[5] = soldier.
[6] = code in this letter.
CHAPTER III.
AN ATTEMPT THAT FAILED.
Thus disappointed of two of our schemes, we looked around for other ways and means of escape. Nobby had another of his brain-waves. In search of dry firewood he had made several tours inside the roof of the barracks: for the ceilings and tiled slopes were carried not by modern trusses, but by the primitive and wasteful means of trestles resting on enormous horizontal baulks, running across from wall to wall at close intervals. Having entered the roof space by a trap-door in the ceiling, it was possible to walk on these completely round the barracks, and eke out the miserably green firewood we collected ourselves by chips and odd ends of comparatively dry wood, left up there presumably several decades before, while the barracks were in building.
Why not, said Nobby, disappear up there one night and leave the Turks to infer that we had escaped, encouraging them in the belief by leaving the bars of some window cut and forced apart? We could then wait until the rest had left for Yozgad and slip out from the deserted barracks at our pleasure.
There were, however, two obvious objections to this scheme. It was hardly feasible as a means of escape for more than one or at most two parties: the Turk might be deceived into thinking half a dozen fellows had slipped past his sentries, but hardly twenty or more. Secondly, it was quite conceivable that the escape of even a small party would lead to the move being cancelled altogether: it is true it would be possible for the stowaways to be fed in the roof by their companions below, but the prospect of spending "three years or the duration of the war" in that dark and musty garret took away from the otherwise considerable attractions of the scheme.
In the end a very much modified form of the roof scheme was permitted by a committee of senior officers, and our party of six, having been adjudged by this committee to have the best chances of success on account of our prearranged scheme when we reached the coast, was given the privilege of making the attempt. As will be seen, however, it was less an actual attempt than a waiting upon favourable circumstances which would arise should our captors make a certain mistake. In any country except Turkey the whole conception would have been absurd; but we had seen enough of Turkish methods to know that there anything is possible.
By good luck the party's preparations for escape were already far advanced, although, apart from the move, we had not proposed starting until June: the rains continue off and on till then, and the crops would be in too immature a state at an earlier date.