IN WHICH THE COOK APPEARS AND THE SPOOK FINDS A
REVOLVER
Rome was not built in a day, and I had my little sea of troubles to
navigate before reaching the safe harbour of the Witch’s Den. My
new-born hope of capturing Kiazim was barely a fortnight old when the
spooking in our house came to a sudden end. On the 23rd of May a party
of 28 rank and file arrived at Yozgad, to act as additional orderlies to
the officers in our camp. A travel-worn, starved, and fever-stricken
little band were these “honoured guests of Turkey”: they had been
driven, much as stolen cattle were driven by Border raiders in the old
days, across the deserts from Baghdad and Sinai, herded at their
journey’s end in foul cellars and filthy mud huts, and left unclothed,
unfed, unwarmed, to face the winter as best they might. Seven out of
every ten Britishers who left Kut as prisoners died in the hands of
their “hosts.” The state in which these gallant fellows reached Yozgad
roused the camp to fury, but it was a very helpless fury. We could do
nothing.
The immediate consequence of their arrival was the opening of the
“Schoolhouse,” or, as it was more commonly called, “Posh Castle.”
Thirteen officers moved into it, taking with them their quota of
orderlies, and three of the thirteen were Price, Matthews, and Doc.
O’Farrell. Their departure put an end to the séances in our house. After
our previous exhaustive experiments I dared not suddenly discover
somebody else _en rapport_ with me.
But in the Hospital House spooking went on cheerily all the summer under
the auspices of Bishop and Nightingale, and it gave the camp much to
think about. There was the episode of Colonel Coventry’s sealed letter,
which the Spook read with the greatest ease. Mundey, as true a believer
as any of my converts in the Upper House, assured Coventry the letter
had never left his possession. He was perfectly honest in his assurance.
The courage with which he stood up for his convictions moved my
admiration. It was no fault of his that he was unconsciously up against
a first-class conjuror,[8] and that he did not know the letter had been
removed, steamed, read, copied, resealed and replaced. The episode is
merely another instance of faulty observation. It supports the argument
which “common sense” opposes to spiritualists. Because X or Y or any
other eminent scientist or honourable man vouches for the correctness of
a fact, it does not follow that the fact is so. All X and Y can really
vouch for is that it is so to the best of their belief. Nor does it
follow that because scores of persons observed the same details as X and
Y, these details are either complete or correct. How many members of a
music-hall audience can see how a conjuring trick is done? For every one
who has noticed the key move there will be a hundred who did not. In
matters of observation the truth is not to be discovered by a show of
hands.
Then there was the episode of the floating bucket. In view of our
success in instilling credulity, it may be thought that soldiers are for
some reason peculiarly gullible. But we gulled others as well—farmers,
lawyers, and business men. Lieutenant McGhie, for example, was a dour
Scot, not a regular soldier, but an ordinary sensible business man, with
a liking for donning khaki when there was the chance of a scrap, and
taking it off again when all was quiet. He had “done his bit” in the
Boer War before he went killing Turks at Oghratina. He could not be
called either a nervous or an imaginative man. He was one of many at a
Hospital House séance who saw a bucket “float across the room.” “Nobody
could have thrown it—it was quite impossible!” Yet Nightingale threw
that bucket! I can only account for this and similar cases by the
assumption that the effect of a séance—of the feeling that one is
dealing with an unknown force—is to blind one’s powers of observation
much as the unknown motor-car makes the savage bury his nose in the
sand. Indeed, it does more than blind, it distorts. One more instance of
the methods by which interest was kept alive. Upstairs in the Hospital
House Mundey and Edmonds, who were recording for Bishop and Nightingale,
found one evening that they could get only the first half of each
message. Every sentence tailed off into nothingness. This was
“discovered” to be due to the fact that downstairs Hill and Sutor were
“blocking the line,” and getting the second halves of the messages. We
had never heard of “cross-correspondence.” Nightingale and Hill invented
it between them (after all, it is a natural sort of leg-pull), and
carried it a step further than any professional medium I have ever read
of.
The man responsible for pushing the glass in the Hospital House séances
was Nightingale. The position of his fellow-medium, Bishop, was exactly
analogous to that of Doc. O’Farrell—he was perfectly innocent of any
suspicion that the whole affair was not genuine. The manifestations were
worked by Hill at a given signal from Nightingale, so that they
synchronized with the writing on the board. Two other people were “in
the know”—Percy Woodland and Taylor, and very carefully they guarded the
secret. This information I learned for certain in August of the same
year, when Nightingale, Hill and I swopped confidences. Until my own
spook-club had broken up, I had paid no attention to the occasional
advances in search of truth which my rivals had made. It was amusing to
learn that my admission of faking took a weight off their minds—they had
felt pretty certain all along that the Upper House show was also a
fraud, but had been puzzled by my reticence and were obviously relieved
to learn the truth. At the time of our mutual confessions, Nightingale
was dreadfully tired of being dragged out night after night by
enthusiastic spook chasers, and was racking his brains to discover some
means of giving it up without causing offence. As one of his
converts—Lieutenant Paul Edmonds—had already written a book on the new
revelations of Nighty’s spook, confession had become rather difficult.
“Don’t confess,” I said. “Let’s get the Pimple well on the string
first.”
“But how?” asked Nighty.
None of us knew. We could only imitate Mr. Micawber and hope something
would turn up.
Something did turn up—it always does if you wait long enough. Early in
September, Cochrane and Lloyd, walking up and down the hockey ground,
noticed a leather strap sticking out of the earth. The magpie instinct
was by this time well developed in the camp. At one time or another we
had all been so hard up that we now made a habit of collecting tins,
bits of string, pieces of wood, old nails, scraps of sacking—in short,
everything and anything which might some day have a possible use for
some project yet unborn. The sum total, hidden under your mattress, was
technically known as “cag.” A leather strap, _with a buckle_, was
“valuable cag.” So Cochrane and Lloyd tugged at it. It came up—with a
revolver and holster attached! They smuggled their find to bed under the
nose of the unobservant sentry. We talked of the discovery in whispers,
and wondered what had happened to the unfortunate Armenian who had
buried it.
A few days later the Pimple buttonholed me.
“I want to ask something,” he said. “I go to Captain Mundey, and he
tells me to ask you.”
“What is it, Moïse?”
The little man glanced furtively up and down the lane, to make sure no
one was within earshot, and lowered his voice to a confidential whisper.
“Can the Spirit find a buried treasure?”
“That depends,” said I.
“On what?”
“On who buried it, and who wants it, and whether the man who buried it
is still alive; or, if he is dead, on whether he can communicate, or is
willing to communicate. The difficulty varies with the circumstances.”
“I see,” said the Pimple. (This was very satisfactory, for I was hanged
if I myself saw!)
“You want me to find this Armenian treasure?” I went on, risking the
“Armenian.”
“You know about it?” the Pimple asked in surprise. “How did you know?
Did the Spook tell you?”
“I have had several communications,” I said guardedly. “You’ve been
concentrating on the wrong places.”
(I did not know whether Moïse had been digging or merely thinking about
digging. “Concentrating” covered both.)
“We tried the Schoolhouse garden,” said the Pimple, “but did not find
it.”
“Of course not,” said I. “Digging at random is like looking for a needle
in a haystack.”
The Pimple was much struck by the phrase, and made a note of it in his
pocket-book, to practise it some days later on a choleric major who
wanted his parcel dug out in a hurry. Thus he acquired English—and
unpopularity!
“You will grant me a séance?” he asked.
“Oh yes! Let’s see! What’s the best day?” I pondered deeply. “How’s the
moon, Moïse?”
“Moon?” said Moïse. “What has the moon to do?”
“Do you want the best results?” I asked.
“Certainly.”
“Then how’s the moon?” (He told me.) “Ah! Then three days hence will be
best. We’ll have a séance on the evening of the 10th September in the
Hospital House. You must get me permission to sleep there for the
night.”
It was directly contrary to the rules of the camp that a prisoner should
be absent from his own house after dark. The readiness with which Moïse
granted the privilege showed he had nothing to fear from the Commandant.
The interview had been most satisfactory. I had learned, first, that the
Turks believed that there was a treasure; second, that two or more of
our captors had already been looking for it (Moïse had said “_WE_ tried
the Schoolhouse garden”); and third, that one of the group was probably
the Commandant, Kiazim Bey himself. No doubt I could have learned all
these facts quite easily by direct questioning. But the whole art of
mediumship is to gather information by indirect methods, in order that,
at a later stage, it may be reproduced by the Spook as an original
utterance from the unknown. The only memory of our conversation Moïse
was likely to carry away with him was the “fact” that the success of a
séance depends on the state of the moon.
My plans had been formed during our interview. This was obviously what I
had waited for so long—an opportunity of attaining my object of properly
intriguing the Turk. A treasure-hunt has a glamour of its own in the
most material surroundings. A treasure-hunt under the guidance of a
Spook ought to be a stunt beyond price. It only remained to prove that
the Spook _could_ find things and the Turk would be on the string. I
determined, if necessary, to ground-bait with my own poor little store
of gold and let the Pimple acquire a taste for the game of
treasure-hunting by finding it. The advantage of this method would be
that the rest of the camp would remain as much in the dark as to the
origin of the gold as the Pimple, and I saw the prospect of much fun by
organizing digging parties throughout the autumn. Had gold been at all
plentiful this would undoubtedly have been the proper course to pursue.
But it was a rare commodity, and I was reluctant to part with my small
stock without first trying a cheaper method.
I therefore waylaid Cochrane.
“I hear,” said I, “that you dug up a revolver the other day. Was it a
good one?”
“It was a Smith and Wesson 450,” said Cochrane, “and we got some
ammunition with it. But the weapon’s quite unserviceable—the action has
rusted to pieces.”
“Would you mind very much parting with it?” I asked.
“It’s of no value,” said Cochrane; “but it isn’t mine, it’s Lloyd’s.
What do you want with it?”
I told him.
“Bones, you old villain,” he laughed, “you’ll get yourself hanged yet if
you are not careful.” That was an uncomfortably correct prophecy! I
remembered it six months later when Hill and I were cut down just in
time to save our worthless lives. But I am anticipating.
“I’ll take the risk,” I said, “if you’ll get me the gun.”
Half an hour later the revolver, its holster, and some dozen rounds of
rust-eaten ammunition were in my possession. It had been cleaned, and
some of the rust removed. We re-rusted it with sulphuric, re-muddied it,
and next morning re-buried it. The spot chosen was not that where it had
been found. The garden was terraced in six-foot drops, and a wall of
uncemented stones upheld each terrace. By removing a few stones from the
face of the wall, scooping out a cavity in the earth beyond and
thrusting in the revolver and ammunition, Cochrane and I succeeded in
planting the revolver in such a way that the ground _above_ it was quite
undisturbed. The only difficulty we might have to overcome was to
explain the freshness of the mud on the holster; for the surrounding
ground was bone dry.
The position now became somewhat delicate. A number of officers in the
camp knew that Cochrane had discovered a revolver. Several of them had
seen it. If the Spook rediscovered it, somebody was sure to recognize it
and the fat would be in the fire. Suspicion would be cast on all our
spiritualistic performances, and the edifice of credulity so painfully
built up in the camp might easily come crashing to earth. This would
have been disastrous, for my principal asset in converting the Turk was
the childlike belief of many of my fellow-prisoners in the genuineness
of our séances. The general atmosphere of faith had an effect on the
Pimple which no amount of concerted lying could have achieved. It was
essential to retain the atmosphere as far as possible, and to bring off
the coup against the Pimple without affecting the belief in spiritualism
of the camp as a whole.
The best plan was obviously to take the camp, up to a certain point,
into my confidence. I announced that the Pimple was about to be
subjected to a practical joke. My plan was not to have a séance at all,
but to pretend to the Turks we had held one, and had received
instructions from the Spook as to where to dig.
But on the morning of the 10th, the Pimple announced his intention of
being present at the sitting. This involved our bringing out the answers
on the spook-board, and placed a fresh difficulty in my way. It was
obvious that if I brought out the answers by my usual methods, the
audience would at once realize that if I could fake thus for the Turks,
I could also fake for them! There must therefore be some difference from
our ordinary procedure which the audience could easily detect for
themselves.
The affair was arranged very simply, to the satisfaction of all
concerned. As between myself and the audience, we agreed that wherever
the Turk happened to sit I was to take the place immediately on his
right. I could then so shade my face from him with my left hand that he
could not see whether or not my eyes were open. With my eyes open, I
explained to my little school of True Believers,[9] I could push the
glass to the answers required. The part of the audience on my right
would see the deception. I begged them to give no sign.
Such was the public plan. But the private plan was quite different. I
wanted to be free to watch the Interpreter, and to be ready for
emergencies. If my attention was to be concentrated on spelling out the
correct answers I could not do this efficiently. So far as my
fellow-prisoners were concerned, I would be the centre of interest. They
knew beforehand the thing was to be faked by me, and they would
naturally watch me closely to see how the fake could be carried out.
Nightingale and I talked the matter over. It was decided that _he_
should be responsible for pushing the glass to the correct letters. This
would leave me free to act my double part so as to appear genuine to the
Pimple and fraudulent to the rest of the audience, without being
bothered with what the glass was doing on the board. Further, in order
fully to occupy the Pimple’s attention, we decided to employ him as a
recorder and keep him so busy writing down letters that he would not
have any time to spare for watching the mediums.
The result was most gratifying. Nobody for one moment suspected
Nightingale. Everybody, except the Pimple, “detected” me pushing the
glass. They came up to me afterwards, congratulated me on my excellent
imitation of a séance, and remarked “Of course it was quite easy to see
you were pushing the glass. We could see you were watching the board.”
Surely there were no further fields to conquer! The True Believers had
first been convinced that I wasn’t pushing the glass when I was, and now
they were equally convinced that I was pushing the glass when I wasn’t!
The Spook fixed the 12th of September for the treasure-hunt. At 2 p.m.
on that day, by the Spook’s orders, Mundey (who wanted to share in the
joke) waited with me outside the woodshed by the Majors’ house. The
Pimple came fussing up.
“Good morning, Mundey! Morning, Jones! You are ready?”
“Yes,” we answered.
“Let me see.” Moïse consulted his record of the séance. “The shavings
for fire? The cord to bind your hands? The cloaks? The ink and saucer?”
he ticked off each item as we produced them.
“What about your companion, Moïse?” Mundey asked. “The Spook said there
must be two of you.”
“Soon the Cook will be here,” the Pimple said, “and like myself he is
carrying hidden steel. Feel! A bayonet”—he thrust forward a stiff leg.
Inside the trouser-leg, according to the Spook’s instructions, he was
wearing a naked bayonet which reached well below the knee.
I was a little disappointed that the Commandant’s Cook should be the
fourth, for I had hoped the Spook’s orders might bring out Kiazim Bey
himself. But the Cook was no ordinary cook—he was the confidant as well
as the orderly of our Commandant, was practically Second in Command of
the camp, and was altogether as big a rascal as ever wore baggy
trousers. The Pimple’s selection of this man to accompany us instead of
one of the regular sentries was another proof that the Commandant was in
the know.
“Do you think there will be danger?” Moïse asked.
Mundey, with a fine air of martyrdom, shrugged his shoulders. “One never
knows in these things,” he said carelessly, “but if we follow
instructions it should be all right.”
“Oh, I hope so,” said the Pimple. “Why do you think the Spook says, ‘the
Treasure is by Arms Guarded’? Why does he insist that first we find the
arms? Why not lead us straight to the treasure?”
“Don’t be impatient,” said Mundey severely; “for all you know the
treasure may be mined, and if we go digging it up without disconnecting
the mine we would all go up together. Our job is to obey the Spook’s
instructions, not to argue about them.”
“Do you think we shall find these arms which are guarding our treasure?”
Moïse asked.
“I think so,” Mundey said. “You have done this sort of thing before,
haven’t you, Bones?”
“Oh yes,” I answered.
The Cook arrived, walking gingerly on account of the bayonet. He spoke
rapidly in Turkish to the Pimple, who turned to us and translated.
“The Cook wants to know what are we to do if the Spook leads to a
harem?”
Mundey and I had the utmost difficulty in keeping our faces straight—we
had not thought of such an enterprise.
“We can stop outside, I suppose,” said Mundey.
The Pimple translated to the Cook, who burst into a torrent of agitated
Turkish.
“He is saying,” Pimple translated, “you will be entranced and the Spook
says on no account must you be touched or spoken to. How then are we to
stop you if you are making to go into the women’s quarters?”
“Probably only one of us will be entranced,” I said, “and if that is me
you tell Mundey to stop me. You know how, don’t you, Mundey?”
Mundey rose to the occasion. “Certainly,” he said. “I can use the Red
Karen teletantic thought transmission.”
“What is that?” asked the Pimple.
“Never you mind,” said I. “That’s a secret process I taught Mundey in
Burma. Come on! Let’s get ready.” I stretched out my hands and the Cook
bound them together with the cord we had brought for the purpose. Then
he did the same for Mundey. These little things all count in instilling
credulity.
“Now what to do?” asked the Pimple.
“Hush!” said Mundey. “Look at Jones! He’s going off! Don’t speak—for
Heaven’s sake don’t speak to him.”
I went gradually off into a “trance.” It was hard acting in broad
daylight, with the two eager treasure-hunters watching at close range.
The fact that I had never seen anybody go off into a trance did not make
it any easier. But I had big plans at stake.
At last, speaking in a slow, sleepy voice, I addressed an invisible
person behind the Interpreter, looking through him as if he were not
there. “What did you say?” I asked.
The Pimple twirled round, but of course saw nothing.
“What?” I repeated. “I—can’t—hear.”
“To whom is he speaking?” asked Moïse. “There is nothing I see! Can you
see?”
“Hush—hush! For any sake be quiet!” Mundey was acting splendidly.
“South!” I shouted, and started off at a great pace down the lane.
“South! South!”
Mundey kept step with me. The Pimple and the Cook trotted (uncomfortably
because of the bayonets) close behind us. With eyes fixed on the
“spirit” I rushed past the astonished sentry, who obeyed a signal from
Moïse and made no effort to stop me. As I went I called to the spirit to
have mercy on us poor mortals, and not to go so fast. Then, as my breath
failed, I came to a stop and sat down in the cabbage-patch outside the
camp.
“What has happened? Where am I?” I looked up at Moïse with a dazed
expression.
“You cannot see it now?” Moïse asked in great agitation. “It is not
quite gone away, surely?”
“Quick!” said Mundey. “The Ink Pool! Before it goes! Hurry up, Moïse!”
The Interpreter produced the bottle of ink and saucer which the Spook
had ordered him to bring. We poured the ink into the saucer, and Mundey
and I stared fixedly into it.
“Ah!” said Mundey.
“Ah!” said I.
“What is it?” asked the Pimple, peering over our shoulders into the ink
pool. We paid no attention to him.
“Can you see which way it is pointing?” Mundey asked.
“Yes,” said I. “West! Come on!” Jumping to our feet, Mundey and I
started westwards up the hill as fast as we could go. Our
bayonet-hobbled friends had the utmost difficulty in keeping up with us.
We led them a pretty dance before we pulled up at the spot where the
revolver was buried.
Here I asked for instructions from the invisible Spook. I was once more
in a trance—a fact to which Mundey judiciously drew the Pimple’s
attention.
“Which test do you suggest?” I asked.
The Spook’s reply was audible only to myself. I turned on the Pimple.
“Quick!” I said. “Do what he says, or we’ll be too late!”
“And what does he say?” the Pimple asked.
“He wants the test of the Head-hunting Waas,” I explained excitedly.
“Quick, man! Quick!”
“I do not understand.” The unhappy Pimple wrung his hands.
“The fire! The shavings! Quick, you idiot!” I raved. (It was great fun
being able to abuse our captors without fear of punishment.)
With trembling fingers the Pimple undid the bundle of shavings. I
snatched it from him, deposited it directly over where the revolver lay,
and put a match to it. Then standing over the blaze, with arms
outstretched towards the heavens, I recited—
“Tra bo dŵr y môr yn hallt,
A thra bo ’ngwallt yn tyfu,
A thra bo calon dan fy mron
Mi fydda ’n fyddlon iti,”
etc., etc., and so on. Celtic scholars will recognize a popular Welsh
love lyric. In Yozgad it passed muster, very well, as the Incantation of
the Head-hunting Waas. The Pimple and the Cook listened open-mouthed.
Even Mundey was impressed.
“Something is here,” I called. “I feel it. Get a pick!”
Moïse turned to the Cook in great excitement and translated. Opposite
us, at the foot of the little garden, was a high wall. The Cook was over
it in a flash, like a monkey gone mad, and a moment later we could see
him racing up the road towards the Commandant’s office to get the
necessary implements for digging.
I glanced round and saw Corbould-Warren’s grinning face watching from
behind a neighbouring wall. Close to him was a little crowd of my
fellow-prisoners, all more or less helpless with suppressed laughter.
The impulse to laugh along with them was almost irresistible. To save
myself from doing so I sat down heavily, in a semi-collapse, against
Tony’s hen-house, and buried my face in my arms. Mundey ministered nobly
to me until the Cook reappeared with the pick. I began to dig.
I calculated the revolver ought to be about fifteen inches underground.
When the hole was a foot deep I stopped, and again appeared to listen to
the invisible Spook.
“I forgot,” I said apologetically, “I am sorry.” Then, turning to Moïse,
“We’ve forgotten the fourth element, Moïse! Hurry up! Get it!”
“Fourth element! I do not understand.”
“Oh, you ass!” I shouted. “We’ve had Air and Earth and Fire. We want the
other one.”
“But _what_ is it?” Moïse wailed.
“Water!” said Mundey. “Quick—a bucket of water!”
Moïse rushed into the house and brought out a pail of water. I took it
from him and poured it into the hole. As the last drops soaked into the
dry earth I breathed more freely. Any fresh mud or dampness on the
revolver due to the re-muddying process would now be properly accounted
for. I resumed the digging. A moment later the butt of the revolver came
to light. With a wild yell I pointed at it, staggered, and “threw a
faint.” It was a good faint—rather too good—not only did I cut my
forehead open on a stone, but one of our own British orderlies who was
not “in the know” ran out with a can of water and drenched me
thoroughly. I was then carried by orderlies into the house and laid on
my own bed.
Outside, the comedy was in full swing. When the revolver was found,
neither the Cook nor the Interpreter worried for a moment about my
condition. For all they cared I might have been dead. Without a glance
in my direction, they let me lie where I had fallen, and seizing pick
and shovel, began to dig like furies. If “the Treasure was by Arms
guarded” surely it must be somewhere near those arms! They dug and they
dug. They tore away the terrace wall. They made a hole big enough to
hide a mule. The Sage, who lived in a room just above the rapidly
growing crater, was roused from his meditations. He sallied forth and
cross-examined Mundey.
“What—aw—have we here?” he asked. “What—aw—what nonsense is this?”
“Shut up, Sage,” said Mundey, fearful that the Pimple would overhear.
“But—ah—what is the—aw—object of this excavation?”
“_Do_ be quiet!” Mundey begged.
“You—aw—you appear to me to be—ah—bent on uprooting the garden! What are
you—aw——”
In despair Mundey imitated my procedure and fainted too! The grinning
orderlies helped him up to my room. The Sage continued to look on, in
mute astonishment. Luckily the Pimple was too excited to have eyes for
anything but the treasure.
A few minutes later Stace, who shared the Sage’s room, came up to me.
“For any sake, Bones, go out and stop the Cook digging.”
“Has he dug much?” I asked.
“Much?” said Stace. “He has torn up the garden by the roots! If you
don’t stop him he’ll have the house down.”
“Right-o, Staggers. I’ll stop him!”
Stace went off, leaving me to think out the next move. A few minutes
later, I went downstairs, supporting myself by the banisters, with every
appearance of weakness. Moïse and the Cook, bathed in perspiration and
grime from their exertions, met me at the foot. I leant feebly against
the wall beside them.
“Are you better?” asked Moïse.
“What happened?” I asked. “How did I get back to my room? Did we find
anything?”
The Pimple patted me affectionately on the shoulder. “Magnificent!” he
said. “You have been in a trance. You found the revolver.”
“No!” I exclaimed. “Where?”
They led me to the hole. “Bless my soul!” I said. “Did I dig that?”
“Not all,” said the Pimple. “When you found the revolver you fainted.
Then the Cook and I, we digged the ground, but found nothing.”
“What?” I said. “_You_ dug?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’ve spoiled everything then! The Spook ordered you to do
nothing without instructions from me.”
“You think the Spirit will be angered?”
“_Think!_ Tell me, did you find anything more?”
“No,” said the Pimple.
“Well, there you are!” said I.
The Pimple translated into Turkish for the Cook’s benefit. For some
minutes they talked together eagerly. Then the Cook seized my hand,
pressed it to his ragged bosom, and became very eloquent.
“He is thanking you,” said Moïse. “He says you are most wonderful of
mediums. You will know how the Spirit may be appeased. We shall dig no
more without orders.”