I had failed to escape, it is true, but there was always hope. Things were getting better. The women had been released. Themistocle only awaited a formal trial. My own condition had improved. I had been moved from my solitary confinement, just when I had secured a Bible, and a large tin of Keating's, wherewith to combat the devils of captivity. But any change is better than none at all, I thought. The mortal hunger for companionship is strong, and my new room, besides containing an officer, also enjoyed an excellent and varied view. After a few days' experience of my new room-mate, however, who was a Bulgarian Bolshevik, I began to pine for solitude again. A more unmitigated Tishbite I have never seen, but fortunately he was smaller than I. When I found him washing his feet in my basin one night, I smote him, hip and thigh. That Bulgarian has coloured my whole view of the Balkans. The less said about him, the better. * * * * * One day about thirty British officers arrived from the camp at Yuzgad, whence they had escaped and been recaptured on the occasion when Commander Cochrane and his gallant band of seven marched four hundred and fifty miles to freedom. All the party who arrived in the Military Prison were in uniform, and in excellent spirits. They were like a breath of fresh air in that sordid place. On being put into three rooms, these thirty brave men and true at once demanded beds to sleep on. In due time the beds arrived, in the usual condition of beds in that place. They might have been so many Stilton cheeses. Our thirty prisoners, despite the protest of the guards, carried out their couches into the passage, and lit two Primus stoves. Over these stoves they proceeded to pass the component parts of each bed, so that its occupants were utterly exterminated. Imagine the scene. A dismal corridor, a flaming stove, Turkish sentries protesting with Hercules in khaki, cleansing the Augean stable. . . . But protests were useless. The smell of burnt bugs mingled with the other contaminations of the prison. Our officers had done in little what civilisation will one day do at large throughout that land. * * * * * A British officer, going to the feeding place, looked into a window which gave on to my room. But I was kept strictly apart from my fellows, and the sentry consequently tried to drag the officer away. "Leave me alone, you son of Belial!" said he. "Isn't a window meant to look through?" Windows in that prison were certainly not meant to look through.