Sparrows on the Housetops
“I’ve often regretted,” said Blenkiron, “that miracles have left off
happening.”
He got no answer, for I was feeling the walls for something in the
nature of a window.
“For I reckon,” he went on, “that it wants a good old-fashioned
copper-bottomed miracle to get us out of this fix. It’s plumb against
all my principles. I’ve spent my life using the talents God gave me to
keep things from getting to the point of rude violence, and so far I’ve
succeeded. But now you come along, Major, and you hustle a respectable
middle-aged citizen into an aboriginal mix-up. It’s mighty indelicate.
I reckon the next move is up to you, for I’m no good at the
housebreaking stunt.”
“No more am I,” I answered; “but I’m hanged if I’ll chuck up the
sponge. Sandy’s somewhere outside, and he’s got a hefty crowd at his
heels.”
I simply could not feel the despair which by every law of common sense
was due to the case. The guns had intoxicated me. I could still hear
their deep voices, though yards of wood and stone separated us from the
upper air.
What vexed us most was our hunger. Barring a few mouthfuls on the road
we had eaten nothing since the morning, and as our diet for the past
days had not been generous we had some leeway to make up. Stumm had
never looked near us since we were shoved into the car. We had been
brought to some kind of house and bundled into a place like a
wine-cellar. It was pitch dark, and after feeling round the walls,
first on my feet and then on Peter’s back, I decided that there were no
windows. It must have been lit and ventilated by some lattice in the
ceiling. There was not a stick of furniture in the place: nothing but a
damp earth floor and bare stone sides, The door was a relic of the Iron
Age, and I could hear the paces of a sentry outside it.
When things get to the pass that nothing you can do can better them,
the only thing is to live for the moment. All three of us sought in
sleep a refuge from our empty stomachs. The floor was the poorest kind
of bed, but we rolled up our coats for pillows and made the best of it.
Soon I knew by Peter’s regular breathing that he was asleep, and I
presently followed him ...
I was awakened by a pressure below my left ear. I thought it was Peter,
for it is the old hunter’s trick of waking a man so that he makes no
noise. But another voice spoke. It told me that there was no time to
lose and to rise and follow, and the voice was the voice of Hussin.
Peter was awake, and we stirred Blenkiron out of heavy slumber. We were
bidden take off our boots and hang them by their laces round our necks
as country boys do when they want to go barefoot. Then we tiptoed to
the door, which was ajar.
Outside was a passage with a flight of steps at one end which led to
the open air. On these steps lay a faint shine of starlight, and by its
help I saw a man huddled up at the foot of them. It was our sentry,
neatly and scientifically gagged and tied up.
The steps brought us to a little courtyard about which the walls of the
houses rose like cliffs. We halted while Hussin listened intently.
Apparently the coast was clear and our guide led us to one side, which
was clothed by a stout wooden trellis. Once it may have supported
fig-trees, but now the plants were dead and only withered tendrils and
rotten stumps remained.
It was child’s play for Peter and me to go up that trellis, but it was
the deuce and all for Blenkiron. He was in poor condition and puffed
like a grampus, and he seemed to have no sort of head for heights. But
he was as game as a buffalo, and started in gallantly till his arms
gave out and he fairly stuck. So Peter and I went up on each side of
him, taking an arm apiece, as I had once seen done to a man with
vertigo in the Kloof Chimney on Table Mountain. I was mighty thankful
when I got him panting on the top and Hussin had shinned up beside us.
We crawled along a broadish wall, with an inch or two of powdery snow
on it, and then up a sloping buttress on to the flat roof of the house.
It was a miserable business for Blenkiron, who would certainly have
fallen if he could have seen what was below him, and Peter and I had to
stand to attention all the time. Then began a more difficult job.
Hussin pointed out a ledge which took us past a stack of chimneys to
another building slightly lower, this being the route he fancied. At
that I sat down resolutely and put on my boots, and the others
followed. Frost-bitten feet would be a poor asset in this kind of
travelling.
It was a bad step for Blenkiron, and we only got him past it by Peter
and I spread-eagling ourselves against the wall and passing him in
front of us with his face towards us. We had no grip, and if he had
stumbled we should all three have been in the courtyard. But we got it
over, and dropped as softly as possible on to the roof of the next
house. Hussin had his finger on his lips, and I soon saw why. For there
was a lighted window in the wall we had descended.
Some imp prompted me to wait behind and explore. The others followed
Hussin and were soon at the far end of the roof, where a kind of wooden
pavilion broke the line, while I tried to get a look inside. The window
was curtained, and had two folding sashes which clasped in the middle.
Through a gap in the curtain I saw a little lamp-lit room and a big man
sitting at a table littered with papers.
I watched him, fascinated, as he turned to consult some document and
made a marking on the map before him. Then he suddenly rose, stretched
himself, cast a glance at the window, and went out of the room, making
a great clatter in descending the wooden staircase. He left the door
ajar and the lamp burning.
I guessed he had gone to have a look at his prisoners, in which case
the show was up. But what filled my mind was an insane desire to get a
sight of his map. It was one of those mad impulses which utterly cloud
right reason, a thing independent of any plan, a crazy leap in the
dark. But it was so strong that I would have pulled that window out by
its frame, if need be, to get to that table.
There was no need, for the flimsy clasp gave at the first pull, and the
sashes swung open. I scrambled in, after listening for steps on the
stairs. I crumpled up the map and stuck it in my pocket, as well as the
paper from which I had seen him copying. Very carefully I removed all
marks of my entry, brushed away the snow from the boards, pulled back
the curtain, got out and refastened the window. Still there was no
sound of his return. Then I started off to catch up the others.
I found them shivering in the roof pavilion. “We’ve got to move pretty
fast,” I said, “for I’ve just been burgling old Stumm’s private
cabinet. Hussin, my lad, d’you hear that? They may be after us any
moment, so I pray Heaven we soon strike better going.”
Hussin understood. He led us at a smart pace from one roof to another,
for here they were all of the same height, and only low parapets and
screens divided them. We never saw a soul, for a winter’s night is not
the time you choose to saunter on your housetop. I kept my ears open
for trouble behind us, and in about five minutes I heard it. A riot of
voices broke out, with one louder than the rest, and, looking back, I
saw lanterns waving. Stumm had realized his loss and found the tracks
of the thief.
Hussin gave one glance behind and then hurried us on at break-neck
pace, with old Blenkiron gasping and stumbling. The shouts behind us
grew louder, as if some eye quicker than the rest had caught our
movement in the starlit darkness. It was very evident that if they kept
up the chase we should be caught, for Blenkiron was about as useful on
a roof as a hippo.
Presently we came to a big drop, with a kind of ladder down it, and at
the foot a shallow ledge running to the left into a pit of darkness.
Hussin gripped my arm and pointed down it. “Follow it,” he whispered,
“and you will reach a roof which spans a street. Cross it, and on the
other side is a mosque. Turn to the right there and you will find easy
going for fifty metres, well screened from the higher roofs. For
Allah’s sake keep in the shelter of the screen. Somewhere there I will
join you.”
He hurried us along the ledge for a bit and then went back, and with
snow from the corners covered up our tracks. After that he went
straight on himself, taking strange short steps like a bird. I saw his
game. He wanted to lead our pursuers after him, and he had to multiply
the tracks and trust to Stumm’s fellows not spotting that they all were
made by one man.
But I had quite enough to think of in getting Blenkiron along that
ledge. He was pretty nearly foundered, he was in a sweat of terror, and
as a matter of fact he was taking one of the biggest risks of his life,
for we had no rope and his neck depended on himself. I could hear him
invoking some unknown deity called Holy Mike. But he ventured
gallantly, and we got to the roof which ran across the street. That was
easier, though ticklish enough, but it was no joke skirting the cupola
of that infernal mosque. At last we found the parapet and breathed more
freely, for we were now under shelter from the direction of danger. I
spared a moment to look round, and thirty yards off, across the street,
I saw a weird spectacle.
The hunt was proceeding along the roofs parallel to the one we were
lodged on. I saw the flicker of the lanterns, waved up and down as the
bearers slipped in the snow, and I heard their cries like hounds on a
trail. Stumm was not among them: he had not the shape for that sort of
business. They passed us and continued to our left, now hid by a
jutting chimney, now clear to view against the sky line. The roofs they
were on were perhaps six feet higher than ours, so even from our
shelter we could mark their course. If Hussin were going to be hunted
across Erzerum it was a bad look-out for us, for I hadn’t the foggiest
notion where we were or where we were going to.
But as we watched we saw something more. The wavering lanterns were now
three or four hundred yards away, but on the roofs just opposite us
across the street there appeared a man’s figure. I thought it was one
of the hunters, and we all crouched lower, and then I recognized the
lean agility of Hussin. He must have doubled back, keeping in the dusk
to the left of the pursuit, and taking big risks in the open places.
But there he was now, exactly in front of us, and separated only by the
width of the narrow street.
He took a step backward, gathered himself for a spring, and leaped
clean over the gap. Like a cat he lighted on the parapet above us, and
stumbled forward with the impetus right on our heads.
“We are safe for the moment,” he whispered, “but when they miss me they
will return. We must make good haste.”
The next half-hour was a maze of twists and turns, slipping down icy
roofs and climbing icier chimney-stacks. The stir of the city had gone,
and from the black streets below came scarcely a sound. But always the
great tattoo of guns beat in the east. Gradually we descended to a
lower level, till we emerged on the top of a shed in a courtyard.
Hussin gave an odd sort of cry, like a demented owl, and something
began to stir below us.
It was a big covered wagon, full of bundles of forage, and drawn by
four mules. As we descended from the shed into the frozen litter of the
yard, a man came out of the shade and spoke low to Hussin. Peter and I
lifted Blenkiron into the cart, and scrambled in beside him, and I
never felt anything more blessed than the warmth and softness of that
place after the frosty roofs. I had forgotten all about my hunger, and
only yearned for sleep. Presently the wagon moved out of the courtyard
into the dark streets.
Then Blenkiron began to laugh, a deep internal rumble which shook him
violently and brought down a heap of forage on his head. I thought it
was hysterics, the relief from the tension of the past hour. But it
wasn’t. His body might be out of training, but there was never anything
the matter with his nerves. He was consumed with honest merriment.
“Say, Major,” he gasped, “I don’t usually cherish dislikes for my
fellow men, but somehow I didn’t cotton to Colonel Stumm. But now I
almost love him. You hit his jaw very bad in Germany, and now you’ve
annexed his private file, and I guess it’s important or he wouldn’t
have been so mighty set on steeple-chasing over those roofs. I haven’t
done such a thing since I broke into neighbour Brown’s woodshed to
steal his tame “possum, and that’s forty years back. It’s the first
piece of genooine amusement I’ve struck in this game, and I haven’t
laughed so much since old Jim Hooker told the tale of ‘Cousin Sally
Dillard’ when we were hunting ducks in Michigan and his wife’s brother
had an apoplexy in the night and died of it.”
To the accompaniment of Blenkiron’s chuckles I did what Peter had done
in the first minute, and fell asleep.
When I woke it was still dark. The wagon had stopped in a courtyard
which seemed to be shaded by great trees. The snow lay deeper here, and
by the feel of the air we had left the city and climbed to higher
ground. There were big buildings on one side, and on the other what
looked like the lift of a hill. No lights were shown, the place was in
profound gloom, but I felt the presence near me of others besides
Hussin and the driver.
We were hurried, Blenkiron only half awake, into an outbuilding, and
then down some steps to a roomy cellar. There Hussin lit a lantern,
which showed what had once been a storehouse for fruit. Old husks still
strewed the floor and the place smelt of apples. Straw had been piled
in corners for beds, and there was a rude table and a divan of boards
covered with sheepskins.
“Where are we?” I asked Hussin.
“In the house of the Master,” he said. “You will be safe here, but you
must keep still till the Master comes.”
“Is the Frankish lady here?” I asked.
Hussin nodded, and from a wallet brought out some food—raisins and cold
meat and a loaf of bread. We fell on it like vultures, and as we ate
Hussin disappeared. I noticed that he locked the door behind him.
As soon as the meal was ended the others returned to their interrupted
sleep. But I was wakeful now and my mind was sharp-set on many things.
I got Blenkiron’s electric torch and lay down on the divan to study
Stumm’s map.
The first glance showed me that I had lit on a treasure. It was the
staff map of the Erzerum defences, showing the forts and the field
trenches, with little notes scribbled in Stumm’s neat small
handwriting. I got out the big map which I had taken from Blenkiron,
and made out the general lie of the land. I saw the horseshoe of Deve
Boyun to the east which the Russian guns were battering. Stumm’s was
just like the kind of squared artillery map we used in France, 1 in
10,000, with spidery red lines showing the trenches, but with the
difference that it was the Turkish trenches that were shown in detail
and the Russian only roughly indicated. The thing was really a
confidential plan of the whole Erzerum _enceinte_, and would be worth
untold gold to the enemy. No wonder Stumm had been in a wax at its
loss.
The Deve Boyun lines seemed to me monstrously strong, and I remembered
the merits of the Turk as a fighter behind strong defences. It looked
as if Russia were up against a second Plevna or a new Gallipoli.
Then I took to studying the flanks. South lay the Palantuken range of
mountains, with forts defending the passes, where ran the roads to Mush
and Lake Van. That side, too, looked pretty strong. North in the valley
of the Euphrates I made out two big forts, Tafta and Kara Gubek,
defending the road from Olti. On this part of the map Stumm’s notes
were plentiful, and I gave them all my attention. I remembered
Blenkiron’s news about the Russians advancing on a broad front, for it
was clear that Stumm was taking pains about the flank of the fortress.
Kara Gubek was the point of interest. It stood on a rib of land between
two peaks, which from the contour lines rose very steep. So long as it
was held it was clear that no invader could move down the Euphrates
glen. Stumm had appended a note to the peaks—“_not fortified_”; and
about two miles to the north-east there was a red cross and the name
“_Prjevalsky_”. I assumed that to be the farthest point yet reached by
the right wing of the Russian attack.
Then I turned to the paper from which Stumm had copied the jottings on
to his map. It was typewritten, and consisted of notes on different
points. One was headed “_Kara Gubek_” and read: “_No time to fortify
adjacent peaks. Difficult for enemy to get batteries there, but not
impossible. This the real point of danger, for if Prjevalsky wins the
peaks Kara Gubek and Tafta must fall, and enemy will be on left rear of
Deve Boyun main position_.”
I was soldier enough to see the tremendous importance of this note. On
Kara Gubek depended the defence of Erzerum, and it was a broken reed if
one knew where the weakness lay. Yet, searching the map again, I could
not believe that any mortal commander would see any chance in the
adjacent peaks, even if he thought them unfortified. That was
information confined to the Turkish and German staff. But if it could
be conveyed to the Grand Duke he would have Erzerum in his power in a
day. Otherwise he would go on battering at the Deve Boyun ridge for
weeks, and long ere he won it the Gallipoli divisions would arrive, he
would be out-numbered by two to one, and his chance would have
vanished.
My discovery set me pacing up and down that cellar in a perfect fever
of excitement. I longed for wireless, a carrier pigeon, an
aeroplane—anything to bridge over that space of half a dozen miles
between me and the Russian lines. It was maddening to have stumbled on
vital news and to be wholly unable to use it. How could three fugitives
in a cellar, with the whole hornet’s nest of Turkey and Germany stirred
up against them, hope to send this message of life and death?
I went back to the map and examined the nearest Russian positions. They
were carefully marked. Prjevalsky in the north, the main force beyond
Deve Boyun, and the southern columns up to the passes of the Palantuken
but not yet across them. I could not know which was nearest to us till
I discovered where we were. And as I thought of this I began to see the
rudiments of a desperate plan. It depended on Peter, now slumbering
like a tired dog on a couch of straw.
Hussin had locked the door and I must wait for information till he came
back. But suddenly I noticed a trap in the roof, which had evidently
been used for raising and lowering the cellar’s stores. It looked
ill-fitting and might be unbarred, so I pulled the table below it, and
found that with a little effort I could raise the flap. I knew I was
taking immense risks, but I was so keen on my plan that I disregarded
them. After some trouble I got the thing prised open, and catching the
edges of the hole with my fingers raised my body and got my knees on
the edge.
It was the outbuilding of which our refuge was the cellar, and it was
half filled with light. Not a soul was there, and I hunted about till I
found what I wanted. This was a ladder leading to a sort of loft, which
in turn gave access to the roof. Here I had to be very careful, for I
might be overlooked from the high buildings. But by good luck there was
a trellis for grape vines across the place, which gave a kind of
shelter. Lying flat on my face I stared over a great expanse of
country.
Looking north I saw the city in a haze of morning smoke, and, beyond,
the plain of the Euphrates and the opening of the glen where the river
left the hills. Up there, among the snowy heights, were Tafta and Kara
Gubek. To the east was the ridge of Deve Boyun, where the mist was
breaking before the winter’s sun. On the roads up to it I saw transport
moving, I saw the circle of the inner forts, but for a moment the guns
were silent. South rose a great wall of white mountain, which I took to
be the Palantuken. I could see the roads running to the passes, and the
smoke of camps and horse-lines right under the cliffs.
I had learned what I needed. We were in the outbuildings of a big
country house two or three miles south of the city. The nearest point
of the Russian front was somewhere in the foothills of the Palantuken.
As I descended I heard, thin and faint and beautiful, like the cry of a
wild bird, the muezzin from the minarets of Erzerum.
When I dropped through the trap the others were awake. Hussin was
setting food on the table, and viewing my descent with anxious
disapproval.
“It’s all right,” I said; “I won’t do it again, for I’ve found out all
I wanted. Peter, old man, the biggest job of your life is before you!”