Exercise in any form was a sign of incipient madness in the eyes of the Turks. Why, they argued, should anyone in his right mind skip five hundred times, and then splash himself with ice-cold water? If he did such things, he ought certainly to be placed under restraint. Boxing, again, was a suspect symptom. A man who bled at the nose for pleasure might commit any enormity. In order to circumvent suspicion it was necessary to adopt the utmost caution. The method I myself employed is described in a later chapter. One friend of mine, while training for a trip to Blighty, habitually carried heavy lead plates hung round his waist, to accustom himself to the weight of his pack. Such were the internal difficulties. But outside the camp the problems were even more puzzling. How to avoid the brigands--how to carry food enough for the journey--how to elude our guards and get a few hours' start--what clothes to wear and what pack to carry--how to find one's way--how to get a boat once the coast was reached--here were well-nigh insoluble questions, which provided, however, excellent topics for talk. I talked about these things for eighteen months. But I will ask the reader to skip that dismal procession of moons, and come directly to the day when I was asked by the Commandant to sign a paper stating that I would not attempt to escape. I naturally refused, as also did another officer to whom the same request was made. Our negotiations in this matter, while interesting to us at the time, and involving the composition of several noble documents in French, led to the sad result that we were both transferred, at an hour's notice, to a little box of a house in the Armenian quarter. Once inside the house, with the various belongings we had collected during a twelve-month of captivity in Afion-kara-hissar, we two completely filled the only habitable room. And although habitable in a sense, this room was already occupied by undesirable tenants. I must here, rather diffidently, introduce the subject of vermin. But, saving the public's presence, bugs are the very devil. Other insects are nothing to them. Lice the gallant reader may have met at the front. Fleas are a common experience. Centipedes and scorpions are well known in India. But bugs are Beelzebub's especial pets, and Beelzebub is a ruler in Turkey. It is quite impossible to write of my captivity there without mentioning these small, flat creatures who live in beds. I cannot disregard them: they have bitten into my very being.