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I said, by pantomime. He understood, grinned, and gave no great
trouble thereafter, though he was always in a state of pitiable funk
when I left the wagon to take a trip within the lines of the besieging
forces.
Gipsies
So to Kirk Kilisse. There I got to General Savoff himself and won
not only leave, but a letter of aid to go down to the Third Army at
the lines of Chatalja. But by then what must be the final battle of the
war was imminent. Every hour of delay was dangerous. To go by cart
meant a journey of several days. A military train was available part of
the way if I were content to drop interpreter, horse, and baggage and
travel with a soldier’s load.
That decision was easy enough at the moment—though I
sometimes regretted it afterwards when the only pair of riding-
breeches I had with me gave out at the knees, and I had to walk the
earth ragged—and by train I got to Tchorlu. There a friendly artillery
officer helped me to get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He
insisted also on giving me as a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier,
with 200 rounds of ammunition, as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the
country. I objected that I had a revolver, and there was the driver,
a Greek. “He would run away,” said the officer pleasantly, and the
patrol was taken.
It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the
soldier was comforting as we entered Silivri at night, the outskirts of
the town deserted, the chattering of the driver’s teeth audible over
the clamour of the cart, the gutted houses ideal refuges for prowling
bands. From Silivri to Chatalja there was again no appearance of
Bashi-Bazouks. But thought of another danger obtruded as we
came near the lines and encountered men from the Bulgarian army
suffering from the choleraic dysentery which had then begun its
ravages. To one dying soldier by the roadside I gave brandy; and
then had to leave him with his mates, who were trying to get him to
a hospital. They were sorely puzzled by his cries, his pitiful grimaces.
Wounds they knew, and the pain of them they despised. They could
not comprehend this disease which took away all the manhood of a
stoic peasant, and made him weak in spirit as an ailing child.
From Chatalja, the right flank of the Bulgarian position, I passed
along the front to Ermenikioi (“the village of Armenians”), passing
the night at Arjenli, near the centre and the headquarters of the
ammunition park. That night at Arjenli seemed to make a rough and
sometimes perilous journey, which had extended over seven days,
worth while.
Arjenli is perched on a high hill, to the west of Ermenikioi. It gave
a view of all the Chatalja position—the range of hills stretching from
the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, along which the Bulgarians were
entrenched, and, beyond the invisible valley, the second range which
held the Turkish defence. Over the Turkish lines, like a standard,
shone in the clear sky a crescent moon, within its tip a bright star. It
seemed an omen, an omen of good to the Turks. My Australian eye
instinctively sought for the Southern Cross ranged against it in the
sky in sign that the Christian standard held the Heavens too. I sought
in vain in those northern latitudes, shivered a little and, as though
arguing against a superstitious thought, said to myself: “But there is
the Great Bear.”