Yet, as a rule, the period of melancholia soon passed, and gave place to resigned acceptance of the trivial and monotonous daily round of prison life. This more or less sane view of things was only made possible by improvised distractions, by reading, and by the discussion of the thousand-and-one rumours that spread from the bazaars. Time and again it would be whispered by some Greek trader that Talaat Pasha was negotiating a separate peace and had agreed to open the Dardanelles, or that war was about to be declared between Turkey and Bulgaria as a result of the Dobrudja dispute, or that Enver Pasha had been assassinated, or that the Sultan was determined to rid himself of the Young Turk government. We knew well that these reports were untrue and scarce worth even the attention of bitter laughter; but since we wanted them to be true they would be discussed with gravity over the mess-tables until the next batch of newspapers proved their falsity. The most useful means to forgetfulness was the camp library. Many hundreds of books were sent to the prison-camps of Turkey by various societies and individual sympathizers in England. It was at Afion-kara-Hissar that I first found the courage and concentration necessary to read through each and every consecutive volume of Gibbon. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by the way, was probably more in demand than anything else in the library; for the state of mind induced by captivity needed something more solid and satisfying than the best yeller-seller. Great favourites, too, were books of Eastern travel and adventure--in particular the works of Burton and Lamartine, the "Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian," and Morier's "Hajji Baba." A copy of Plutarch's "Lives" also received the attention of much wear and tear. For the rest, many a time have I thanked the gods for Kipling; but never more heartily than when lying on the hillside at Afion and forgetting the Black Rock and all that it stood for in the company of Kim the lovable, Lalun the lovely, and The Man Who Would Be King.