"Far from it," said the enthusiastic specialist. "You are not following it with your eyes."
"I am—indeed I am," said I, squinting at his fat forefinger.
"I am told you cannot sleep," continued my interlocutor. "You seem to me to be suffering from nervous exhaustion."
"A little sleeping draught . . ." I suggested.
"I ought to observe you for a few days," he answered.
"Not here?" I quavered.
"Yes, here."
"But I do not like the—other lunatics," said I, in a small voice.
Eventually, to my great delight, I was allowed to remain where I was, and was given (as reward for the danger I had endured) several cachets of bromide and a few tablets of trional.
I returned in triumph to my ward, and Robin and I laid our heads together. With the drugs we now possessed it would be possible to send our sentries to sleep when we were moved from hospital, if the person who was making plans for us to be taken on board a Black Sea steamer failed to communicate in time. But the question now arose as to how much of these drugs was suitable for the Turkish constitution. The object was to administer a sleeping draught, not a fatal dose. If we were transferred from Haidar Pasha we knew we should be sent for a time to the garrison camp of Psamattia (a suburb of Constantinople on the European side) and our intention was to inveigle our attendants into having lunch during our journey there, and ply them with Pilsener beer, suitably prepared, until they were somnolent and unsuspicious enough to make it feasible to bolt.