Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom

by Maurice Andrew Brackenreed Johnston; Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley

The other half of the party had gone in turns to the well, to fetch water and do some more crude grinding for the day's food. It took an hour and a half to do a single trip for water alone. Each time nearly an hour was spent in drawing up water mugful by mugful till all available receptacles were full. So we were thankful when later on that day, Cochrane, scouting around, discovered another well. This was not only a little nearer to our lair, but also had one place deep enough to permit the use of a canvas bucket. This meant a great saving of time. The water, too, held in solution rather less mud, and none of the bits of mouldy wood which formed a fair proportion of the hauls from the well by the tower. Near the new well there were more ruins, in this case only a few low walls, and, standing apart, a semicircular arch of some twelve feet in diameter—just the bare ring of stones remained and nothing else.

From now onwards, for the rest of our stay on the coast, we settled down to a new kind of existence—in fact we may be said to have existed, and nothing more. Life became a dreary grind, both literally and metaphorically. For the next few days, at any rate, we thought of nothing else but how to prepare and eat as much food as we could. This was not greed: it was the only thing to do. None of us wanted to lie a day longer than absolutely necessary in that awful ravine, but we were at present simply too weak to help ourselves. To carry out a search for another boat was beyond the powers of any one.

Cochrane rigged up the coffee-grinder on the same afternoon as it had arrived—lashing the little brass cylinder to the branch of a tree at a convenient height for a man to turn the handle. A rusty saw, cutting like all Oriental saws on the pull-stroke, had been discovered in the village and brought down by the last party, and this proved useful now and on subsequent occasions.

Whilst one of the party worked at the mill, and another supervised the cooking of the next dixieful of porridge, the rest were busy picking over the grain in the hopes of removing at any rate some small proportion of the empty husks and the bits of earth with which it was mixed. Even so it was impossible to clean the dirt off the grains themselves.

Nothing, we thought, could be more wearisome than this never-ending task. Our misery was aggravated by the swarms of flies which incessantly harassed us as we worked. What right they had to be alive at all on such a deserted coast was never discovered. He whose turn it was to cook found in the smoke from the fire a temporary respite from their attentions; but they took care to make up for lost time afterwards. When the water was nearly boiled away, bits of porridge were wont to leap out of the pot and light on the cook's hands. The ensuing blister did not last long, for within twenty-four hours the flies had eaten it all away. We had no bandages left, and pieces of paper which we used to wet and stick on the blisters fell off as soon as they were dry. It was not many days before Old Man's and Johnny's hands became covered with septic sores. Unfortunately, too, most of us were out of 'baccy, as a means of keeping these pests away. Some took to smoking cigarettes made from the dried leaves which littered the stony bed of our unhappy home. Even the non-smoker of the party had to give way to the pernicious habit once, out of pure self-defence.

Nor at night was it easy to obtain peace. The flies had no sooner gone to their well-earned rest than the mosquitoes took up the call with their high-pitched trumpet notes. But of course it was not the noise which mattered, but their bites; and in the end most of us used to sleep with a handkerchief or piece of cloth over our faces, and a pair of socks over our hands.

Ravine life was most relaxing—partly owing to the stuffiness of the air in so deep and narrow a cleft, overgrown as it was with trees and scrub; but perhaps still more to reaction, after more than three weeks of strenuous marching. So long as we had had the encouragement of being able to push on each day, and feel that we were getting nearer home, we had no time to think of bodily exhaustion: the excitement, mild though it was, kept us going. Now, unable to do anything towards making good our escape, it required a big effort to drag oneself to one's feet for the purpose of fetching a mugful of porridge. It required a still bigger one to go up in pairs to fetch water from the well, although it was essential for every one to do this at least once a day, merely to keep the pot a-boiling. This, too, was the only way of obtaining a deep drink; except for half a mug of tea made from several-times stewed leaves, all the water brought down to the nullah each day was utilised for cooking the wheat. Fortunately, to take us to the well there was the further inducement of a wash for both bodies and clothes. The latter by this time were in a very dirty and also worn-out condition; but thanks doubtless to our having spent no appreciable time inside villages actually occupied by Turks, they were not verminous.

On account of the washing, visits to the well were apt at times to develop into lengthy affairs—anything up to five or six hours, which did not help towards getting through the daily tasks necessary to keep ourselves fed. Not only did this involve having reliefs at the mill for eight out of every twenty-four hours, but much work was necessary to keep up the supply of cleaned wheat to feed the machine. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention, and from the 5th September, acting on a suggestion made by Looney, we used to take the next day's wheat up to the well and wash it there in a couple of changes of water. There was a convenient stone trough on the spot. The chaff floated to the surface, while the earth, whether in loose particles or clinging to the grains themselves, was dissolved. After washing, the wheat was spread out in the sun on squares of cloth brought down from the village, and when dry was fetched back to the ravine by the next water-party.

Like most schemes, this one had its weak points. It was very extravagant in water, and in a few days our well began to show distinct signs of being drained to emptiness; in fact, only a puddle could have existed to begin with, though a larger one than that in the well near the tower.

The second disadvantage was that the grain, while left out to dry, might be discovered and give away our presence; but, in any case, one pair or another of the party was so often up at the well that the risk was not greatly increased; besides, there was not much to induce a Turk from the camp below to visit the ruins.