Just before Christmas the weather grew colder and more boisterous. I got leave to go to town and was allowed into the Maritza café. Here I found most urgent and useful news. Some fortnight before while walking with my posta, who was quite friendly towards me after his lira lunch, I told him I wanted to ask some German soldiers what mosques we could go to at Tchouka Bostan. Reluctantly he allowed me to speak to them. They took me for a civilian _interné_. I soon learned that German N.C.Os. often got along to the forbidden quarter, where were the usual nightly attractions for the troops, by pretending they were going to the _Korkovado_, a large Russian ship near the southern end of Galata Bridge, and used by the German General Staff Officers. Having got through the military police by saying they were off to the _Korkovado_, they swung past the ship around the bay. I intended to do the same, only to swing round out to sea. The restaurant man now verified this to be true. The wind was so favourable and the position of our sailing boat, which had to be kept in an exposed bay in order to be ready, was so precarious that our friends sent us word that we must start Christmas Eve, notwithstanding the extreme cold. The idea of their arriving at the foot of the back wall was less to help us than to tell us whether the road was clear, _i.e._ on what streets the police sentries were, for as I have said, besides the garrison itself, a cordon of police surrounded most of the streets. Doust and Castell came about six o'clock to the back street. As arranged, I had lowered a string down. Doust was to tie a note on the end if our plans were altered, and to smoke if we were to start. Instead of this, however, they bungled badly, lost their direction in the dark, and jumped about in the most ridiculous fashion; in fact, their proceedings were the most suspicious imaginable. They continued to grope in the wrong corner of the section and to take alarm at their own shadows. They had previously inspected the section and said they had located our rope. This they could not have done.