In Jail at Nazareth
“Finally, I was taken to Nazareth and put in a criminal jail with murderers and brigands, all filthy brutes. At first I was put in an underground dungeon, with one other man, an Arab, whose great penchant was chasing cooties. There were other English prisoners there, and we were all treated pretty badly. Our food consisted of a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread each day. It was some bread!
“Several of us planned to escape and tried several stunts, none of which appealed to the Turks, until I selfishly hit on the scheme of becoming temporarily insane. I was very crazy, for a few days, and then the highly ornate boss of the jail shook his head seriously and said he would have to send me to Constantinople.
“We finally began to rumble across the desert in a very slow train, and I decided to drop off at the first convenient way-station and cut across lots for Jaffa. We were quite near Constantinople before an opportunity came, and then, at the psychological moment, there was a very opportune train wreck, and I walked away and hid in among some rocks.
“When night came I met a Turkish officer dressed in a German uniform, and then worked the popular game of bakshish, which is really the national game of Turkey.
“I gave the officer a couple of Turkish pounds and he peeled the uniform. He put on mine and I have no doubt he was duly captured by the guards. I went to Constantinople and was saluted very regularly by Turkish and German soldiers. It took a lot of dodging to keep clear of the Germans in Constantinople, but I managed to get along, having a lot of fun sometimes in the cafés, listening to the gossip and plotting.