My difficulty was to see how to escape from my room just at the right moment. Neither part of the _bandobast_ could wait for the other. Moreover, a chance had to be taken when offered, as everything depended on the right posta. To escape and hide in Stamboul seemed the best thing to do, but this meant that my chance of getting right away was lessened, as one would be sure to be missed after some hours, and at most after a day. This would be telegraphed all over the place and search would be redoubled. The ordinary risks were bad enough. Communication got very difficult owing to the capriciousness of the commandant, as he sometimes wouldn't allow me to go out, or only to a bath near by, and sometimes the posta was obdurate. On one occasion I crossed from one tramcar on to another and then back again on to the first, leaving my old posta revolving around helplessly. I had previously told him that if we lost each other, we should each go back at once to report. He was an old peasant from Anatolia, or I would not have dared this. I had promised him not to escape while with him. This I did first thing before he allowed me into the restaurant. A change of trams and swift walking brought me to Pera. I made plans and called at the rendezvous. Nothing happened. I left a letter and then drove back as hard as I could to Psamatia, passing the posta just before arriving there. He was weeping with fright and annoyance, but forgave me on seeing me again. The new commandant gave me an orderly named Plaistow, from the Gloucestershire Yeomanry, and a very excellent fellow and good friend he was, although his cooking was not of the first grade. A night or so after this when he was rubbing my spine, from which I suffered acute neuralgia at intervals in the region of the bruise, the door opened and two British officers came in. Their physical condition and that of their kit marked them as just captured. One was a colonel named Newcombe, who had been captured north of Beersheba with a small striking desert force armed with machine-guns, during a phase of the battle of Gaza. On camels he had led the force, about sixty strong, without convoy, before the battle, by a circuitous route over the desert to the Turks' rear, and having captured cars and staff officers and generally enjoyed an excellent field day, he was himself taken after heavy casualties. A large Arab force, which by the Emir Feisul's influence should have co-operated, had let him down. I liked him at once. He seemed dead beat and very non-plussed, if not depressed, at being captured. He could not sleep, and I combated in my mind this new difficulty in my escape programme--of a colonel who could not sleep. A goodly number of the senior officers I had hitherto met in captivity were against escaping, some unsympathetic, some almost hostile, and one actually gave a written order to all officers junior to him not to escape. I was extracting secret delight from the fact that here at least was one colonel half