without remembering that an Armenian lad said those words to me, lying in chains in one of these cells. With another prisoner, a Greek, who had endured eleven months of this torture, I also had some speech.
"Yes, the war will be over soon," he said. "My God, how good this cigarette of yours tastes! I haven't touched tobacco for a month. But be careful. The sentries must not see you speaking to me."
"Yes, the chains were bad at first," he continued when the sentry's back was turned, "but one gets used to anything in time. And I have had time enough. It takes a lot to kill a healthy man. Before I came in here I used to be strong and well. I used to ride two hours every day, on my own horses. Now my horses have gone to feed the Turkish Army and I can hardly drag my chains as far as the water-tap. But God is great. . . ."
God is great! Allahu akbar!
I determined to get away from that dungeon at all costs, if for no other reason than because I had to survive to write about it.
I went to the big gate, and tried to bluff the sentry to let me go to see the Commandant. But a clean face and a full stomach are practically necessary to a débonnaire appearance. When one is scrubby and starved it is almost impossible to succeed in "wangling." I stared at the sentry through my eyeglass, and I offered him my twenty-five piastres as if I had plenty more baksheesh to give to a good boy, but I utterly and dismally failed to impress him.
"Yok, yok, yok," he said, looking at me as one might look at an orang-outang that has
DO NOT IRRITATE THIS ANIMAL
written over its cage.
I gibbered in impotent rage, and then went and put my head under a tap.