The Battered Caravanserai
Two days later, in the evening, we came to Angora, the first stage in
our journey.
The passports had arrived next morning, as Frau von Einem had promised,
and with them a plan of our journey. More, one of the Companions, who
spoke a little English, was detailed to accompany us—a wise precaution,
for no one of us had a word of Turkish. These were the sum of our
instructions. I heard nothing more of Sandy or Greenmantle or the lady.
We were meant to travel in our own party.
We had the railway to Angora, a very comfortable German _Schlafwagen_,
tacked to the end of a troop-train. There wasn’t much to be seen of the
country, for after we left the Bosporus we ran into scuds of snow, and
except that we seemed to be climbing on to a big plateau I had no
notion of the landscape. It was a marvel that we made such good time,
for that line was congested beyond anything I have ever seen. The place
was crawling with the Gallipoli troops, and every siding was packed
with supply trucks. When we stopped—which we did on an average about
once an hour—you could see vast camps on both sides of the line, and
often we struck regiments on the march along the railway track. They
looked a fine, hardy lot of ruffians, but many were deplorably ragged,
and I didn’t think much of their boots. I wondered how they would do
the five hundred miles of road to Erzerum.
Blenkiron played Patience, and Peter and I took a hand at picquet, but
mostly we smoked and yarned. Getting away from that infernal city had
cheered us up wonderfully. Now we were out on the open road, moving to
the sound of the guns. At the worst, we should not perish like rats in
a sewer. We would be all together, too, and that was a comfort. I think
we felt the relief which a man who has been on a lonely outpost feels
when he is brought back to his battalion. Besides, the thing had gone
clean beyond our power to direct. It was no good planning and scheming,
for none of us had a notion what the next step might be. We were
fatalists now, believing in Kismet, and that is a comfortable faith.
All but Blenkiron. The coming of Hilda von Einem into the business had
put a very ugly complexion on it for him. It was curious to see how she
affected the different members of our gang. Peter did not care a rush:
man, woman, and hippogriff were the same to him; he met it all as
calmly as if he were making plans to round up an old lion in a patch of
bush, taking the facts as they came and working at them as if they were
a sum in arithmetic. Sandy and I were impressed—it’s no good denying
it: horribly impressed—but we were too interested to be scared, and we
weren’t a bit fascinated. We hated her too much for that. But she
fairly struck Blenkiron dumb. He said himself it was just like a
rattlesnake and a bird.
I made him talk about her, for if he sat and brooded he would get
worse. It was a strange thing that this man, the most imperturbable
and, I think, about the most courageous I have ever met, should be
paralysed by a slim woman. There was no doubt about it. The thought of
her made the future to him as black as a thunder cloud. It took the
power out of his joints, and if she was going to be much around, it
looked as if Blenkiron might be counted out.
I suggested that he was in love with her, but this he vehemently
denied.
“No, Sir; I haven’t got no sort of affection for the lady. My trouble
is that she puts me out of countenance, and I can’t fit her in as an
antagonist. I guess we Americans haven’t got the right poise for
dealing with that kind of female. We’ve exalted our womenfolk into
little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real
business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest
kind of man’s game we can’t place her. We aren’t used to regarding them
as anything except angels and children. I wish I had had you boys’
upbringing.”
Angora was like my notion of some place such as Amiens in the retreat
from Mons. It was one mass of troops and transport—the neck of the
bottle, for more arrived every hour, and the only outlet was the single
eastern road. The town was pandemonium into which distracted German
officers were trying to introduce some order. They didn’t worry much
about us, for the heart of Anatolia wasn’t a likely hunting-ground for
suspicious characters. We took our passport to the commandant, who
visaed them readily, and told us he’d do his best to get us transport.
We spent the night in a sort of hotel, where all four crowded into one
little bedroom, and next morning I had my work cut out getting a
motor-car. It took four hours, and the use of every great name in the
Turkish Empire, to raise a dingy sort of Studebaker, and another two to
get the petrol and spare tyres. As for a chauffeur, love or money
couldn’t find him, and I was compelled to drive the thing myself.
We left just after midday and swung out into bare bleak downs patched
with scrubby woodlands. There was no snow here, but a wind was blowing
from the east which searched the marrow. Presently we climbed up into
hills, and the road, though not badly engineered to begin with, grew as
rough as the channel of a stream. No wonder, for the traffic was like
what one saw on that awful stretch between Cassel and Ypres, and there
were no gangs of Belgian roadmakers to mend it up. We found troops by
the thousands striding along with their impassive Turkish faces, ox
convoys, mule convoys, wagons drawn by sturdy little Anatolian horses,
and, coming in the contrary direction, many shabby Red Crescent cars
and wagons of the wounded. We had to crawl for hours on end, till we
got past a block. Just before the darkening we seemed to outstrip the
first press, and had a clear run for about ten miles over a low pass in
the hills. I began to get anxious about the car, for it was a poor one
at the best, and the road was guaranteed sooner or later to knock even
a Rolls-Royce into scrap iron.
All the same it was glorious to be out in the open again. Peter’s face
wore a new look, and he sniffed the bitter air like a stag. There
floated up from little wayside camps the odour of wood-smoke and
dung-fires. That, and the curious acrid winter smell of great
wind-blown spaces, will always come to my memory as I think of that
day. Every hour brought me peace of mind and resolution. I felt as I
had felt when the battalion first marched from Aire towards the
firing-line, a kind of keying-up and wild expectation. I’m not used to
cities, and lounging about Constantinople had slackened my fibre. Now,
as the sharp wind buffeted us, I felt braced to any kind of risk. We
were on the great road to the east and the border hills, and soon we
should stand upon the farthest battle-front of the war. This was no
commonplace intelligence job. That was all over, and we were going into
the firing-zone, going to take part in what might be the downfall of
our enemies. I didn’t reflect that we were among those enemies, and
would probably share their downfall if we were not shot earlier. The
truth is, I had got out of the way of regarding the thing as a struggle
between armies and nations. I hardly bothered to think where my
sympathies lay. First and foremost it was a contest between the four of
us and a crazy woman, and this personal antagonism made the strife of
armies only a dimly-felt background.
We slept that night like logs on the floor of a dirty khan, and started
next morning in a powder of snow. We were getting very high up now, and
it was perishing cold. The Companion—his name sounded like Hussin—had
travelled the road before and told me what the places were, but they
conveyed nothing to me. All morning we wriggled through a big lot of
troops, a brigade at least, who swung along at a great pace with a fine
free stride that I don’t think I have ever seen bettered. I must say I
took a fancy to the Turkish fighting man: I remembered the testimonial
our fellows gave him as a clean fighter, and I felt very bitter that
Germany should have lugged him into this dirty business. They halted
for a meal, and we stopped, too, and lunched off some brown bread and
dried figs and a flask of very sour wine. I had a few words with one of
the officers who spoke a little German. He told me they were marching
straight for Russia, since there had been a great Turkish victory in
the Caucasus. “We have beaten the French and the British, and now it is
Russia’s turn,” he said stolidly, as if repeating a lesson. But he
added that he was mortally sick of war.
In the afternoon we cleared the column and had an open road for some
hours. The land now had a tilt eastward, as if we were moving towards
the valley of a great river. Soon we began to meet little parties of
men coming from the east with a new look in their faces. The first lots
of wounded had been the ordinary thing you see on every front, and
there had been some pretence at organization. But these new lots were
very weary and broken; they were often barefoot, and they seemed to
have lost their transport and to be starving. You would find a group
stretched by the roadside in the last stages of exhaustion. Then would
come a party limping along, so tired that they never turned their heads
to look at us. Almost all were wounded, some badly, and most were
horribly thin. I wondered how my Turkish friend behind would explain
the sight to his men, if he believed in a great victory. They had not
the air of the backwash of a conquering army.
Even Blenkiron, who was no soldier, noticed it.
“These boys look mighty bad,” he observed. “We’ve got to hustle, Major,
if we’re going to get seats for the last act.”
That was my own feeling. The sight made me mad to get on faster, for I
saw that big things were happening in the East. I had reckoned that
four days would take us from Angora to Erzerum, but here was the second
nearly over and we were not yet a third of the way. I pressed on
recklessly, and that hurry was our undoing.
I have said that the Studebaker was a rotten old car. Its steering-gear
was pretty dicky, and the bad surface and continual hairpin bends of
the road didn’t improve it. Soon we came into snow lying fairly deep,
frozen hard and rutted by the big transport-wagons. We bumped and
bounced horribly, and were shaken about like peas in a bladder. I began
to be acutely anxious about the old boneshaker, the more as we seemed a
long way short of the village I had proposed to spend the night in.
Twilight was falling and we were still in an unfeatured waste, crossing
the shallow glen of a stream. There was a bridge at the bottom of a
slope—a bridge of logs and earth which had apparently been freshly
strengthened for heavy traffic. As we approached it at a good pace the
car ceased to answer to the wheel.
I struggled desperately to keep it straight, but it swerved to the left
and we plunged over a bank into a marshy hollow. There was a sickening
bump as we struck the lower ground, and the whole party were shot out
into the frozen slush. I don’t yet know how I escaped, for the car
turned over and by rights I should have had my back broken. But no one
was hurt. Peter was laughing, and Blenkiron, after shaking the snow out
of his hair, joined him. For myself I was feverishly examining the
machine. It was about as ugly as it could be, for the front axle was
broken.
Here was a piece of hopeless bad luck. We were stuck in the middle of
Asia Minor with no means of conveyance, for to get a new axle there was
as likely as to find snowballs on the Congo. It was all but dark and
there was no time to lose. I got out the petrol tins and spare tyres
and cached them among some rocks on the hillside. Then we collected our
scanty baggage from the derelict Studebaker. Our only hope was Hussin.
He had got to find us some lodging for the night, and next day we would
have a try for horses or a lift in some passing wagon. I had no hope of
another car. Every automobile in Anatolia would now be at a premium.
It was so disgusting a mishap that we all took it quietly. It was too
bad to be helped by hard swearing. Hussin and Peter set off on
different sides of the road to prospect for a house, and Blenkiron and
I sheltered under the nearest rock and smoked savagely.
Hussin was the first to strike oil. He came back in twenty minutes with
news of some kind of dwelling a couple of miles up the stream. He went
off to collect Peter, and, humping our baggage, Blenkiron and I plodded
up the waterside. Darkness had fallen thick by this time, and we took
some bad tosses among the bogs. When Hussin and Peter overtook us they
found a better road, and presently we saw a light twinkle in the hollow
ahead.
It proved to be a wretched tumble-down farm in a grove of poplars—a
foul-smelling, muddy yard, a two-roomed hovel of a house, and a barn
which was tolerably dry and which we selected for our sleeping-place.
The owner was a broken old fellow whose sons were all at the war, and
he received us with the profound calm of one who expects nothing but
unpleasantness from life.
By this time we had recovered our tempers, and I was trying hard to put
my new Kismet philosophy into practice. I reckoned that if risks were
foreordained, so were difficulties, and both must be taken as part of
the day’s work. With the remains of our provisions and some curdled
milk we satisfied our hunger and curled ourselves up among the pease
straw of the barn. Blenkiron announced with a happy sigh that he had
now been for two days quit of his dyspepsia.
That night, I remember, I had a queer dream. I seemed to be in a wild
place among mountains, and I was being hunted, though who was after me
I couldn’t tell. I remember sweating with fright, for I seemed to be
quite alone and the terror that was pursuing me was more than human.
The place was horribly quiet and still, and there was deep snow lying
everywhere, so that each step I took was heavy as lead. A very ordinary
sort of nightmare, you will say. Yes, but there was one strange feature
in this one. The night was pitch dark, but ahead of me in the throat of
the pass there was one patch of light, and it showed a rum little hill
with a rocky top: what we call in South Africa a _castrol_ or saucepan.
I had a notion that if I could get to that _castrol_ I should be safe,
and I panted through the drifts towards it with the avenger of blood at
my heels. I woke, gasping, to find the winter morning struggling
through the cracked rafters, and to hear Blenkiron say cheerily that
his duodenum had behaved all night like a gentleman. I lay still for a
bit trying to fix the dream, but it all dissolved into haze except the
picture of the little hill, which was quite clear in every detail. I
told myself it was a reminiscence of the veld, some spot down in the
Wakkerstroom country, though for the life of me I couldn’t place it.
I pass over the next three days, for they were one uninterrupted series
of heart-breaks. Hussin and Peter scoured the country for horses,
Blenkiron sat in the barn and played Patience, while I haunted the
roadside near the bridge in the hope of picking up some kind of
conveyance. My task was perfectly futile. The columns passed, casting
wondering eyes on the wrecked car among the frozen rushes, but they
could offer no help. My friend the Turkish officer promised to wire to
Angora from some place or other for a fresh car, but, remembering the
state of affairs at Angora, I had no hope from that quarter. Cars
passed, plenty of them, packed with staff-officers, Turkish and German,
but they were in far too big a hurry even to stop and speak. The only
conclusion I reached from my roadside vigil was that things were
getting very warm in the neighbourhood of Erzerum. Everybody on that
road seemed to be in mad haste either to get there or to get away.
Hussin was the best chance, for, as I have said, the Companions had a
very special and peculiar graft throughout the Turkish Empire. But the
first day he came back empty-handed. All the horses had been
commandeered for the war, he said; and though he was certain that some
had been kept back and hidden away, he could not get on their track.
The second day he returned with two—miserable screws and deplorably
short in the wind from a diet of beans. There was no decent corn or hay
left in the countryside. The third day he picked up a nice little Arab
stallion: in poor condition, it is true, but perfectly sound. For these
beasts we paid good money, for Blenkiron was well supplied and we had
no time to spare for the interminable Oriental bargaining.
Hussin said he had cleaned up the countryside, and I believed him. I
dared not delay another day, even though it meant leaving him behind.
But he had no notion of doing anything of the kind. He was a good
runner, he said, and could keep up with such horses as ours for ever.
If this was the manner of our progress, I reckoned we would be weeks in
getting to Erzerum.
We started at dawn on the morning of the fourth day, after the old
farmer had blessed us and sold us some stale rye-bread. Blenkiron
bestrode the Arab, being the heaviest, and Peter and I had the screws.
My worst forebodings were soon realized, and Hussin, loping along at my
side, had an easy job to keep up with us. We were about as slow as an
ox-wagon. The brutes were unshod, and with the rough roads I saw that
their feet would very soon go to pieces. We jogged along like a
tinker’s caravan, about five miles to the hour, as feckless a party as
ever disgraced a highroad.
The weather was now a drizzle, which increased my depression. Cars
passed us and disappeared in the mist, going at thirty miles an hour to
mock our slowness. None of us spoke, for the futility of the business
clogged our spirits. I bit hard on my lip to curb my restlessness, and
I think I would have sold my soul there and then for anything that
could move fast. I don’t know any sorer trial than to be mad for speed
and have to crawl at a snail’s pace. I was getting ripe for any kind of
desperate venture.
About midday we descended on a wide plain full of the marks of rich
cultivation. Villages became frequent, and the land was studded with
olive groves and scarred with water furrows. From what I remembered of
the map I judged that we were coming to that champagne country near
Siwas, which is the granary of Turkey, and the home of the true Osmanli
stock.
Then at the turning of the road we came to the caravanserai.
It was a dingy, battered place, with the pink plaster falling in
patches from its walls. There was a courtyard abutting on the road, and
a flat-topped house with a big hole in its side. It was a long way from
any battle-ground, and I guessed that some explosion had wrought the
damage. Behind it, a few hundred yards off, a detachment of cavalry
were encamped beside a stream, with their horses tied up in long lines
of pickets.
And by the roadside, quite alone and deserted, stood a large new
motor-car.
In all the road before and behind there was no man to be seen except
the troops by the stream. The owners, whoever they were, must be inside
the caravanserai.
I have said I was in the mood for some desperate deed, and lo and
behold providence had given me the chance! I coveted that car as I have
never coveted anything on earth. At the moment all my plans had
narrowed down to a feverish passion to get to the battle-field. We had
to find Greenmantle at Erzerum, and once there we should have Hilda von
Einem’s protection. It was a time of war, and a front of brass was the
surest safety. But, indeed, I could not figure out any plan worth
speaking of. I saw only one thing—a fast car which might be ours.
I said a word to the others, and we dismounted and tethered our horses
at the near end of the courtyard. I heard the low hum of voices from
the cavalrymen by the stream, but they were three hundred yards off and
could not see us. Peter was sent forward to scout in the courtyard. In
the building itself there was but one window looking on the road, and
that was in the upper floor.
Meantime I crawled along beside the wall to where the car stood, and
had a look at it. It was a splendid six-cylinder affair, brand new,
with the tyres little worn. There were seven tins of petrol stacked
behind as well as spare tyres, and, looking in, I saw map-cases and
field-glasses strewn on the seats as if the owners had only got out for
a minute to stretch their legs.
Peter came back and reported that the courtyard was empty.
“There are men in the upper room,” he said; “more than one, for I heard
their voices. They are moving about restlessly, and may soon be coming
out.”
I reckoned that there was no time to be lost, so I told the others to
slip down the road fifty yards beyond the caravanserai and be ready to
climb in as I passed. I had to start the infernal thing, and there
might be shooting.
I waited by the car till I saw them reach the right distance. I could
hear voices from the second floor of the house and footsteps moving up
and down. I was in a fever of anxiety, for any moment a man might come
to the window. Then I flung myself on the starting handle and worked
like a demon.
The cold made the job difficult, and my heart was in my mouth, for the
noise in that quiet place must have woke the dead. Then, by the mercy
of Heaven, the engine started, and I sprang to the driving seat,
released the clutch, and opened the throttle. The great car shot
forward, and I seemed to hear behind me shrill voices. A pistol bullet
bored through my hat, and another buried itself in a cushion beside me.
In a second I was clear of the place and the rest of the party were
embarking. Blenkiron got on the step and rolled himself like a sack of
coals into the tonneau. Peter nipped up beside me, and Hussin scrambled
in from the back over the folds of the hood. We had our baggage in our
pockets and had nothing to carry.
Bullets dropped round us, but did no harm. Then I heard a report at my
ear, and out of a corner of my eye saw Peter lower his pistol.
Presently we were out of range, and, looking back, I saw three men
gesticulating in the middle of the road.
“May the devil fly away with this pistol,” said Peter ruefully. “I
never could make good shooting with a little gun. Had I had my
rifle...”
“What did you shoot for?” I asked in amazement. “We’ve got the fellows’
car, and we don’t want to do them any harm.”
“It would have saved trouble had I had my rifle,” said Peter, quietly.
“The little man you call Rasta was there, and he knew you. I heard him
cry your name. He is an angry little man, and I observe that on this
road there is a telegraph.”