This officer was of the East Eastern, dyed as to the skin only by a smear of the West. Once he had been as far West as Sophia, and on that, fortified by pornographic French literature, he based his claim to civilisation. When I was ill with paratyphoid, and partially delirious, he used to visit me while the rest were upstairs at lunch, and used to try to poison my mind with his views on the downfall of England. But the skipper, our senior officer, took this in hand, locked me in and him out, and utterly refused him permission to visit me. He used also to be as uncivil as he dared to Zaki, who longed to cut his throat; but this Turk was not a man who dared much, and he was shut up in that direction also. He used to drop in to tea, and call us “mon cher.” He _was_ an unlikeable creature. But after Christmas he cooled off, for the reason that we made him drunk and foolish. This is not the tale of a select seminary, but of full-blooded, hard-hearted prisoners of war, who had not much joy in their lives. So I shall describe Christmas, and pray for the mercy of the court. To be judged by our peers we should be judged by soldier and sailor prisoners. We had been locked up just long enough to hate it by Christmas, and we determined to have as merry an evening as we could. We were helped in this in several ways. First by ourselves, for we succeeded in buying some rum in the town. Secondly, by the American Ambassador, may his name be praised, who sent us a real generous Christmas hamper, with a ham, whisky, rum, port, cigars, and chocolate. A gorgeous individual, all gold and scarlet, came all the way from Constantinople to bring it. And, thirdly, by the Turks: for they gave us leave to congregate for the one evening all together in the other house, and they provided twelve Christmas trees! There were no woods nearer than two and a half days’ journey distant, and yet they sent out a party of soldiers who brought in twelve small fir trees. I think they were a little apologetic that there were not enough trees to go round; and we regretted it, too, for firewood was scarce. But it was a kindly thought, and they deserve all credit for it. I had not had a Christmas tree of my own for about twenty-five years.