What made me realise more sharply than anything else the seriousness of the affair was the further news that Frederick Moore, of the New York Sun, whom I had often met during the last six months, had been badly wounded. I started up Pera Street to see what I could see. More people were about by that time, but the shops were shut and no cabs or trams were running. All the embassies, legations, and consulates were guarded, like ours, by cadets and Macedonian gendarmes. Other Macedonians, they of the white caps and white leggings, they of the careless Mauser and the casual cigarette, mingled informally with the crowd. As an inhabitant of a captured city, it was interesting to note the friendliness of captives and captors. A rare shot was the sole reminder that there might be more than one side to this question. By the time I reached the vicinity of the Taxim artillery barracks, however, there were other reminders. I saw an iron shutter neatly perforated by dozens of small round holes. The windows of houses in otherwise good repair were riddled and broken. Walls were curiously pockmarked, and I saw a shell embedded in one. These phenomena were particularly visible about the local guard-house, which I was told had only just surrendered. Several stretchers passed me, carrying soldiers in contorted attitudes. A man went into the guard-house with a ridged pine coffin on his back, followed by two of the dervishes who wash the bodies of dead Mohammedans. I didn’t count how many more coffins and dervishes I saw go into that guard-house.
A Macedonian Blue
I followed one of the stretchers into the adjoining French hospital, in hope of hearing from Moore. The resources of the place were evidently overtaxed, and I took the liberty of going farther to verify the information given me by a white-winged sister of charity. At a hospitable English house across the street I found Mrs. Moore. Mr. Graves, of the London Times, who had been reported as dead, was also there, and two English officers of the Macedonian gendarmerie. They had come up unofficially from Salonica to see how their men acquitted themselves. It seemed they and Mr. Booth, of the Graphic, had been with Moore that morning. They ran into the firing before they knew it, thinking, as other people did, that the action was taking place around Yîldîz. Their position was the more awkward because the Macedonians were determined to prevent the soldiers of the garrison from getting down into Pera, and there was cross-firing from side streets. The two correspondents were wounded almost at the same moment, Booth getting a bullet that grazed his scalp, and Moore being shot clean through the neck. A Greek behind him was killed, apparently by the same ball. The officers got Booth into an adjoining house, but by a regrettable misunderstanding they left Moore lying in the street, whence he was rescued by a young Greek sculptor.
Taxim artillery barracks, shelled April 24
The streets grew more animated until the Grande Rue de Pera assumed the appearance of a Sunday afternoon. But another aspect of the situation was presented to me when I bearded the Blues of the telegraph office for Mrs. Moore, and heard clerks politely regretting that all wires were down except those to Europe by way of Constantza. I concluded that Shefket Pasha, who did not trouble Yîldîz until he was sure of the city, proposed to leave no loophole for reactionary telegrams to the provinces. Returning to the Taxim for further reconnaissance, I was taking snap-shots when shots of another kind began to snap again. They were neither near nor many, but they caused an extraordinary panic. People ran wildly back into Pera, the women screaming, the men tucking those near and dear to them under their arms or abandoning them to the mercy of the foe as their motor centres dictated. I, seeing some soldiers grin, waited in the lee of a tree. When the street was clear I went on to the artillery barracks that had given so much trouble in the morning. The big building was quiet enough now, under the afternoon sun that made jagged black shadows in the holes torn by Macedonian shells. Beyond, at the far corner of the Taxim Garden, I saw a group of white leggings. A bugle blew, and some of them crept around the wall into the side street. As I came nearer a soldier ran toward me, brandishing his rifle. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. I replied as politely as I could that I was taking photographs. “Is this a time to take photographs?” he vociferated. “We are killing men. Go back!” If other argument were needed I had it in the form of renewed shots that banged behind him, where I could see through trees the yellow mass of Tash Kîshla. I went back less rapidly than I might have done, remembering the people who had just run away. Opposite the garden was the parade-ground of the barracks, bounded on its farther side by stables and a strip of wall behind which heads bobbed. I began to repent of my retreat, also to thirst for human companionship, and I resolved to join those comfortably ensconced spectators. As I strolled toward them across the great empty space of sun they hailed me from afar. I then perceived with some embarrassment that they wore white caps, à la macédonienne, and that a portentous number of rifle barrels were gaping at me. They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon attack on Tash Kîshla.
I cannot say that they received me too civilly. Grace, however, was given me to appreciate that the moment was not one for civilities, especially from men who had been under action for twelve hours. I also appreciated the opportunity, urged without forms upon me, of studying their picturesque rear. Tired soldiers smoked or slept on a steep grass slope, and a mule battery lurked in the gully below. Wondering if it might not yet be possible to see what was going on, I approached a young man who stood at the door of a house behind the artillery stables and asked him in my best French if he objected to my ascending to a balcony I saw on the top story of his house. He, being a Greek, replied in his best English that he would be happy to accompany me thither. On the way up he pointed out to me, at a broken window of the opposite stable, the figure of an artilleryman, his rifle across his knees, sitting dead and ghastly against a wall. And he told me about the engagement of which he had been an uncomfortably close witness: how the Macedonians marched in from the valley of the Golden Horn early in the morning; how the first of them were allowed to pass the artillery barracks, and were even cheered; how another lot, who scrambled up the gully from Kassîm Pasha, saw a white flag flying from the artillery stables, advanced more confidently, and were met by a treacherous fire; how they then retired for reinforcements, brought up machine guns and field-pieces, and took stable, barracks, and guard-house after a nasty little fight of five hours.
They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon attack on Tash Kîshla