Chapter IV

Dawn brings surprise to him, and the other War prisoners of the Barracks. After the distribution of the morning half-brick of gritty black bread, they are given a second ration, and told to get ready, as they are all going away.

To this end they are presently mustered in the courtyard, carrying their various packs and bundles. Sick and well, unwashed, haggard, unshorn; on naked feet, or feet that are bandaged with the remnants of puttees. Some in tattered khaki tunics, others in cast-off German or Turkish jackets; many bareheaded, others covered with German military caps or broken sun-helmets,--as sorry a collection of scarecrows as Turco-German neglect and brutality can make of two hundred and twenty brave men.... A Turkish bimbashi of infantry, attended by a châwush, gravely pretends to inspect the French and British prisoners. In the name of his Empire he bids them farewell. Some try to raise a feeble cheer when both sets of big wooden gates are thrown open,--and they see a string of some half-dozen German motor-lorries waiting in the sunny road. Sick and well, they are marched forth under guard and packed into these vehicles,--those unable to stand being carried out by _postas_. Then, followed by some weeping wives, the Arabs, Jews and Armenians, chained neck to neck in double file,--are led away--a disconsolate procession, bound for no man knows where....

Even as they leave the foul place of their captivity, the Barracks is filled from wall to wall by an entering battalion of Turkish Reservist Rifles, part of a Brigade hastily summoned by Von Kressenstein from the Caucasus, to be launched on the journey to Mespot, and now brought down here. Swarthy, hairy men, armed with the old long Martini, some covered with the fez, others with the drill _enverieh_, some shod with sandals and leggings, others with German Army boots.

Thus, the Railway-line from Shechem not being available--it was extensively damaged a little while back by British bombing aircraft--and on the repair of it many of these War prisoners have bitterly toiled!--they are bumped over villainously bad roads to railhead at Nakr--en route for the fierce red city of Aleppo, where as they are now aware and Heaven knows how they have got the knowledge!--the sick and disabled are to be picked out for Exchange to England, _via_ Smyrna--and the able-bodied (such as they are!) sent north to Belemkh, a station in the Taurus Mountains, headquarters for gangs of War prisoners working on the rails....

The villainous road that buckjumps through the tumbled Palestine landscape is crowded with Turkish Field, Horse, and Mountain Artillery, conjured back from Mesopotamia by Von Kressenstein, and rushing forward to the defence of Junction Station South. Battery after battery rolls by in the blinding dust; guns and waggons pulled, and riders carried by tough Anatolian horses, bitterly ill-used and evidently poorly fed. But not the roll of iron-shod wheels and the clatter of iron-shod hoofs, nor the roar of human voices talking in many Oriental dialects, nor the curses and jeers and viler things that are hurled at the prisoners in the jolting lorries, can shut out the savage, irregular thudding of Turkish Krupp 75 mms., Turkish Mountain Artillery, and machine-guns; and the steady, dogged slogging of British Royal Garrison Artillery motor-howitzers; British Field Artillery eighteen-pounders; and the clat-clat-clatter of Lewis machine-guns, waging bitter battle in the west and south....

At Nakr, where there is to be a delay of several hours, owing to the detrainment of forces from Mespot, they find a composite train of second and third-class compartments full of Turkish War Prisoner guards and their commanders, and horse-trucks, packed with British officers, waiting under steam for a German Staff Deputy Director of War Prisoners,--and a Controller of Transport,--who are going to Aleppo and thence to Smyrna to arrange the conditions of their exchange. The British officers are the recent captives of the stone-prison and the wired enclosure at Shechem. Very sunburnt are they:--very haggard, weary, thirsty, shabby and ill-shaven, and burdened with tattered valises and heterogeneous odds and ends of personal property, but bright of eye, elastic of bearing--full of the indomitable spirit that from the days of Agincourt and long before them--has been the birthright of their warlike race.

Crowding like schoolboys at the half-doors of the padlocked and guarded horse-trucks, they shout cheery greetings, salutations and scraps of information to the rank-and-file, clustered like swarming bees on the grilling stretch of platform beside the iron track....

"Hear the guns, W. and S.? Putting the wind up Djemal, aren't we?"

"Halloa! Mossam of B---- Company, my late Platoon! I've not seen you since I launched you with a note to the O.C. the water-camels at Rashid.... Have you got hold of a new song, or are you still denying relationship with Potsdam?"

"Aren't you Jollife, you chap with the Turkish fez and your eye in a sling? My Orderly in front of Gaza! What price that leg of roast goat with the skin and hair on? I'll bet you'd tuck into it quick enough now--if you got the chance!"

A graver, older officer leans out and calls to the soldiers:

"Can any of you men give us news of Father Forbis? We've been on the look-out for him since we heard we were to be moved."

"The Padre! ... Where's the Padre? ... What are you shaking your heads about? Damn you, you hairy brute! Why do you savage the man? ... What the hell has he done to you? ..."

Thus the ringing British voice, sharp and acrid with indignation. For Barney Mossam, screwing himself up to answer, has been clubbed by a _posta's_ rifle-butt full in the mouth. He spits out blood and broken teeth, and grins pitiably; and for his sake and his comrades', the officers address them no more. Now the Turkish Station-Master and the German R.T.O. who is his master, appear on the platform, as the Deputy Director of War Prisoners and the Controller of Imperial Transport and their escorts arrive on the scene in German Army motor-cars. They board the dirty first-class compartment specially reserved for them. Their orderlies and servants stow away their luggage, the signal falls--and the train--with a non-commissioned officer on the platform of the corridor-car conveying the German officials--armed with binoculars and sharply on the look-out for British bomb-carrying aircraft, jolts over the warped, unevenly-laid metals for El Fuda Junction and Deraa, the first stages of its journey North....

An Arab horseman, stationary beside the track with two mounted companions, controlling his fiery dapple-grey mare with a master-hand upon her jingling bridle--resplendent with the gold and silver jewellery lavished on horse-furniture by the wealthier Bedwân, gravely salutes with his long lance tufted with sable ostrich feathers, as the composite train jolts out of Nakr. And the Deputy Director of War Prisoners and the Controller of Imperial Transport, sitting opposite one another in their dusty first-class compartment, with tall tumblers of Munich beer, (iced, in this land of dust and drouth) on a table fitted between them ... smoking the fat cigars of Hamburg and discussing German Military Supremacy and German World-politics--gravely finger the brims of their sun-helmets in recognition of the salute....

"_Wer ist es!_ Who now, is that Arab? ..." asks the Controller, whose bulging, light-grey eyes are sharp-sighted behind their tinted glasses. "A personage of some consequence, by the gold embroidery on his _burnus_ judging; the gold twist in his head-rope, the gold-hilted sword in his waist-cloth--and the also-with-precious-metal-enriched trappings of his Blauschimmel mare."

"He," the Deputy Director replies, "is one of the lesser Emirs of the Irregular Cavalry of the King of the Hedjaz, who--as the Herr General Controller knows,--secretly under British leadership--upon the City of Mecca seized in June and annexed Akaba in July."

"And is now wrecking trains on the Hedjaz Rail, containing German Ottoman forces, under the very noses of our Allied patrols,--blowing Turkish Railway-bridges with charges of nitro-glycerine sky-high--and in the North and East our rearguards harassing. _Donnerwetter!_ Why is this rogue of an Arab not in fetters? What makes he, hanging about trains containing military officials of the Fatherland?"

"Because, Herr General, the Emir Fadl Anga and his followers are of those who the solid worth and philanthropic aims of Germany recognise, and scorn the windy emptiness and rapacious greed of England, the Great Swashbuckler.... They what we Germans have done for the Turkish Army also see--and are convinced that under similar auspices, Arabia, hand in hand with Egypt and India, might become a powerful and war-capable State. Emir Fadl Anga estimates the number of his party--headed by a nephew of the Mecca Sherif--as very considerable. 'They are many,' he in his Oriental hyperbole, says, 'as the stars of Heaven, or the Desert sands!' Also, information has by him been supplied, which, had the difference between German and Arabic clock-time at our Shechem Headquarters been better understood--might have resulted in a _Handstreich_ very gratifying to Imperial Majesty at Berlin. The officer guilty of this so gross ignorance was brought to a drumhead Court Martial and degraded, the Herr General will be pleased to hear! However, the Emir's intentions were agreed to be excellent, and he has now brought us a basket of carrier-pigeons from his Chief, the nephew of the Sherif--and the Emir is to convey back with him of these birds a similar basket, trained at the Nazareth Headquarters of the Herr General-in-Chief, Liman von Sanders--as soon as the pigeon-master-Sergeant with them arrives.... Also, this is good beer! What does the Herr General say to another bottle?"

"_Ja, ja_. _Mit Vergnügen_. It is hellishly hot! ..."

The Emir Fadl Anga, ingenious purveyor of genuine but post-dated intelligence--salutes gravely, and wheels his dapple-grey about as the composite train bumps out of Nakr. A muscle in his lean, dark cheek jerks, and his thin lips under the Arab beard smile scornfully--as his glance falls on the rank-and-file of the War Prisoners--clustered on the platform beside the iron way....

They are hot, faint and weary under the bite of the sun, amidst this jumble of naked hills, on whose chalk and limestone knees they have driven elaborate systems of trenches for the enemy, under the lash of the loaded hide-whips. But Barney Mossam, with a split top-lip and a scarlet gap where several front teeth are missing, is making a gallant effort to buck the others. In the middle of a spirited rendering of "I HAVEN'T seen the Kaiser for a VERY long time. He's the leader of a German Band, an' he AIN'T no cousin of mine!"--breaks in the fierce interruption of an Arab voice, bitterly abusive:

"You--O you! Sons of _farrâshes_ prostitute concubines!--silence that brother of howling apes!"

Thrusting his lance-butt in the embroidered leathern bucket, Fadl Anga leans low from his saddle--appears to pick up something, no doubt a pebble--rises erect, and hurls the missile savagely into the brown of the crowd of men. It hits Barney, who picks it up, and white teeth flash in the black beards of the other mounted Arabs, and a laugh goes up from the Turkish guards, who are smoking and chatting and eating water-melons, as the supposed emissary of the traitorous nephew of the Sherif of Mecca touches his mare with the sharp edge of the broad copper stirrup--and with a ringing shout of _"Allah ho Akbar!_" gallops down the rocky road towards Shechem, followed by his two companions, and leaving Barney Mossam gaping--with an embroidered Arab purse--heavy with Turkish silver coins, clutched in his hand....

Long before the composite train went jolting out of Nakr the keen grey eyes under the _kuffiyeh_ of Fadl Anga--eyes less miserable now that by day and night sharp danger gives a spice to life, so empty void of Katharine--have assured their owner, Edward Yaill,--that Julian Forbis is not with the officers in the cattle-trucks any more than he is with the men clustered like swarming bees upon the grilling platform, beside the iron track.