"Good!" he laughed, "because I am a dead shot!"
One day we must meet again, and pick up the threads of talk.
At Ress-el-Ain we separated for a time, and my friend was carried into the train, where he lay down and took no further interest in the proceedings. I also lay down, exhausted by anxiety. I was glad to be quit of the desert. Under other conditions it might have been charming, but its glamour is invisible to a captive's eyes.
The train journey was not very interesting, except for the fact that our guard commander (excited perhaps by the approach to civilisation, or else because he was free from the restraining influence of our teetotal Boy Scout) purchased a bottle of 'araq and imbibed it steadily on the journey between Ress-el-Ain and Djerablisse.
'Araq, the reader must know, is otherwise known as mastic or douzico, and is a colourless alcohol distilled from raisins and flavoured with aniseed, which clouds on admixture with water, and tastes like cough-mixture. It is an intoxicant without the saving grace of more generous vintages. It inebriates but does not cheer.
At Djerablisse, on the Euphrates, our guard commander supplemented the fiery 'araq with some equally potent German ration rum. By the time we got to Aleppo next day, he was reeking of this blend of alcohols. Not all the perfumes of Arabia could have stifled its fumes, nor all the waters of Damascus have quenched his thirst. He was besotted.
Escape would have been possible then. We had become separated from the rest of our party and were in charge of one old, sleepy, and rather friendly soldier. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind as to where we should pass the night, but we eventually arrived at a small and clean Turkish hotel, where we were told, rather mysteriously, that we should be among friends.
I looked for friends, but as everyone was asleep, it being then two o'clock in the morning, I decided to have a good night's rest before making any plans. Our dainty bedroom was too tempting to be ignored. The curtains were of Aleppo-work, in broad stripes of black and gold. The rafters were striped in black and white. The walls were dead white, the furniture dead black. Three pillows adorned our beds, of black, and of crimson, and of brilliant blue, each with a white slip covering half their length. The bed-covers were black, worked with gold dragons. It was like a room one imagines in dreams, or sees at the Russian Ballet.
After a blissful night, between sheets, and on a spring mattress, tea was brought to us in bed, and immediately afterwards, as no guards seemed to be about, I rose, greatly refreshed, and dressed in haste. My idea was to order a carriage to drive us to the sea-coast at Mersina, from which place I felt sure it would be possible to charter a boat to Cyprus.
But these hasty plans were dispelled by finding the Boy Scout waiting for me in the passage.