Frank Forester: A Story of the Dardanelles

by Herbert Strang

This was more than even an Anatolian captain could stand.

"You wish to insult me?" he cried.

"Wallahy! What is this? Insult you? I do but repeat the Alman Pasha's words. Mayhap I understood him wrongly; but it seemed to me that he spoke of Anatolian asses. Who am I to correct him? But come now, tell me what you have done and where you have been; what caves you have searched, what woods you have beaten."

Unwillingly, sulkily, the captain gave particulars of his doings during the past few days. He felt that though nominally in command as senior officer, the Kurd was in reality superseding him. And he resented the implication that he had failed in what was at best a thankless task.

Some ten days before, his information had been, an Englishman disguised as an Armenian had been recognised in Gallipoli as a fugitive from Erzerum. How he had contrived to reach Gallipoli was a mystery. Before he could be arrested by the person who had discovered him, he had made a violent attack on that person, and escaped to the hills. When the alarm was given, the Anatolian captain had been sent in pursuit. About sunset a peasant had seen an Armenian who answered to the description of the fugitive crossing the Karaman river near the Bergas road. Darkness prevented his being followed up, but the hunt was resumed at dawn next morning. It had proved fruitless hitherto. The captain complained that not a hundred, but ten thousand men would be required to beat thoroughly those rugged brush-covered hills.

"Think of it!" he said. "Climbing up and down these almost perpendicular hill-faces; through dense scrub; down one side of a valley, across a stream or a swamp and up the other side; beating bushes; exploring hill caves; searching secluded farms--and all the time without proper food. We were sent away in a hurry. 'Hunt till you find him,' was the order. We had two days' rations, and since then have had to depend on what we could pick up at the farms, and they, as you know, are in lonely places far apart. And we have not so much as caught sight of this elusive Englishman, though we have heard of him often enough. Wallahy! a farmer at Taifur Keui told me that a young Armenian had walked uninvited into his house and demanded food, holding a revolver to his head. Stricken with amazement and terror at this boldness on the part of an Armenian dog--but in truth a famished dog is bold as a lion--the farmer gave him bread and honey, and having satisfied himself, he paid for his entertainment and went away composedly and without haste, threatening to shoot any man that followed him. This being told me, I hunted diligently for two days through the Taifur district, and behold, it was then related that the fugitive had appeared at Kum Keui, ten miles away on the high-road, and there he had waylaid a supply wagon, and taken for himself a great quantity of the good things it contained, and forced the driver to unyoke the mules, and when this was done in fear and trembling because of the revolver, this bold brigand caused the wagon to run down a sloping place and over a precipice into the Ak Bashi river."

"Mashallah! These are marvels indeed," said the Kurd, "and there is no truth in them. But say on, captain; let my ears feast on these fairy tales."

"I speak what I have heard; as for the truth, Allah knows. It was told me also that the dog was seen at Kachili and Kuchuk Anafarta, but when I came to those places and was searching every nook and cranny, behold, one brought me word that he had been seen elsewhere. Yesterday, as I live, a major of artillery came wearily into Maidos, sick with shame at the garments he wore, which in very truth were the rags of an Armenian. And he told me that when he was riding without escort on the Gallipoli road near Boghali yonder, a young giant that was Armenian in dress but a very devil in mien and bearing leapt forth suddenly from the bushes of the wayside, and laying a mighty hand upon him, dragged him from his horse, and compelled him there and then to exchange his uniform for those filthy tatters the Armenian wore. Yet did the major confess that his ravisher was not without courtesy, for even as he put on the major's heavy coat he prayed his pardon for the robbery, saying that he would fain have left him the coat, but that he could not, because the nights in these hills are bitter cold. And that this is truth I tell is sure, for that same day--yesterday in the afternoon--an officer of artillery was seen, alone, above Baghche Keui, the hamlet you see below us yonder. And I came last night in haste to Biyuk Anafarta, and rose with the dawn, and for six hours I have been scouring these hills, and not a glimpse of that bold Englishman have I seen."

"Wallahy! Truly it was time I came," said the Kurd. "Know you that it was I, Abdi, that found the Englishman searching for treasure in the ruins of a house in Gallipoli which an English shell had smitten. It was I, Abdi, whom the dog, taking me unawares--who can contend against deceitfulness?--hurled fainting to the ground. To me should have been given the task of hunting the dog; now to me it is given; and by the beard of the Prophet I will catch him and flay him; I, Abdi, say it."

While the others were thus conversing, some of the men, having finished their meal, had got up and begun to stroll about the hillside. Others had gone down to fill their water-bottles at a spring that bubbled out of the rock some two hundred yards from the spot where the officers were sitting. Abdi, lighting a cigarette, watched them with a speculative eye.