Read it again in the light of the key, which is the Greek letter π. Every schoolboy knows π. It is something or other to do with the relation of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. I am no mathematician, but I know that π means 3·14159. Take the third word of the first line, the first of the second line, the fourth of the third line, and so on right through the letter following π. It will then read: “Four division passed through to Bag Dad yesterday.” In addition to writing codes, I took to studying cypher, and of all the nine or ten varieties of cypher given me by various prisoners never found one for which a method of solution could not be worked out. An average piece of Playfair took me about three and a-half hours: probably an expert would do it in half that time. This is not written as an advertisement for the study of cypher, but to show the straits to which a prisoner may be driven for want of occupation. Few occupations are more detestable than poring over cypher, but total inaction is worse. It is an occupation for a slave, and now I am no longer a slave I hope never to do it again. Enough has been said of prisoners’ occupations now for the rest to be left to imagination. Here endeth the Arts and Crafts section. Towards the end of the summer of 1916 some of the generals taken in Kut passed through Afion. None of them made more than one night’s stop there. But after them there came some officers who did stop; and from them we heard how the men had suffered on their deadly trek over the desert. The road from Bagdad to Aleppo is strewn with the bones of the British and Indian soldiers of Kut. We used to see gangs of men arrive and walk up from the station to the town, almost too weak to look up at our windows as they passed. And hundreds, thousands, have died or been killed on the way, long before they reached Afion. At Afion itself they were not badly treated then, but they reached that comparative refuge so weak and worn out that very many of them died there. We used to see their bodies by twos and threes and half-dozens being carried to the Armenian cemetery where they were buried. We were not allowed to go to their funerals, but later, when we had a padre, he was allowed to read the burial service over the Christians.