Lying on the floor having proved to be as impossible as lying on the bed, I went to the window and looked into the night, thinking of the one matter that interested me in those days--escape. Across the road was a large camp bordered on the left by a meadow and on the right by one of the seven streams of Damascus. Straight ahead, weirdly colossal in the moonlight, were two great mountains. Beyond them, I knew, the great desert stretched through hundreds of miles to Mesopotamia. I was aware just how far the British Mesopotamian army had arrived on the way from Bagdad to Mosul; but even if we were lucky enough to find a guide who could smuggle us into an eastward-moving caravan it would be almost impossible to make a détour around the Turkish army; and in any case we should be dependent on the help of Kurds or Mesopotamian Arabs, who are much less estimable than the Arabs of Syria and Arabia. No, that plan was not feasible. I considered the suggestion of C.--that we should make our way to the coast, hiding in the daytime and walking only at nights, and then, arrived at Acre or Tyre, or some such seaport, commandeer a sailing-boat and make for Cyprus or Jaffa. For this plan, also, the difficulties would be many and serious. Such few boats as were still serviceable would be well guarded. Even if we managed to steal one of them, it would have to be towed into deep water by swimmers, which was scarcely practicable in the darkness. In any case, a walk to the coast from Damascus must cover many nights. A guide would be essential, as otherwise we could buy no bread on the journey, since none of us spoke Arabic. And a guide would cost a deal of money, of which we had little. My scheme of getting into touch with the secret caravans, by means of which Arabs and Armenians were slipping southward from Damascus to Akaba, still seemed the best. But here, again, money would be needed, besides a reliable intermediary. Money we might obtain by smuggling a letter to the Spanish consul, who had taken charge of British interests in Damascus. As for an intermediary, we should have to trust the gods to give us one from among the guards. Whatever we did would have to be done quickly, for we should not be long in Damascus. By the time I had reached this conclusion I was tired enough to fall asleep despite the bugs. The morning toilet included a ceremony that every prisoner in Turkey found it necessary to perform after travelling on the railway--a careful hunt for lice in our clothes. The search was productive, and led to talk of the plague of typhus which was being spread all over Turkey by these vermin. For the rest of the morning nothing happened, except a short visit from the commandant. By now, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, we were irritable with hunger. I made known this fact to the commandant, who promised that we should feed at midday.