"But the train will be gone."
"Not if we run."
"Run!" replied the porter, very much astonished, "and what will the Effendi do?"
"Run too."
And with another thrust from the billiard cue, I started him down Pera.
Fortunately for me, trains in Turkey are not very punctual in starting. On arriving at the railway, about ten minutes past seven, I found that I had time to take my ticket to Hadem Kui, a small station an hour and a half from Constantinople. There were two Englishmen in the same carriage as myself, one of them an old friend whose acquaintance I had made some years previous in Madrid. They intended to stop at a swamp a few miles from the city, and spend the day snipe-shooting.
Upon my remarking that the railway seemed to take a very circuitous course, my friend smiled.
"Yes," he said, "when the line was about to be constructed, the Government agreed to pay so much per mile,—the result has been that, although the country is level, the line is not quite so straight as it might be."
"Poor Turks!" said his companion, "they are always being abused by the Christians, and yet the latter make a very good thing out of them. Why, only the other day, a quantity of Krupp guns were brought here. The cost price was 150l. per gun, but the Turks had to pay 750l."
"The Christians are too much for them in a bargain," he added.