Chapter VI

The line held yesterday by the Turco-German forces has bent northwards at its western extremity, and southwards at its eastern end. Jaffa, the ancient Port of Jerusalem, has been occupied by Allenby's forces. Junction Station, the key of the north, now being in British hands, the enemy's Army, cut in two, has retired partly east into the mountains towards Jerusalem, and partly northwards along the Coastal Plain. The nearest line upon which its several portions can re-unite is the line Tul-Keram, Shechem. Reports from the Royal Flying Corps indicate the intention of Djemal Pasha and the other Corps Commanders to evacuate Jerusalem and withdraw to organise on the line Tul-Keram, Shechem.

It being vital to obtain a hold of this invaluable artery of thoroughfare, which traverses the Judæan range from north to south from Shechem to Jerusalem,--our Advance has wheeled to the right, and struck into the Hills with the object of wresting from the enemy the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

At the eastern end of the long fish-shaped valley, whose sides are shagged with olive-woods and running with springs, and in which lies Shechem, is a grassy, level expanse in the shape of an isosceles triangle--one of its longer sides being the road that runs east and west past the new Turkish Barracks, the Arsenal and the Hospital--and the other the road that--north of this--passing the Mohammedan Cemetery and the ancient Tombs that are upon the fringe of the limestone robe of Ebal, runs into an ancient Roman road, that completing the shape of the isosceles, goes north along the eastern flank of Mount Ebal to the little hamlet of Sichar, and south to the Holy City,--leaving on the left a Mohammedan well that has been built over the Tomb of Joseph, and some quarter of a mile farther on, a hillock shaded by mulberries and figs, and covered with ruins, enclosing _Bir Samariyeh_, or the Samaritan Woman's Well.

The top of the triangular patch of waste ground ends at the very gate of Shechem, being lost in the great mounds of immemorial ashes, brought down in ancient days from the Temple on Mount Gerizim. Wild fig and mulberry, olive and tamarisk--and thickets of the _zizyphus_ set with formidable thorns, that give the tree its name of Spina Christi--make a shabby jungle of the Ash Heaps, haunted by kites, crows and owls, pariah-dogs and jackals, who come to feast where the offal and refuse of the town are thrown. Here, too, lepers congregate; sick animals are thrust to die, dead ones are thrown to bleach and putrefy; and sometimes--even before the War--bodies of people robbed and murdered, or too destitute of friends to be given burial--huddle amongst the rank weeds and tangled undergrowth, or lie stark and dreadful, with blind eyes beaten by the lashing rains of Palestine, or staring at its pitiless sun.

When Allied War Prisoners first came to the town of Shechem, the isosceles triangle of waste ground--its shortest side indicated by the road that runs by the Tomb of Joseph towards the Well of the Samaritaness--was enclosed within a twelve-foot double fence of German barbed-wire, for the keeping of certain French and British officers, who declined to give parole. These lived in Turkish Army tents and messed in a ramshackle wooden hut near the eastern end of the enclosure; their rations, such as they were, being brought from the Turkish Barracks twice a day. Those officers who gave parole, causing less trouble to the authorities--were somewhat better treated, it may be allowed. The old stone prison near the Suk was alloted as their quarters. They were permitted to take exercise within certain bounds, even to visit the Latin Fathers, and the headquarters of the Protestant Mission, and better their diet by making purchases in the town bazar. To-day, Shechem, with her numerous mosques and her flat-brown roofs embowered in orange and pomegranate-trees--is bursting full of Turkish troops, and their German military masters; and destined ere long to rival Tul Keram as an Army H.Q. No British War Prisoners are left in her since the exodus of early morning, save four Berkshire and Devon Yeomen lying desperately sick at the Turkish Hospital--two London Territorials, and three Indian troopers in the charitable care of the Sœurs de la Sainte Croix....

Ah, and the solitary captive of the leaky wooden shanty in the Wired Enclosure, from which the Turkish Army tents have been removed, leaving round yellow patches of parched and trampled grass. Saving the Bey, certain of his German friends, several Mounted Police, and a guard of infantry from the mud Barracks--no other persons in Shechem suspect that Father Julian Forbis did not leave yesterday for Aleppo with the other British officers,--though possibly that dust-like one, the Mother of Ugliness, may have a certain inkling of the truth.

Upon a native _anghareb_, a short-legged, palm-wood bed-frame with coarse sacking laced upon it, he lies within the hut that used to be the Mess. Although it leaks in the winter rains, its timbers are of solid oak, and its door is heavy, and secured on the outside by a huge wooden lock. A padlocked iron fetter on the priest's ankle is linked to a chain finishing in a ring, running on an iron bar,--the ends of which, being bent, have been driven into the corner-posts at the end of the hut that is farthest from the door. Having thus secured the prisoner, the _bash-châwush_ of Mounted Police went away with his troopers and the escort. That was yesterday morning, possibly in the neighbourhood of nine o'clock. The common watch of gun-metal on the priest's wrist has stopped--as the result of brutal usage.... He can only calculate Time by the prayer-call from the mosques of the town....

No hint of the possible length of his confinement has been given, the _bash-châwush_ being an old hand and quite thoroughly understanding the torture of Uncertainty. No food was brought the prisoner yesterday or to-day; they have not even given him water.... Nothing has passed the man's lips--since on that morning of the Bey's visit he broke fast with the thin boiled wheat-porridge and the black bread on which War Prisoners are fed.

Mere hunger he can endure.... As a Religious of a strict Order he is well inured to fasting. But the thirst, aggravated by mental distress, sleeplessness and anxiety, is torture. His lips are cracked, and his throat and tongue so dried and leathery, that the effort to speak above a whisper would be positive pain.

The two narrow apertures that serve as windows are some eight feet above the floor-level. It is not possible to see out of them. Through chinks and knot-holes in the walls of stout though ancient timbers--it might be possible to get a glimpse through the twelve-foot fence of barbed-wire--out upon the road running east from the gates of the city, and the road running north and east by the Wadi Farab to the Jordan Valley, and southwards from Shechem to Jerusalem.... But the man chained to the iron bar lies in a feverish stupor on the sacking of the _anghareb_. There are strange noises in his ears like the clamour of voices in many tongues--like the clatter of innumerable hoofs, the rattle of wooden wheels and the vibrating grind and din of heavy motor-traffic; but he is too faint and weary to be curious as to their cause.

We know, that even as reinforcements of Turkish troops of the Redif and Mustaphiz are being rushed from the Caucasus to form reserves upon the fissured Plain of Ephraim--has begun the exodus of such inhabitants of Jerusalem as are not strict Mohammedans--or known to be Turco-German in views and sympathies.... Since the noon prayer-call, vehicles of every type, loaded with fugitives of the better class, have been rolling into Shechem, the roads leading to the town are blocked--a haze of dust envelops everything since the sun dried up the torrents of rain that fell at break of day....

Came yesterday, Von Geierstein, the once famous War Minister--now Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief on Germany's Battle Front in Asia--post haste from his Great Headquarters at the red city of Aleppo. To meet Enver Pasha, Djemal, and the other Turkish Commanders at Jerusalem, harangue the defeated generals, and reorganise the Turco-German War Plan on more successful lines....

Fallen into eclipse at the Court of Berlin as the result of his military failures at Verdun, horribly disconcerted by the disaster of the Vulkan Pass, inexpressibly sickened by the taking of Beersheba, the fall of Gaza and the loss of Junction Station,--the brilliant ex-favourite of Imperial Majesty (whose ambition has had more to do with the kindling of the brand of War than that of any other man in Germany--saving Von Tirpitz)--after warning Enver and Djemal of the uselessness of endeavouring to hold Jerusalem now the Gaza Line has been broken--left the Holy City this morning for Shechem, in his Œstler-Daimler, another with his Staff Officers, following, half his escort of armoured Scheff cars preceding him--the remainder, with his servants, bringing up the rear.

Even as the Governor, Izzet Bey, and Ali Fuad Pasha, Commander of Turkish Forces in the Holy City--issue the proclamations of their masters to the people, our troops are pushing up the passes into the Judæan Highlands; the sound of British guns comes even from the Vale of Sorek, thenceforward the din of battle grows louder hour by hour....

Already in Shechem, in Samaria and in Jericho--whither the Latin, Greek, Armenian and Coptic Patriarchs have been forcibly deported, with other ecclesiastics and notables, and wealthy Zionist Hebrews--the reign of terror that has prevailed in Jerusalem since Turkey joined issues with Germany--has begun. Ten Turkish pounds are asked, and got, by Mohammedan drivers for a seat in a carriage. Large numbers of the wealthier inhabitants, with the remaining chiefs of religious communities, have been warned by the Turkish Police to be in readiness for exile. No more vehicles being available for the transport of the victims, Djemal Pasha--venomous always, seasons the order with the intimation that the deported population will be compelled to travel on foot....

Spies swarm everywhere. Fear presses like a heavy hand upon the public mouth. Arrests, confiscations and requisitions redouble--populations quail under the lash of tyranny. Gallows are set up at the Jaffa Gate--there are hangings and shootings daily. The bodies of the victims of the last battue are left exposed for hours, to impress upon the population that, after four centuries of oppression, the Tartar is not disposed to surrender one of the Holy Cities of the Turkish Caliphate without a final orgie of extortion, brow-beating and blood.

The day wears on, no succour comes, and the priest's stupor of exhaustion deepens. Towards sunset there is a heavy knock upon the door of the hut.

"Come in!"

The captive's first effort to speak aloud results in a croaking whisper. The heavy Turkish lock scroops in its wooden mortice, and something like a smile twitches the lips of Julian Forbis. Is it not the very brutality of irony to knock upon a starving prisoner's door?

Now the door swings inwards, letting in a wedge of noon-tide brightness, but the visitors delay a moment on the threshold. And a strange voice says, as though in answer to a question, speaking in cultured Arabic, softly and melodiously:

"No! Nothing may be done in the Holy City; the influences there are too adverse. But at Banias!--and here on Mount Gerizim--"

Even as the utterance strikes with a strange, premonitory shock and thrill upon the consciousness of the prisoner, the door is pushed open to admit three men.

Two German Staff officers, tall, burly and swaggering, and a slight man, dark-hued as smoke, bearded, and of forbiddingly handsome countenance, arrayed in a dazzlingly white brocaded silk _kaftan_, girt with a gold embroidered crimson cincture, and a flowing _kuffiyeh_ or head-drapery of the same fierce sanguinary colour, bound with a thick twist of silver and gold cords.

Two German officers of inferior rank, with a lieutenant and sergeant-major of Turkish Mounted Police and several troopers, are seen beyond the threshold. Now the heavy door shuts the four men in together.... The priest lowers his feet to the stamped earth floor and rises to receive the visitors. But so weak is he that he totters, and sways as though about to fall.

His giddiness passing with the dimness of his sight, he discerns that one of his visitors is the tall, sunburned, trap-mouthed German general who visited the Barracks yesterday in company of the Bey, and whose order put the period of a shot from a gendarme's repeating Winchester, to Govan's crazy song.

His companion is a handsome person, as yet in the early fifties, superbly built and of heroic size and stature. The grey-green Field Service dress suits him to admiration; not a button or buckle is out of its true alignment; his gloves, belts, revolver-holsters and boots are of immaculate earthy-brown. His spurs are of steel and gold; his single-breasted Norfolk-shaped Service jacket shows, as does the other man's, the narrow silver lace, the crimson collar-edging and shoulder-cords of the Great General Staff--the Iron Cross dangling at the buttonholes of both by its ribbon of black and white. Both wear the ribbons and brochettes of many decorations. But the taller man displays, in addition to these, the Order of the Prussian Black Eagle with diamond swords, hanging by a swivel under his collar-hook. And noting this distinction, together with the wearer's physical beauty--for he is yellow-haired, blue-eyed, straight-featured, handsome still, as the Viking hero of some old Teutonic Saga--it flashes on the priest as his own blue eyes, set in hollow caves of exhaustion and hunger, encounter the visitor's--that the man can be no other than the fallen favourite of the Emperor of Germany, now Commander-in-Chief of his army in Palestine....

Nor is the priest's conjecture wrong. It is the man, weary and disgruntled, sick with conscious failure, savage at the fancied triumph of old rivals and ancient enemies--wounded in the one vulnerable spot of his hard, vain, shallow heart by the death of his son, a brave young Flying Officer--killed in a duel with a British airman in January, 1915.

He spent last night at the old Army Headquarters, the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives. Ah, with what heartiness has Von Geierstein cursed the Turks as he turned his back upon the Holy City; as his fleet of cars ate distance upon the road to Shechem--where he is to dine, and sleep, if he can. He is keenly alive to their military blunders. For there are good Teutonic brains behind the brilliant eyes that light the handsome face to which he owes his rescue from bankruptcy--and his subsequent promotion from the rank of Chief of the General Staff of the 4th Army Corps, Magdeburg, to the dignity of Prussian War Minister--and the more dubious position of alter ego to William of Hohenzollern.

Over, over, the meteoric and splendid career. Fallen, beaten, ruined. Rich in the world's goods still, but bankrupt in the world's envying admiration. Left by the tide of Success on which he has floated so buoyantly,--he sees himself once more high and dry on the mudbank of Failure--not by the utmost expenditure of cleverness to be floated off again. His magnificent blue eyes are dark with wrath. He grinds his teeth, eminently white, and all his own--as he devotes the Ottoman Allies of Imperial Germany to the uttermost depths of Hell.

Unlucky favourite! never again to draw all eyes in the White Hall of the Imperial Palace at Berlin, while morning sunshine, streaming through the tall windows, shines upon the opening Session of the Reichstag--makes glittering play with the silver livery of Prussian State flunkeys, and strikes multi-coloured sparks of fire from the decorations and military orders of the members of the Federal Council, ranged on the left of the Throne. Never again to stand, the dazzling centre of a blazing constellation of Generals, by the daïs under the black, red and white Canopy--topped with the blazon of that Bird of ill-odour, whose greedy claws and rapacious beak, and insatiate maw are not yet glutted--though twenty millions of men and women have perished to slake its quenchless thirst for human blood.

"The Herr General Von Krafft, that you speak good German has informed me, Reverend Father? ..."

His own English is guttural, but passably decent. The priest, master of several dead, and some half dozen modern tongues, replies as well as his parched throat and palate will allow. His German, the distinguished visitor concedes, is very good for an Englishman....

"Though you belong to a Scotch family, I am given to understand by the Herr General.... I am deeply grieved that your much-desired reunion with your relatives has been farther delayed by your own unfortunate lack of tact. I refer to your regrettably-insolent treatment of the Bey, Our Ottoman Ally, who should command respect."

He is sick to nausea of Germany's Ottoman Ally even as he says it. His handsome lips twist with hatred of all things of the Turk Turkish, under his glittering up-brushed moustache. He is revolted by the fetid, stifling hut, by the pallid prisoner chained to the dirty native bed, but most by the sense of Failure dominating everything....

"_Over, over, over!_" says the voice that is always in his ears, sounding above the roar of moving Divisions and the crashing of artillery from the workshops of Krupp and Skoda, keeping time with the throbbing of the blood in his temples and the irregular beating of his wearied heart. "_Beaten, beaten, beaten! ... Fallen, fallen! ... Total Kaput! ..._"

"Sir--"

Not "Your Excellency" or other flattering title. Under his lowered lids, set thickly with dark lashes,--they accused him of using cosmetics, in his younger, more effeminate days,--he looks at the wasted, high-bred face, and meets its pure glance. His dead son, killed at twenty-two in the air battle with the English aviator, had eyes like this man's.

"Sir, an accusation similar to this was brought against me yesterday in the presence of," the blue eyes go dauntlessly to the other German's face, "General Von Krafft. I said then, as I reiterate now--that the charge is without foundation! As a man of honour and a Catholic priest, I deny it absolutely. I can bring creditable witnesses to refute it whenever there is need."

"Kindly name your witnesses. Where are they to be found, sir?"

They have all left for Aleppo, the priest remembers with a shock. He says, with a sinking heart:

"The guards of the Barracks would give evidence in my favour."

"It is they who accuse you! and I myself heard you-with-words-encourage, and saw you by gestures stimulate the mutineers to fresh acts of violence!"

The harsh voice of the Bey's friend, the tall brick-faced General, says this with a rasp of something like ill-will. The priest draws himself proudly up and meets the glance of the false accuser.

"Sir, I can only say that you--are mistaken."

"Prisoner, though you be a priest, you shelter yourself behind a lie!"

The white face flushes scarlet, and the blue eyes blaze indignantly. He draws from his tattered tunic-breast a small wooden Crucifix, touches the Feet of the Victim with his pale lips, and lifts the Crucifix high. As he does this the dark bearded man in the white silk _kaftan_ and crimson kuffiyeh glides hurriedly towards the door.

"So help me God, I have spoken the truth!"

Very quietly the words have been uttered. Thrusting the sacred symbol back within his breast, he confronts his enemies, awaiting what may come. The momentary silence past, the highest in military rank addresses the priest grandiloquently:

"Prisoner, as the Military Representative in the East of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Germany, I assure you that investigation will be made into this affair. But as the testimony against you is absolutely unshakable," the tall and splendid personage who speaks gracefully salutes the brick-faced general, "it is equally my duty to tell you that the decision of your judges will go against your oath. As a guest of the Turkish Empire you will naturally be considerately treated--"

The blue eyes meet his again.... _Gott im Himmel!_ how like the dead boy's.... The white lips smile ironically.... The weak voice rings strong:

"Your words sound like sarcasm, sir, to the guest of the Turkish Empire, who has been confined without food or even water since early yesterday...."