Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom — Chapter 8, Part 2 - The Ancient Halys

Before we left Yozgad, Nobby had continually impressed upon the party the need of living as much as possible on the country.

To aid us in this he had consulted with another naturalist, and prepared an elaborate list of somewhat uncommon but possible foods.

Amongst them appeared tortoises, snails, frogs, snakes--these last were especially nutritious, stated this unique document--rodents, and grasshoppers.

There were also notes regarding mushrooms, and how to distinguish them from poisonous toadstools.

Tortoise we ate at Yozgad, not, we must hasten to add, because we were reduced to it by lack of better nourishment, but with a view to testing its edibility.

It proved messy and uninteresting, but at least non-poisonous.

We had, however, hardly come across any tortoises during our march, although we had seen many on the journey from Changri to Yozgad four months previously.

In fact, the only item of the list we had sampled so far had been the grasshoppers.

We had, of course, also placed considerable dependence on being able to eke out our meagre ration by plucking corn as we went along at night, intending either to boil or to parch it the next day.

We had discovered that the Turkish soldiers did the latter very quickly and effectively by making a small fire of twigs, placing whole ears of corn on them, then adding more twigs on top.

When the fire had died down they took out the corn and separated the grain by the simple process of rubbing it between the hands.

Unfortunately for us, although we had passed a good deal of ready-cut crops, there never seemed to be enough grain inside to be worth the trouble of collecting.

On this particular night, however, Nobby was able for once to satisfy his predatory instincts by looting a couple of water-melons, for there was a bed of these outside the village we were now passing.

These were cut up and divided out among the party without further ado, and eaten as they continued on their way.

As a matter of fact, the melons were far from ripe; but even the rind seemed too good to throw aside, for by this time we were ready to eat anything: but it did not tend to quench thirst, we found, so the rind was sacrificed.

The going was easier, and with one long halt of an hour and a half we plodded on steadily until 5 A. M.

It was then, of course, daylight; and as a mile to our west there was a large town, boasting a rather fine-looking white tower, we resolved to lie up in a dry but grassy irrigation channel.

A light haze covered the country, but in the direction opposite to the town we could just recognise Akserai built near the foot of the Hasan Dagh peak.

Before us stretched the desert plain, bare except for an occasional nomad encampment; there seemed little sign of movement, even around the town near by.

By 10 A. M.

this 19th of August, we came to the conclusion that we might as well go on by day.

We had practically no water, and if we were to be in the sun it was better to be on the march as well.

The next water shown on our map was a river called the Beyaz Sou, or "White Stream," and thither we set forth, once more transformed into Germans by the simple expedient of replacing the fezes we had been wearing by Homburg hats or service dress caps, one or other of which each of the party carried for this very purpose.

In less than an hour we were glad to find ourselves nearing a stream, on the banks of which were a few reed huts and a vegetable patch with some more of those excellent water-melons.

This time, however, there were not the same facilities for their removal, and, as we rather anticipated, their wild owners would not part with them, money or no. We therefore proceeded to the stream, which was perhaps a foot deep and twelve feet across.

The paddle was refreshing to the feet;

the water for drinking purposes less encouraging, for above us were cattle watering and the bottom was muddy.

It belied its name of "White Stream," we thought, as we filled up our water-bottles.

While doing this and wiping the mud off our feet, a villainous-looking cutthroat came out from a tent close by and drew near for a talk.

We told the usual German story, and he asked for no details, but mentioned there was better water in a village farther on; we could see its grove of trees to our left front.

On resuming our march we did not visit it, but kept due south over the scorched prairie land, varied here and there with a bit of plough.

The heat was already terrific.

At 1 P. M.

we halted for an hour within a broken-down enclosure of large sun-dried blocks of mud.

Two of these made an excellent fireplace for the dixie, while dry camel thorn and scrub provided fuel in abundance.

Here we cooked some rice and cocoa, which, although amounting to only half a mugful apiece, took some time to demolish, for in that temperature the food was long in cooling.

Here a dissertation upon mugs.

If an aluminium mug saves an ounce of weight, it makes a ton of trouble: and Looney's was thoroughly unpopular on account of its unpleasant habit of burning the fingers of any one who handled it.

Moreover, it shared the failing of instability with Perce's empty ovaltine tin, which did duty for mug after his own had fallen out of his haversack on the very first night.

Its small base was a source of anxiety both to its owner and the disher-out of brews.

If you ever think of having all your food for a month or so out of a mug, let it be a squat enamelled one.

While we were eating our simple fare, a man passed ahead of us, but took no apparent notice of our little group.

We marched on at about 2 P. M.

, having as our next objective Mousa Kouyousou, _i.

e. _, the Well of Moses: aptly named we thought, for the parched plain before us would need a Moses' wand to make it bring forth water.

No treed oasis round this well was to help us in our quest; the map itself wrote the name vaguely across the desert without committing itself to any definite spot.

All we could say from the map was that the well should be almost due west of Hasan Dagh.

In that case we ought to find it within eighteen miles of the Beyaz Sou, and that as we imagined was now five or six miles behind us.

An hour later we unexpectedly came upon a couple of small irrigation canals, at the first of which we halted a few minutes to bathe our scorched feet.

The heat and glare of the desert were indeed overpowering; mirage seemed to raise the southern end of the Touz Cheul--the Salt Lake--above the level of the plain, and mocked us with the vision of an arm of water stretching out eastwards at right angles to our course, until we began to wonder where we could best cross it.

As we proceeded, however, it became clear that this was in reality but the broad white bed of a dried-up river.

A horrible suspicion entered our minds that here was the real Beyaz Sou, and that the muddy stream and two canals we had crossed were merely its diverted waters.

The surmise was soon confirmed, for, as we drew near, we were able to see far away to the S. E.

a humpbacked bridge of some antiquity, now standing high and dry.

This meant that those eighteen miles to the Well of Moses were still before us.

On the far bank of the old river-bed could be seen a few huts, apparently deserted, while a little farther on, and to the west, stood an old khan or inn which eventually turned out to be in ruins.

It was possible, however, that a well might be found there, so we decided to go rather out of our way on the off-chance.

We amused ourselves by estimating how long it would take to reach it.

The most pessimistic view was twenty minutes, but from the time of the guess we were on the march for a full hour before we finally reached that khan: so much for distance-judging in the desert.

At 5. 30 P.

M.

haggard eyes were peering down into the depths of two wells, obviously long disused, but which might still perhaps contain a little water.

As it happened one of them did, and Cochrane lowered a mug.

All he succeeded in drawing up were a few putrid dregs, in which floated some decomposed cockroaches--to Nobby's disgust especially; for it was his mug.

Prospects were not very bright: Moses' Well, if it existed at all, was still something over twelve miles distant, and if we marched on at night it would be the easiest thing in the world to miss it in the darkness.

At length the sun set, and as the air became cooler our spirits revived a little.

We made up our minds that we would carry on for only part of the night, so as to be short of the well when daylight appeared.

7 o'clock accordingly saw us once more on the march; the going remained good, although the country was becoming rather more undulating.

There were still the little fields of dusty plough in the midst of otherwise hopeless desolation.

After a couple of hours we took our long halt on the edge of one of those ploughed patches.

Nobby, wiser than the remainder of the party, dug himself a shallow trench in the loose soil, and so slept for five happy hours undisturbed by the cold which woke the rest; for we seemed to live in extremes of temperature.

Dawn on the 20th August found us very anxious.

Having marched for another two hours or more, we felt that the well must be somewhere near.

As the light grew stronger, we crossed a couple of steep rocky nullahs, and looking back saw that we had passed not far from a village in a group of trees.

A minute later two stunted trees ahead caught our eye.

We thought there might be water here, but were disappointed.

By six o'clock we were seriously thinking of going back to the village behind us, when another came into view on our left.

This time, however, there were no trees, and the huts seemed entirely deserted; but next moment our steps quickened as we recognised the stone circle of a well.

As in other countries in the East, so in Turkey, water is often drawn up by bullocks: they are harnessed to a rope which, passing over a rude pulley supported directly over the mouth of the well, is attached to a large waterskin.

The track beaten out by the patient beasts as they go to and from the well gives a measure of its depth.

In the present instance, we could see by the length of the track that our well was a deep one; but it was comforting to find that the hoof-marks appeared fairly recent.

So deep, indeed, was this well that no sound could be heard of the splash of a dropped pebble, but as the eyes became more accustomed to the dark depths, it was possible to recognise the sparkle of running water.

Packs were off in a moment, and while Johnny and Grunt went on to see what they could find in the village, Cochrane joined up the heterogeneous collection of string and cord produced by the rest.

There was still insufficient length, however, until we had added on a couple of strands unravelled from a skein of rope.

Nobby's mug was then lowered, and we began filling our water-bottles and chargals.

No drinks were to be allowed until this had been done--a wise precaution, for after a few mugfuls the string snapped, and poor old Nobby's mug was gone.

It was not long before a new line was made, this time all of strands from the rope, and a water-bottle was lowered, suitably weighted to make it enter the water mouth upwards.

As soon as the supply was ensured, Ellis and Looney started a fire in a high stone enclosure near the village huts; for here it was possible to obtain a little shade from the already burning sun.

Inside the enclosure there was a limitless supply of canes, placed there by some unwitting friend, and these, after weeks in the sun, were dry and burned admirably.

Things were certainly beginning to look up, and we refreshed ourselves with a series of brews--cocoa, rice and Oxo, and tea--calculating with satisfaction that we had covered something over forty-four miles in the preceding thirty-five hours.

Our contentment was but temporarily disturbed by the arrival of two men on donkeys--who with three or four boys now came into the village.

They passed by the open side of our enclosure, so we thought it best to call out the usual greeting, as though pleased to see them.

To this they responded, and a few minutes later, having dismounted in the village, the two men came up, borrowed a brand from our fire, lit their cigarettes, and chatted pleasantly enough.

The conversation turned, as often, on the subject of firearms.

We slapped our thighs in a knowing way, and left them to infer that we had revolvers.

They seemed to take our presence as a matter of course, and asked no awkward questions as to what we were doing in such an out-of-the-way place.

After a short rest they took their departure, and we thought no more about them.