Our first intimation of what had happened came when the chief doctor announced that no Britishers were to be allowed into the city, because two prisoners had escaped. Soon afterward a Russian, who arrived from Psamatia with influenza, brought details. With their bank-notes (obtained from Mr. S., a British civilian living in Pera) sewn up in suspenders and braces, with faces and hands stained brown, and each wearing a fez, the pair had climbed out of their window at Psamatia in the middle of the night, crept along a ledge, tied a rope to the gutter of the roof, and let themselves down into a dark doorway. The rope was found in the morning, still dangling from the roof. Since then--three days ago--nothing had been heard of them. Meanwhile the hopes of White and myself revolved round John Willie the Bosnian. This man, an Austrian aviator who was a lieutenant in the Turkish Flying Corps, had been shot down in Palestine, and in the ward next to ours was receiving treatment for minor injuries. He told Ms. that in a few weeks' time he would desert from Turkey by aeroplane, and said he wanted a letter of recommendation, to be presented to the British when he landed at Mudros. Ms. refused to write such a compromising letter, and, not trusting the Bosnian, disregarded a suggestion that he should be taken as passenger in the proposed flight to Mudros. Next, Ms. having left the hospital, the Bosnian approached me. Finding that I was a fellow-aviator, his first overtures dealt, innocuously enough, with war-flying in general and his own experiences in particular. Then, one evening, he announced, with the air of a conspirator, that he was about to tell me an important secret. I knew what was coming, but was careful to pretend ignorance. John Willie--the name by which he became known to us, for we dared not risk suspicion by mentioning his real name when we talked among ourselves in the presence of Turks--thereupon produced an English grammar, and said I must make pretence of teaching him English, so that we might meet each day. He would tell the Turkish doctors that I had become his schoolmaster. His first suggestion, as we sat down on a shady bench, was that I should write him a letter to take to Mudros. Like Ms., I declined, not knowing what was at the back of his mind. A Turkish corporal passed the bench, whereupon John Willie began mispronouncing some English words, taken at random from the page of the grammar which lay open on his lap. "If," I said, "you can get me an aeroplane to fly to Mudros myself I will. The book is on the table, _das Buch liegt auf dem Tische_." This last when the Turkish corporal turned back and glanced at us as he passed a second time. "Ze book eez on tâbel," repeated John Willie. Then in German, "I was going to suggest the same thing myself."