20 
LAND & WATHK 
September 14, 1916 
own business was in good trim, for we were presently 
going east towards Mesopotamia, but unless we learned 
more about Greenmantle our journey would be a 
grotesque failure. And learn about Greenmantle we could 
not, for nobody by word or deed suggested his existence, 
and it was impossible of course for us to ask questions. Our 
only hope was Sandy, for what we wanted to know was the 
prophet's whereabouts and his plans. I suggested to Blenk- 
iron that we might do more to cultivate Frau von Einem, 
but he shut his jaw Uke a rat-trap. " There's nothing doing 
for us in that quarter," he said. " That's the most dangerous 
woman on earth ; and if she got any kind of notion that we 
were wise about her pet schemes, I reckon you and I would 
very soon be in the Bosporus." 
Tiiis was all very wi 11 ; but what was going to happen 
if the two of us were bundled off to Bagdad with instructions 
to wash away the British ? Our time was getting pretty 
short, and 1 doubted if •, e could spin out more than three 
days more in Constantinople. I felt just as I had felt with 
Stumm that last night when I was about to be packed off 
to Cairo and saw no way of avoiding it. Even Blenkiron 
was getting anxious. He placed Patience incessantly, and 
was disinchned to talk. I tried to find out something from 
tl;e servants, but they either knew nothing or wouldn't speak 
—the former, I think. I kept my eyes lifting, too, as I 
walked about the streets, but there was no sign anj'where 
cf the skin coats or the weird stringed instruments. The whole 
company of the Rosy Hours seemed to have melted into the 
air, and I began to wonder if they had ever existed. 
An.xiety made me restless, and restlessness made me want 
e.xcrcis.^. It v>as no good walking about the city. The 
weather liad become foul again, and I was sick of tlie smells 
and the squalor and the flea-bitten crowds. So Blenkiron 
and I got horses, Turkish cavalry mounts with heads like 
trees, and went out through the suburbs into the open 
coimtry. 
It was a grey drizzling afternoon, with the beginnings of a 
s?a fog which hid the Asiatic shores of the straits. It wasn't 
ea.sy to find open ground for a gallop, for there were endless 
small patches of cultivation, and the gardens of country 
houses. We kept on the high larld above the sea, and when 
we reached a bit of downland came on squads of Turkish 
soldiers digging trenches. Whenever we let the horses go 
we had to pull up sharp for a digging party or a stretch of 
barbed wire. Coils of the beastly wire were lying loose 
everywhere, and Blenkiron nearly took a nasty toss over one. 
Then we were always being stopped by sentries and having 
to show our passes. Still the ride did us good and shook up 
our livers, and by the time we turned for home I was feeling 
more like a white man. 
We jogged back in the short winter twilight, past the 
wooded grounds of white villas, held up every few minutes 
by transport waggons and companies of soldiers. The rain 
had come on in real earnest, and it was two very bedraggled 
horsemen that crawled along the muddy lanes. As we 
passed one villa, shut in by a high white wall, a pleasant 
smell of wood smoke was wafted torwards us, which made 
me sick for the burning veld. My ear, too, caught the 
twanging of a zither, which somehow reminded me of the 
afternoon in Kuprasso's garden-house. 
I pulled up and proposed to investigate, but Blenkiron 
very testily declined. 
"Zithers are as common here as fleas," he said. " You 
don't want to be fo.ssicking around somebody's stables and 
find a horse-boy entertaining his friends. They don't like 
visitors in this country ; and you'll be asking for trouble 
if you go inside those walls. I guess it's some old Buzzard's 
harem." Buzzard was his own private peculiar name for 
the Turk, for he said he had had as a boy a natural history 
book with a picture of a bird called the turkey-buzzard, and 
couldn't get out of the habit of applying it to the Ottoman 
people. 
I wasn't convinced, so I tried to mark down the place. It 
seemed to be about three miles out from the city, at the end 
of a steep lane on the inland side of the hill coming from the 
Bosporus. I fancied somebodv of distinction lived there, 
for a little farther on we met a big empty motor-car snorting 
its way up, and I had a notion that car belonged to the 
walled villa. 
Next dav Blenkiron was in grievous trouble \vith his 
dyspepsia. ,\bout midday he was compelled to lie down, 
and havin-, nothing better to do I had out the horses again 
and took Peter with me. It was funny to see Peter in a Turkish 
army-saddle, riding with the long Boer stirrup and the slouch 
of the back veld. 
That afternoon was unfortunate from the start. It was 
not the mist ;ind drizzle of the day before, but a stiff northern 
gale which blew sheets of rain in our faces and numbed our 
bridle hands. We took the same road, but pushed west of 
..he trencli-digging parties and got to a shallow valley with a 
white village among cypresses. Beyond that there was a 
very respectable road which brought us to the top of a crest 
which in clear weather must have given a fine prospect. 
Then we turned our horses, and I shaped our course so as to 
strike the top of the long lane that abutted on the down. I 
wanted to investigate the white villa. 
But we hadn't gone far on our road back before we got into 
trouble. It arose out of a sheep-dog, a yellow mongrel brute 
that came at us like a thunderbolt. It took a special fancy 
to Peter, and bit savagely at his horse's heels and sent it 
cajx-ring off the road. I should have warned him, but 1 
did not realise what was hapjx;ning till too late. For Peter, 
being accustomed to mongrels in Kalfir kraals, took a summary 
way with the {>est. Since it desf)ised his whip, he out witli 
his pistol and put a bullet through its head. 
The echoes of the shot had scarcely died away when the 
row began. A big fellow appeared running towards us, 
shouting wildly. I guessed it was the dog's owner, and 
proposed to pay no attention. But his cries summoned two 
other fellows— soldiers by the look of them — who closed in 
on us, unslinging their rifles as they ran. My first idea was 
to show them our heels, but I had lio desire to be shot in the 
back, and they looked like men who wouldn't stop short of 
shooting. So we slowed down and faced them. 
They made as savage-looking a trio as ycu would want 
to avoid. The shepherd looked as if he had been dug up, 
a dirty ruffian with matted hair and a beard like a bird's 
nest. The two soldiers stood staring with sullen faces, finger- 
ing their guns, while the other chap raved and stormed and 
kept pointing at. Peter, whose mild eyes stared unwinkingly 
at his assailant. 
The mischief was that neither of us had a word of Turkish. 
I tried German, but it had no effect. We sat looking at them, 
and they stood storming at us. and it was fast getting dark. 
Once I turned my horse round as if to proceed, and the two 
soldiers jumped in front of me. 
They jabbered among themselves, and then one said very 
slowly : " He . . . want . . . pounds," and he 
held up five fingers. They evidently saw by the cut of our 
jib that we weren't Germans. 
" I'U be hanged if he gets a penny," I said angrily, and the 
conversation languished. 
The situation was getting serious, so I spoke a word to 
Peter. The soldiers had their rifles loose in their hands,, 
and before they could lift them we had the pair covered with 
our pistols. 
" If you move," I said, " you are dead." They under- 
stood that all right and stood stock still, while the shepherd 
stopped his raving and took to muttering hke a gramophone 
when the record is finished. 
" Drop your guns," I said sharply. " Quick, or we shoot." 
The tone, if not the words, conveyed my meaning. Still 
staring at us, they let the rifles slide to the ground. The 
next second we had forced our horses on the top of them, 
and the three were off like rabbits. I sent a shot over their 
heads to encourage them. Peter dismounted and tossed the 
guns into a bit of scrub where they would take some finding. 
This hold-up had taken time. By now it was getting 
very dark, and we hadn't ridden a mile before it was black 
night. It was an annoying predicament, for I had com- 
pletely lost my bearings and at the best I had only a foggy 
notion of the lie of the land. The best plan seemed to be ta 
try and get to the top of a rise in the hope of seeing the lights 
of the city, but all the countryside was so pockety that it was 
hard to strike the right kind of rise. 
We had to trust to Peter's instinct. I asked him where 
our line lay, and he sat very still for a minute snifflng the air. 
Then he pointed the direction. It wasn't what I would have 
taken myself, but on a point Hke that he was pretty near 
infallible. ^ ^ 
Presently we came to a long slope which cheered me. But 
at the top there was no light visible anywhere— only a black 
void hke the inside of a shell. As I stared into the gloom it 
seemed to me that there were patches of deeper darkness 
that might be woods. 
" There is a house half-left in front of us," said Peter. 
I peered till my eyes ached and saw nothing. 
" Well, for Heaven's sake, guide me to it," I said, and with 
Peter in front we set off down the hill. 
It was a wild journey, for darkness clung as close to us as a 
vest. Twice we stepped into patches of bog, and once my 
horse saved himself by a hair from going head forward into a 
gravel pit. We got tangled up in strands of wire, and often 
found ourselves rubbing our noses against tree trunks. 
Several times I had to get down and make a gap in barricades 
of loose stones. But after a ridiculous amount of slipping 
and stumbling we finally struck what seemed the level of a 
road, and a piece of special darkness in front which turned 
out to be a high wall. 
I argued that all mortal walls had doors, so we set to groping 
