“Finally, I was taken to Nazareth and put in a criminal jail with
murderers and brigands, all filthy brutes. At first I was put in an
underground dungeon, with one other man, an Arab, whose great penchant
was chasing cooties. There were other English prisoners there, and we
were all treated pretty badly. Our food consisted of a bowl of soup and
a loaf of bread each day. It was some bread!
“Several of us planned to escape and tried several stunts, none of
which appealed to the Turks, until I selfishly hit on the scheme of
becoming temporarily insane. I was very crazy, for a few days, and then
the highly ornate boss of the jail shook his head seriously and said he
would have to send me to Constantinople.
“We finally began to rumble across the desert in a very slow train,
and I decided to drop off at the first convenient way-station and cut
across lots for Jaffa. We were quite near Constantinople before an
opportunity came, and then, at the psychological moment, there was a
very opportune train wreck, and I walked away and hid in among some
rocks.
“When night came I met a Turkish officer dressed in a German uniform,
and then worked the popular game of bakshish, which is really the
national game of Turkey.
“I gave the officer a couple of Turkish pounds and he peeled the
uniform. He put on mine and I have no doubt he was duly captured by the
guards. I went to Constantinople and was saluted very regularly by
Turkish and German soldiers. It took a lot of dodging to keep clear of
the Germans in Constantinople, but I managed to get along, having a lot
of fun sometimes in the cafés, listening to the gossip and plotting.