I had at that time come to the conclusion that I could not reach the coast from Afion-kara-hissar, so for some time I sought a mental rather than a physical escape from my surroundings. Philosophy seemed an ideal subject under the circumstances, and in the company of two friends of like mind, I made some study of "Creative Evolution." Every afternoon we used to forgather for tea, in a little room I had built, where our joint contributions provided a well-selected pabulum of cakes and jam and Bergson, so that the inner and the outer man were Platonically at one. But to plunge from _le tremplin de la vie_ is not easy in captivity. Lack of employment cripples imagination. The average mind works best when it has practical things to do, and mine, such as it is, boggles at abstractions more quickly than it tires of talk. When this occurred the best thing to do was to laugh. A friend and I used to laugh for hours sometimes over weak and washy stories that would hardly pass muster, even in the small hours of the morning. But they did us good. Generally, however, the time between tea and dinner was spent in learned and weighty discussions on appearance, reality, and the problems of Being and Not-being. With my two friends ". . . the seed of Wisdom did I sow And with my own Hand arboured it to grow, But this was all the Harvest that I reaped-- I came like Water and like Wind I go." Only unfortunately I did not go. I remained firmly at Afion-kara-hissar. When philosophy failed me, the hours spent in planning escapes and concocting cyphers were those which passed most easily. But the craft of cyphers, interesting though it be, cannot be discussed in print. Like the preparation of poisons, it must remain part of the unpublished knowledge of the world, until the millennium. As regards escapes, some of us thought a great deal, and did very little. There were, however, some ingenious attempts made to get to Constantinople. One officer conceived the idea of going there to be treated for hydrophobia, and, after inflicting suitable wounds in the calf of his leg with a pair of nail scissors, he asserted that a certain dog, well known in the camp, had exhibited strange symptoms of insanity, amongst others, that of suddenly biting him in the leg. This ruse would have succeeded but for the fact that the Turks did not treat hydrophobia with any seriousness. Kismet takes no account of the Pasteur system. Short of actually snapping at someone, the officer could not have established a belief in his infection. He found it simpler to feign another ailment. Two other officers, however, of a still more picturesque turn of mind, declared that they themselves were mad, and actually hung themselves as a proof of insanity. They were found one morning by their astonished sentries suspended from a rafter, and apparently in the last stages of strangulation. Convinced that they were "afflicted of God," the Turks