The voyage was a sad and long one. There was mildewed and rotten bread that no one could touch. It was worse than the biscuits. Other things like eggs and milk we had to buy at huge prices. At Baghailah Arabs came within a yard of our boat, and danced in ecstasy, gibing at us, and drawing their fingers across their throats indicating what they thought we deserved or were in for. That did not trouble us much. But we tingled with anger and shame at seeing on the other bank a sad little column of British troops who had marched up from Kut being driven by a wild crowd of Kurdish horsemen who brandished sticks and what looked like whips. The eyes of our men stared from white faces drawn long with the suffering of a too tardy death, and they held out their hands towards our boat. As they dragged one foot after another some fell, and those with the rearguard came in for blows from cudgels and sticks. I saw one Kurd strike a British soldier who was limping along. He reeled under the blows. We shouted out, and if ever men felt like murdering their guards we did. But that procedure was useless. We prevailed on the Turk in charge of our boat to stop and take some of the men. It seemed that half their number were a few miles ahead and the rest strewed the road to Kut. Some have been thrashed to death, some killed, and some robbed of their kit and left to be tortured by the Arabs. I have been told by a sergeant that he saw one of the _Sumana_ crew killed instantly by a blow on the head from a stirrup iron swung by a Kurdish horseman for stopping by a road a few seconds. Men were dying of cholera and dysentery and often fell out from sheer weakness. But the remorseless Kurd, worse than the Turk, knows no excuse. Every now and then we stopped to bury our dead. The awful disease, enteritis, a form of cholera, attacked the whole garrison with greater vigour after Kut fell, and the change of food no doubt helped this. It showed also that before surrender the garrison had drawn on its last ounce of strength. A man turned green and foamed at the mouth. His eyes became sightless and the most terrible moans conceivable came from his inner being, a wild, terrible retching sort of vomiting moan. They died, one and all, with terrible suddenness. One night several Indians were missing. Others reported that these have fallen overboard or jumped overboard to end their wretchedness. But more than one was probably trying to escape. Some officers played bridge and one or two chess. In a cot close by the wasted form of a well-known major still balanced between life and death. He was a big man, but nevertheless now weighs less than a child of ten.