The streets of the city, usually crowded at dawn, were still deserted by all except soldiers when we entered. There were sentinels seated cross-legged at every corner, who rose and unslung their guns as our carriage approached—the dynamiters had gone to their work in carriages. But we were not halted on this ride, for we had a Turkish driver who served as a passport. We drove first to the hotel named from America’s discoverer, but finding it had been put out of business by the same explosion that destroyed the bank, we went back to the Angleterre. After a wash and breakfast we at once set about gathering an account of the events of the past two days. It was difficult, however, to move through the town, Asiatics challenging us at every turn, and we sought out the British Consul for assistance.
We arrived at the Consulate just as the Vice-Consul, accompanied by the Consular kavass, was starting on an official tour of investigation. This was an opportunity we could not afford to miss. We attached ourselves to the Vice-Consul, and the gentleman protested. But he was courteous in his objections to our company, and we remained with him. His great solicitude was to know the exact number of the slain on both sides, a fact which concerned us less than graphic accounts of the fighting; for it is a duller story to say a thousand people were put to the sword than to give in detail the way a single Christian died. H.M. Vice-Consul was a careful young man, with little confidence in correspondents. He evidently thought it would be useless to provide us with accurate information, and took no trouble to point out to us that the slaughter had not assumed the proportions of what might in Turkey be called a massacre. He seemed to concern himself chiefly with priming himself to contradict in his official despatches the gross exaggerations wherein we would undoubtedly indulge; and in view of his services to us we were both sincerely sorry to disappoint him.
THE WRECK OF THE OTTOMAN BANK.
ENTERING THE DYNAMITERS’ DEN.
The dead were all now removed from the streets, though the routes taken by the carts in which they were collected could still be traced to the trenches by clotted drippings of blood and bloody wads of rags on the roads. The Consul led the way to the Bulgarian cemeteries in the hope of being able to count the corpses, but the last spadeful of earth was just being shovelled into the long graves as we entered the gates. We could only, therefore, estimate the number. We paced off the dimensions of the excavations, and, taking the word of the Turkish official that the bodies were laid but one row deep, estimated that there could not be more than twenty in a trench—and, as far as we knew, there were but three trenches throughout the city.
From the cemetery we followed the Consul to the site of the Ottoman Bank and passed with him through the cordon of troops which surrounded the ruins. Workmen were busily engaged uncovering a tunnel under the street leading from a little shop opposite to a vital spot beneath the bank. The little shop was that which I had watched so often from my window in the Hôtel Colombo. The peasants I had seen enter and leave the place had been, many of them, insurgents in disguise. The stock displayed in front was only a ruse to cover the real merchandise, which had come all the way from France and had been passed by the Turkish Customs officials on the payment of substantial backsheesh. We were told that ‘special’ customers of this shop went away nightly with heavy baskets, now suspected of containing the earth excavated during each day. It is said to have taken the insurgents forty days to cut the tunnel, by means of which they were able to blow up the bank.
The soldiers were preparing to break into the den of the dynamiters, and we waited in the street to see what they would discover within. They were compelled to enter first by a side window, because the iron front of the place was stoutly barred. They made an opening large enough for a man to pass through, and two of them climbed in cautiously with lighted lanterns. I do not think they expected to discover any Bulgarians, dead or alive, within—nor did they—but they feared to tread on dynamite. They found a sword of the pattern in use in the Bulgarian army, and a wooden box with a small quantity of dynamite, and a basket containing a strange assortment of other things. They passed these trophies out of the window and permitted us to examine them. In the basket were several yards of fuse, a few pounds of steel lugs for making bombs more deadly, a bottle half full of wine, a hunk of native cheese, and a string of prayer beads. The dynamite, in the shape of cubes two inches thick, was carefully packed in cardboard boxes, on the covers whereof were instructions for use printed in three languages—French, English, and German, in the order named.