Chapter I: Front Matter

Photograph of Captain Alan Bott, taken in Constantinople while he was a prisoner. Captain Bott signed it in the name of "Fritz Richter, First Lieutenant in the German Flying Corps." While escaping, he was able, by means of the false signature, to convince a Turkish gendarme that he was a German officer wearing mufti.]

EASTERN NIGHTS--AND FLIGHTS

_A Record of Oriental Adventure_

BY CAPTAIN ALAN BOTT

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1919

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

TO D. O. V.

Transcriber's Note: Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained as printed.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Prologue. Through the Looking Glass 3

CHAPTER

I. Pain, Purgatory, and a Plan 13

II. The Flight That Failed 27

III. Nazareth; and the Christian Charity of a Jew 39

IV. Damascus; and the Second Failure 64

V. The Berlin-Bagdad Railway; and the Aeroplanes That
Never Flew 90

VI. Cuthbert, Alfonso, and a Mud Village 110

VII. In the Shadow of the Black Rock 124

VIII. Constantinople; and How to Become Mad 140

IX. Introducing Theodore the Greek, John Willie the
Bosnian, and David Lloyd George's Second Cousin 159

X. The Third and Fourth Failures 175

XI. A Greek Waitress, a German Beerhouse, a Turkish
Policeman, and a Russian Ship 189

XII. The Face at the Window 203

XIII. A Shipload of Rogues 213

XIV. The City of Disguises 230

XV. Stowaways, Inc. 250

XVI. A Russian Interlude 266

XVII. Sofia, Salonika, and So to Bed 281

Epilogue. A Damascus Postscript; and Some Words on the Knights of Araby, A Crusader in Shorts, a Very Noble Ladye, and Some Happy Endings 286

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Alias Fritz Richter _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Captain T. W. White 150

Captain Yeats-Brown 236

Eastern Nights--and Flights