by E. H. Jones
Figure 29: I began distributing banknotes among the onlookers.
A merciful Providence has decreed that the present must suffice, and the future shall be hidden from man; so though at Yozgad we guessed a little of the horror to come, it did not unduly oppress us. When at 10 a.m. on 26th April, the two best carts and the four best horses in the Changri transport were brought to our door, we made merry with Moïse about this theft from the Afion party. Then we went out into the street. In a mad sort of way I superintended the loading of our belongings on to the carts, getting into everybody’s way and flustering still further the already flustered Turks. (Why do Orientals always seem to lose their heads when starting on a journey?) Hill stood by, perfectly heedless of the tumult that was going on round him, reading his Bible and looking miserable. Behind the barred and latticed windows of the Colonels’ House we could hear the Changri prisoners chuckling at our antics, and a voice hailed us from Posh Castle. We did not look up – our farewells had already been said. By way of giving our escort an example of how to humour us, Kiazim Bey came to the door of his office and told us in Turkish that he was our very good friend, that he was sending us to Constantinople for a holiday, and that the soldiers who accompanied us were there to guard us against the enmity of Baylay and our other English foes. (All this, of course, by order of the Spook.) I bade him a florid and affectionate farewell and mounted the cart. Hill went on reading the Bible and had to be pushed up beside me. The driver struck the horses with his whip. I cheered, and my imitative mania asserting itself, I struck the driver with my fly-flap. This caused a delay. The driver pulled up, expostulating in angry Turkish, and my fly-flap was taken away from me by Mulazim Hassan, who had turned up to see the last of us. By this time there was a biggish crowd in the street. We started again. I hugged the driver, got up another cheer, and began distributing banknotes among the onlookers. Moïse, who had been warned by the Spook what to do if I was controlled into wasting my money, jumped off his cart and collected them back again. He had hard work explaining to the ragged mob that I was mad and they must not keep the money, but his fear of the wrath of the Spook if he failed lent a new boldness to his speech and authority to his manner. Still, it was not difficult to see he was far from happy when forcing them to disgorge, and that his nervousness increased proportionately with the size and burliness of his victim.66
Thus, in the two best carts obtainable, with Moïse and two selected gamekeepers in charge of us, and the blessings of the Commandant on our heads, we started forth to face the world as lunatics, and to read the thoughts of the holder of the third clue in Constantinople. It was good fun, getting out into the open after nearly two years of dismal prison life, and I was not a little sorry for Hill. As a religious melancholic he must do nothing but weep or pray or read his Bible, while his heart, if it was anything like mine, was thumping with joy at being quit of Yozgad and moving westwards towards Europe, England, and Liberty! The time was to come when, with hope near dead within me and the stress of an enforced cheerful idiocy weighing me down, I would long to change places with Hill so that I might pray a little, aye – and weep too! But for this one day I was in luck. The Turks put down my happiness to the fact that I was leaving behind the English who were so intent on murdering me, and going to Stamboul to see the Sultan, and Enver Pasha, and become a great man in the Turkish government. So it was quite in keeping with my type of insanity to be light-hearted, and to let off my high spirits in any old act of lunacy that came up my back; to set the carts racing against one another, to howl Turkish songs in imitation of the drivers, to shout mad greetings and make faces and throw money (to the annoyance of the Pimple) at the amazed passers-by. And from my own private point of view there was some excuse for high spirits – were we not the first two to get out of Yozgad on our own initiative, and were we not being taken on a personally conducted tour at the expense of the Turkish government, which, if all went well, would end in old England? So I laughed, and shouted, and sang, and was exceeding cheerful, to the great joy of the escort and the drivers, who much preferred this phase of my lunacy to my ‘dangerous’ moods. All the time Hill sat mournfully huddled up, as became a melancholic, but once, when he glanced at me, I noticed his eyes were sparkling. He told me afterwards it must have been a sparkle of anticipation – he was planning his first dinner at home!
The first three days of our journey were very happy. In my role of ‘cheerful idiot’ I rapidly got on good terms with Bekir and Sabit, the two sentries, and with the drivers of our carts. Beyond insisting on praying before he would do anything they wanted him to do, Hill gave them no trouble at all. So our escort thought they had got a ‘cushy’ job, and a paying one, as an occasional five-piastre note, which escaped the notice of Moïse, came their way. They told Moïse it was a shame to send such a couple of innocents to the ‘Tobtashay’, and they’d like to look after us till the end of the war. They were soon to change their tune.
Doc. O’Farrell’s hint that a ‘suicide’ would complete the downfall of the Constantinople doctors had not been lost upon us. We had decided to hang ourselves on the way to Angora, and to arrange to be rescued by the Pimple in the nick of time. We told the Doc. of our intention. ‘If ye do it,’ he said with enthusiasm, ‘there’s not a doctor in Christendom, let alone Turkey, will believe you’re sane!’ Then caution supervened, and he tried to dissuade us. He told us uncomfortable details about the anatomy of the neck and the spinal column. He said that theoretically the idea was sound, but practically it was impossible, because it was too dangerous. A fraction of a minute might make all the difference and convert our sham suicide into the genuine article. ‘One of ye do it,’ he suggested, ‘then the other can be at hand to cut him down if the Turks don’t come.’ We objected that, besides being suspicious, this would give one of us an unfair advantage over the other in the eyes of the specialists, and we were determined to do the thing thoroughly and share all risks equally. The Doc. made one last despairing effort.
‘Suppose you pull it off and deceive the Turks into thinking it was a genuine attempt,’ he said, ‘what do you think will happen?’
‘We’ll be sent home – to England.’
‘Aye – you’ll be sent home all right. An’ what do you think your address will be?’ He leant forward and tapped my shoulder impressively with a crooked forefinger. ‘Until I get back to let you out it’s Colney Hatch you’ll be in, and divil a glimpse will ye get of Piccadilly or the French Front or whatever it is ye’re hankering after. Remember, I can’t write and explain – the Turks would hang me if I tried.’
‘Once we are in England we can explain matters ourselves,’ I laughed.
‘An’ who will believe you, with your spooks and your buried treasure and all the rest of it? I tell you, you can explain till you’re blue in the face, but it is mad they’ll label you, and mad you will remain till I get back!’
We said we’d risk that, and Doc. gave up argument and threw himself enthusiastically into the task of helping us to deceive his professional brethren, showing us how to fix the knot with the least danger to ourselves, and telling us how to behave when we came to (if we ever came to), and what to say when we were questioned about the hanging. Matthews got us some suitable rope. We used it, for the time being, to tie up our roll of bedding, and very innocent it looked as we rode along towards Angora. Thus openly did the Pied Piper carry his flute.
…Smiling the while a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
Within his quiet pipe the while.
Our rope would open for us a path through the mountains of captivity, and we too had our Mayor and Corporation – Kiazim and our escort – to leave gaping behind.
On the second day out from Yozgad the Spook began to prepare Moïse for the ‘suicide’. It was, of course, out of the question to use the spook-board, or to hold regular séances, because privacy was impossible, and we did not wish the sentries to see Moïse in his role of ‘sitter’, lest they report the fact to
the Constantinople authorities. The Spook had therefore announced at one of our last séances in Yozgad that we were now so well in tune, and so amenable to ‘control’ that the use of the board could be dispensed with (though we were to take it with us), and after leaving Yozgad messages would be delivered through either Hill or myself, as Moïse desired. Moïse suggested that the messages should be delivered through me, and asked for some sign by which he might know ‘whether it is Jones himself who is talking or whether it is the Control speaking through his voice’. The Spook said that the sign of my being under control would be that I would start twisting my coat-button. Whatever was said while I twisted the button emanated from the Spook, and not from myself, and neither Hill nor I would be conscious of it or remember anything about it. The Pimple was overjoyed at this advance to more speedy means of communication; for the glass and board method had been painfully slow, a séance taking anything up to six hours. The great merit of the Ouija or of table-rapping, from the mediums’ point of view, lies in this very fact of slowness, for spelling out an answer letter by letter gives us psychics plenty of time to think. When an inconvenient question is asked, an unintelligible reply can easily be given, and while the sitter is trying to puzzle out what it means the mediums can consider what the final reply is to be. But when the Spook uses the medium’s voice question and answer follow one another with the rapidity of ordinary conversation, and there is less opportunity for deliberation. Because of this danger we had never trusted ourselves to use the ‘direct speech’ method in Yozgad.67
But on the road to Constantinople we used it freely, for we knew exactly what we wanted, and were quite sure of our man.
Early in the morning on the second day, the drivers asked us to lighten the load by walking. The Pimple, Hill, myself and the two sentries took a short cut up the hillside, while the carts followed the winding road. The Pimple began giving us a lesson in French, for the Spook had told him to teach us some French words and a few simple phrases in order to enable us to ask for things in hospital. Ever since Constantinople had been fixed upon as our destination Moïse had spent an hour a day in giving us a French or Turkish lesson. He was an excellent teacher, but he found us rather slow pupils.
‘Your Turkish,’ he said to me as we walked together up the hill, ‘is much better than your French. Now – say the present tense – je suis.’
‘Je suis, tu as, il a –’
‘No, no, no,’ said the Pimple, ‘you mix with avoir! Perhaps I have tried to make you go too fast. Do you remember the numerals?’
I got as far as ‘douze’ and stuck.
‘You, Hill?’
Hill struggled on to twenty in an atrocious accent.
‘You should have learned all this at school,’ said the Pimple reprovingly; ‘you British are always deficient in foreign languages, but even so most of you know the French rudiments.’
‘I was trained for India,’ I said apologetically. ‘Eastern languages, you know. Perhaps that is why I find Turkish easier.’
‘You are lazy and forgetful, both in French and Turkish.’ He began to lecture us for forgetting our lesson of the day before. ‘Try je suis again and see if you can –’ Suddenly his voice broke.
‘Sir,’ he said, excitedly, fixing his eyes on my fingers. I was twisting my coat-button.
The Spook began to speak through me, and Moïse was at once all ears. The change in his attitude was extraordinary. A moment before he had been a hectoring schoolmaster abusing his pupils, a Turkish conqueror in charge of his two prisoners, secure in his superior knowledge and in his official position. Now he was the disciple, humble, deprecating, almost cringing.
The Spook reminded him that both Hill and I were now in a trance and knew nothing of what was being said. Moïse was to keep it secret, lest we got frightened. For in order to justify, in the eyes of the authorities, the diagnosis and fears of the Yozgad doctors, we were to be controlled into hanging ourselves.
‘Oh mon Dieu!’ said the Pimple. He was genuinely shocked.
‘Tais-toi!’ said the Spook angrily. ‘Il ne faut jamais dire ce mot là.’ It began abusing him in French for his carelessness. The Pimple made a most abject apology in the same language, which the Spook was graciously pleased to accept. It then went on in English to describe the Pimple’s part in the coming suicide, and to impress upon him the importance of carrying out his orders exactly, for on that alone the lives of the mediums would depend.
The hanging, the Spook explained, would take place at night, at Mardeen, which was a little country town some sixty miles from Yozgad68. The signal that the hanging had begun would be the extinguishing of the candle in the mediums’ room. As soon as he saw the room was in darkness, Moïse was to call out and ask why the light was put out. He would get no answer and would enter the room to see what was the matter. He would find Hill and Jones hanging by the neck, close together, and must at once do his best to lift them up so as to take some of their weight off the rope, and shout at the top of his voice for assistance, holding them thus till help arrived and they could be cut down. Any carelessness on his part would mean the death of the mediums and loss of the treasure, but beyond being careful to carry out his instructions he need have no other worries, for the mediums would feel no pain and would be quite unconscious of what they were doing.
The Spook made Moïse repeat his instructions, over and over again, until there was no doubt that he knew exactly what to do. Then I gave a sigh, let go of the button, and turned my eyes, which had been fixed steadily on the horizon, and said:
‘All right, I think I can remember it now! Je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils ont.’
Moïse stared at me open-mouthed. He was a little shaken.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s right, except the third plural. But do you know you’ve been in a trance?’
‘Has he?’ said Hill. ‘I never noticed.’
‘And in your trance,’ Moïse went on, ‘you spoke French – well, fluently, with argot in it!’
‘You don’t say so! What did I say?’
‘You abused me for saying “mon Dieu!”’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No,’ Moïse lied. ‘Nothing else. But surely that is wonderful enough? Oliver Lodge says it is practically unknown for mediums to speak in a tongue they don’t know. You’ve beaten Lodge.’
‘But you’ve been teaching us French,’ I expostulated.
‘Pah!’ said the Pimple, ‘you used words you never heard in your life!’
Perhaps! But then, the Pimple did not know as much about me as he thought. My training for India had not been entirely confined to Eastern languages. I have pleasant recollections of summers spent in a French school and a French ’Varsity.
Chapter XXV
How We Hanged Ourselves
On the 29th April 1918 (an ominous day because it was the second anniversary of the fall of Kut-el-Amarah and of the beginning of my captivity), we drove into the little town of Mardeen. Here, on our journey to Yozgad twenty-two months ago, we had rested for a day. We were then travel-worn, footsore and starved. The memories of the awful desert march, the studiously callous neglect with which the Turks had treated us on the way, the misery of being herded and driven and clubbed across the wastes like so many stolen cattle, and sheer weariness of body had nigh broken our spirit. Long afterwards a British officer, captured on the Suez front, who saw the Kut prisoners pass through Angora, told me, ‘When we saw your mob being driven along I turned to my neighbour and said, “By God! Those fellows have been through it! They’re broken men, every one of them!” You all looked fit for nothing but hospital.’ Our batch were officers, and as such the Turks had granted us a little money and a little transport to help us on the way. What the men of the garrison suffered no one can tell. The desert road from Kut to railhead at Raas-el-ain is 600 miles. At each furlong-post set a stone to the memory of a murdered prisoner, and there will still be corpses to spare! That lonely desert track belongs to the Dead Men
of Kut.69
My second entry into Mardeen was happier than the first. We were travelling in comfort. The twisting of a coat-button made us in fact what that courteous liar Enver Pasha had glibly promised we should be – ‘the honoured guests of Turkey’. The Spook could get us all the comforts we wanted, and though we still denied ourselves proper food the starvation was nothing, for it was a self-imposed means to an end. In place of a hopeless captivity there lay ahead of us the hope of early freedom. So we bumped joyfully over the cobbled streets and drew up in the market square. We noticed with interest the effects of the pressure of the British navy. Two years ago the shops had still been full of European goods. Now most of them were shut, and those which remained open were empty of everything but local produce. A restaurant where I had got a good meal for five piastres was now charging forty piastres for a single dish of poor food. Everywhere prices were fabulously high. Last winter, we learned, the town had been swept by typhus. Most of the townsfolk were in rags; at all of which we could have rejoiced had it not been for the starving children. Hill nudged me and silently indicated a little group of them, pallid with hunger, grubbing amongst some refuse in the hope of finding food the dogs had overlooked. The Spook got to work with five-piastre notes, and my Turkish being already good enough to enable me to tell each recipient to run like smoke, the Pimple had a desperate ten minutes. He returned from his last chase puffing and blowing, and bundled me back into the cart. He was very frightened, for he had retrieved very few of the notes.
We went on to one of the three caravanserais of which the town boasted. These Turkish serais are built on a regular model. A big gateway leads into an open courtyard surrounded on all four sides by buildings. These are usually two-storeyed. The lower storey consists of stables for the horses, the upper of rooms for the men. Round the upper storey runs a fairly broad veranda, which overlooks the courtyard and gives access to the rooms. The veranda is reached by a staircase leading up from the courtyard. Somewhere in the building there is usually a coffee-stall, kept by the caretaker, where light refreshment can be obtained.