The train now seems to have “put up for the night,” but it is shaking like an earthquake; and as the rain lashes upon us in torrents, its engine shrieks in unison with others in the dark distance. Every moment I expected the whole construction to collapse. It was the old impression of the “cellars” during an air-raid, the horrible suffocation of claustro-mania, or the terror of being buried alive. “I must get out.” “You cannot. Where will you go?” “I shall walk.” “You will be blown away or killed on the line.” “I cannot help it. I must get out. The train is choking me.” “But it may start off again any moment, and you would be left stranded on the line.” The officer, poor man, said nothing. He knew his duty. Whatever I might choose to do, he must accompany me and share my fate. The inspector at last jumps out, and the cheik, exclaiming, “If you must go, you must,” throws me down into the arms of that sturdy and solid being, as you might fling a cat out into the rain. Now fully exposed to the “four winds of heaven,” the drenching storm seemed to be tearing my hair off my head, and I was soon ankle-deep in the thick mud; but the air was good, and merely to be out of the train banished all fear of being crushed to death in the darkness by some passing steam monster. I _ought_ to have braced my nerves with the thought that Turkish women have to endure these things; but for some reason the train terrified me. As I can justly boast, I was terrified by nothing else in this country. Three times they coaxed me back into that choking van (as now and again the train shifted along for a few miles), and three times I insisted on being tossed into the storm. It was about two o’clock in the morning when, to the intense relief of all, we actually arrived at our destination. We disembark for “positively the last” time at Afioun-Karahissar, where the deluge adds its gloom to the now familiar woefulness of a town in ruins. Yet many of the inhabitants are actually sleeping in the mud of that awful night. We are driven some way beyond the town, to the one primitive and tumble-down roof that can possibly offer us shelter. Like most Eastern hans (_i.e._, inns), it is built round a courtyard, the living-rooms next to the stable; but horses are warm and agreeable neighbours. Once at the front, on a particularly cold and bitter day, the French, who shrugged their shoulders and refused none of my mad requests, politely allowed me to travel with the horses!