On the day following this, extra sentries were put on us, and all privileges stopped. Nothing was known, but it appeared that Fauad was suspicious, and had probably informed the captain of the guard. He was more importunate than ever for money. The crisis was precipitated by our discovery that he had appropriated large sums of money for cheques given to him by other officers. He said that the censor had become impatient, and that he had had to be paid with this money. I got Fauad to come to our room. I proposed to buy the letter off him, as it was stamped. He first swore that he had the letter, and on our producing the money, some only of which we wanted to give him, he started to blackmail us by refusing to say where the letter was until he got the whole sum. It ended up by me closing the door and saying I wanted the letter and proposed to take it. He was a tall but sloppily built fellow, and after a straight one on the point of his chin I back-twisted him over the iron bed. We searched him, but found nothing. It was at this point when he said the letter was known about, and when it seemed he would betray us in any case, that another officer caught him by the throat. But he managed one wild yell, which brought up the sentries. I was marched off with fixed bayonets for about the tenth time in my career as a prisoner of war, but had time to hand my pocket-book and papers to a friend before this happened. The commandant kept me waiting a long time, and, of course, the letter was produced, but not a word was known of the escape. I believe they sent urgent telegrams to the mouth of the Bosphorus police, so that if we had actually got away to the Dardanelles, fortune would have assisted us with an extraordinary false scent. In the meantime, the commandant's wrath was terrific, in fact, as I explained to him, it was rather unnatural, seeing he had once said he would adopt me as his nephew. But, alas, he was beyond a joke. I was remanded under a heavy guard, who inspected me about every five minutes, so that work at the hole had to cease, and two nights after, we were carpeted before a Court of Inquiry consisting of the commandant, another officer, and some one from headquarters. As we didn't know whether the letter actually existed now, there was no point in saying much. But the colonel, when asked why he wanted to go out, said "Pour une nuit joyeuse," comprising, presumably, a dinner at the Tokatlion and a fairy row on the Bosphorus. His countenance, however, and mine also, fell when the commandant produced the letter, all about our roubles and lifebelts, and the way to Russia. But when the commandant jeered at the colonel as being too old and past his prime for such undertakings, I laughed out aloud, for on our actual show, so far as physical serviceability went, the colonel was worth about six of us.