20 
LAND & WATER 
August 24, 1916 
for your Captain Schenk." I slipped the envelope in my 
pocket and went out. 
Schenk was pretty sick, so I left a note for hini. At one 
o'clock I got the train started with a couple of German 
Landwehr in each truck and Peter and I m a horse-box. 
. Presently I remembered Schenk's telegram which still reposed 
in mv pocket. I took it out and opened it, meaning to wire 
it from the first station we stopped at. But I changed my 
mind when I read it. It was from some official at Regensburg 
asking him to put under arrest and send back by the first boat 
a man named Brandt, who was believed to have come aboard 
at Absthafen on December 30th. 
I whistled and showed it to Peter. Th^ sooner we were at 
Constantinople the better, and I prayed we would get there 
before the fellow who sent this wire repeated it and got the 
Commandant to send on the message and ha\e us held up at 
Chataldja. For my back had got fairly stiffened about these 
munitions, and I was going to take any risk to see them safely 
delivered to their proper owner. Peter couldn't understand 
me at all. He still hankered after a grand destruction of the 
lot somewhere down the railway. But then tliis wasn't the 
line of Peter's profession, and his pride was not at stake. 
We had a mortally slow journey. It was bad enough m 
Bulgaria, but when we crossed the frontier at a place called 
Mustafa Pasha we struck the real supineness of the East. 
Happily 1 found a German officer there who had some notion 
of hustling, and after all it was in his interest to get the stuff 
moved. It was the morning of the i6th, after Peter and I 
had been living like pigs on black bread and condemned 
tinned stuff, that we came in sight of a blue sea on our right 
hand and knew we couldn't be very far from the end. 
It was jolly near the end in another sense. We stopped 
at a station and were stretching our legs on the platform, when 
I saw a familiar figure approaching. It was Rasta with half 
a dozen Turkish gendarmes. 
1 called to Peter and we clambered into the truck next our 
liorsc box. I had been half expecting some move like this 
and had made a plan. 
The Turk swaggered up and addressed me. " You can get 
back to Rustchuk," he said. " I take over from you here. 
Hand me the papers." 
"Is this Chataldja?" I asked innocently. 
" It is the end of your affair,"^ he said haughtily. " Quick, 
or it will be the worse for you." 
" Now look here, my son," I said- " You're a kid and 
know nothing. I'll hand over to General von Oesterzee and 
to no one else." 
" You are in Turkey," he cried, " and will obey the Turkish 
Government." , ,, t j <<i_ .l 
" I'll obey the Government right enough, I said, but 
if you're the' Government I could make a better one with a bib 
and a rattle." 
He said something to his men who unslung their rifles. 
" Please don't begin shooting," I said. " There are twelve 
armed guards in this train who will take their orders from 
me. Besides, I and my friend can shoot a bit." 
" Fool ! " he cried, getting Very angry. " I can order up 
a regiment in five minutes. 
" Maybe you can," I said, " but observ-e the situation. I 
am sitting on enough toluol to blow up this countryside. If 
you dare to come aboard I will shoot you. If you call in your 
regiment I will tell you what I'll do. I'll fire this stuff, and 
I reckon they'll be picking up tiie bits of you and your regiment 
off the Galhpoli Peninsula." ^ t , j 1, j • 
He had put up a bluff— a poor one— and 1 had culled it. 
He saw I meant what I said, and became sullen. 
" Good-bye, sir," he said. " You have had a fair chance 
and rejected it. We shall meet again soon and you will be 
sorry for your insolence." 
He strutted away, and it was all I could do to keep from 
running after him. I wanted to lay him over my knee and 
spank him. 
We got safely to Chataldja and were received by von 
Oesterzee like a long-lost brother. He was the regular 
gunner-officer, not thinking about anything but his guns 
and shells. I had to wait about three hours while he was 
checking the stuff with the invoices, and then he gave me a 
receipt which 1 still possess. I told him about Rasta and lie 
agreed I had done right. It didn't make him as mad as I 
expected, because, you see, he got his stuff safe in any case. 
It was only that the wretched Turks had to pay twice for a 
lot of it. 
He gave Peter and me luncheon and was altogether very 
(ivil and inclined to talk about the war. I would have liked 
to hear what he had to say, for it would have been something 
to get the inside view of Germany's eastern campaign, but I 
did not dare to wait. Any moment there might arrive an 
incriminating wire from Rustchuk. Finally he lent us a car 
to take us the few miles to the city. 
So it came about that at five minutes past three on the 
i6th day of January, with only the clothes we stood up in. 
Peter aiid I entered Constantinople. 
I was in considerable spirits, for I had got the final lap 
successfully over, and I was looking forward madly to meeting 
my friends', but all the same the first sight was a mighty dis- 
appointment. I don't quite know what I had expected— a 
sort of fairyland Eastern city, all white marble and blue water, 
and stately Turks in surphces and veiled liouris and roses- 
and nightingales and some sort of string band discoursing sweet 
music. I had forgotten that winter is pretty much the same 
everywhere. It was a drizzling day with a south-east wind 
blowing, and the streets were long troughs of mud. The first 
part I struck looked like a dingy colonial suburb—wooden 
houses and corrugated iron roofs and endless dirty sallow 
children. There was a cemetery I remember, with Turk's- 
caps stuck at the head of each grave. Then we got into narrow 
steep streets which descended to a kind of big canal. I saw 
what I took to be mosques and minarets and they were about 
as impressive as factory chimneys. By and by we crossed 
a bridge and paid a penny for the privilege. If I had knowa 
it was the famous Golden Horn I would have looked at it 
with more interest, but I saw nothing save a lot of moth- 
eaten barges and some queer little boats hke gondolas. Then 
we came'^into busier streets where ramshackle cabs drawn 
by lean horses spluttered through the mud. I saw one old 
fellow who looked hke my notion of a Turk, but most of the 
population had the appearance of London old-clothes men. 
All but the soldiers, Turk and German, who seemed well 
set-up fellows. • , ^ • j 
Peter had paddled along at my side like a faithful dog, 
not saying a word, but clearly not approving of this wet and 
dirty metropolis. ,, 
" Do you know that we are being followed, Cornells ? he 
said suddenly. " Ever since we came into this evil-smeUing 
dorp." , 
Peter was infallible in a thing like that. The news scared 
me badly, for I feared that the telegram had come to Chat- 
aldja. Then I thought it couldn't be that, for if von Oesterzee 
had wanted me he wouldn't have taken the trouble to stalk 
me. It was more likely my friend Rasta. 
I found the ferry of Ratchik by asking a soldier, and a 
German sailor there told me where the Kurdish Bazaar was. 
He pointed out a steep street which ran past a high block of 
warehouses with every window broken. Sandy had said the 
left hand side coming down, so it must be the right-hand 
side going up. We plunged into it and it was the filthiest 
place of all. The wind whistled up it and stirred the garbage. 
It seemed denselv inhabited, for at all the doors there were 
groups of people 'squatting with their heads covered, though 
scarcely a window showed in the blank walls. 
The street corkscrewed endlessly. Sometimes it seemed to 
stop ; then it found a hole in the opposing masonry and 
edged its way in. Often it was almost pitch dark ; then 
would come a greyish twilight where it opened out to the width 
of a decent lane. To find a house in that murk was no easy 
job, and by the time we had gone a quarter of a mile I began 
to fear we had missed it. It was no good asking any of the 
crowd we met. They din't look as if they understood any 
civiHsed tongue. 
At last we stumbled on it— a tumble-down coffee house 
with A. Kuprasso above the door in queer amateur lettering. 
There was a lamp burning inside and two or three men. 
smoking at small wooden tables. 
We ordered coffee, .^thick black stuff like treacle, which 
Peter anathematised." A negro brought it and I told him 
in German I wanted to speak to Mr. Kuprasso. He paid 
no attention, so I shouted louder at him, and the noise brought 
a man out of the back parts. 
He was a fat oldish fellow with a long nose, very hke the 
Greek traders you see on the Zanzibar coast, I beckoned to 
him and he waddled forward, smiling oilily. Then 1 asked 
him what he would take, and he replied in very halting 
German that he would have a sirop. 
" You are Mr. Kuprasso," I said. " I wanted to show 
this place to my friend. He has heard of your garden-house 
and the fun there." 
He turned on me a perfectly blank face. 
" The Signor is mistaken. I have no garden-house." 
" Rot," 1 said, " I've been here before, my friend. I recall 
your shanty at the back and many merry nights there. What 
was it you 'called it ? Oh, I remember— the Garden House of 
Suhman the Red." . 
He put his finger to his hp and looked incredibly sly. 
" The Signor remembers that. But that was in the old 
happy days before war came. The place is long since shut. 
The people here are too poor to dance and sing." _^ 
" All the same I would like to have another look at it, 
I said, and I slipped an English sovereign into his hand. 
He glanced at it in surprise and his manner changed. 
" The Signor is a Prince and I will do his will." He clapped 
