Captain Suttor, an Australian officer, and two sergeants, were overlooked in the hurry of embarkation. But they escaped and, boarding a steamer full of Bolshevik fugitives, induced the Captain to land them at Krasnovodsk on the eastern shore of the Caspian and the terminus of the Trans-Caspian Railway. Suttor knew that a British military post had been established there. Of this the Bolsheviks were ignorant, and their fury and amazement were great when they found themselves marched off as prisoners. [Illustration: SIX-INCH HOWITZER IN ACTION AT BAKU WITH A DETACHMENT OF DUNSTERFORCE GUNNERS.] The day after the British evacuation of Baku the Turks entered, and for two days the town was given over to pillage, many of the Armenian irregulars being killed in cold blood by the enemy. {219} CHAPTER XXI THE TURKS AND THE CHRISTIAN TRIBES Guerrilla warfare--Who the Nestorian and other Christian tribes are--Turkish massacres--Russian withdrawal and its effect--British intervention. The Nestorians, Jelus, and other racially connected Christian groups who, in the region around Lake Urumia, had been carrying on a guerrilla warfare against the Turks, at the beginning of July were reduced to very sore straits indeed by losses in the field, disease, and famine. As already related in a previous chapter, Lieutenant Pennington, a British aviator, flew into Urumia in the first week in July, carrying General Dunsterville's assurance of speedy help. The leaders of these Christian peoples, in full accord with the British, decided that after evacuating Urumia an attempt should be made to break through to the south in the direction of Sain Kaleh and Bijar, in order to get in touch with the British relieving column which was marching north from Hamadan bringing ammunition and food supplies. For the better understanding of this narrative, some explanation is due to the reader as to who and {220} what are the Nestorians and their kindred Christian clans who were now about to run the gauntlet of the Turkish Army operating in the Lake Urumia district. The Nestorians are the followers of the Patriarch of Constantinople who was condemned for heresy in the year A.D. 431. They inhabit Kurdistan and north-western Persia, are also known as Assyrians, and are indeed often loosely referred to as Syrians. They live in that portion of the country which the Bible has familiarized to us as Assyria, and are confusedly termed Syrians, not because they come from Syria proper on the Mediterranean littoral, with its cities of Antioch, Aleppo, and Damascus, but rather because their rubric and sacred writings are in ancient Syriac, while the language of the people themselves is modern Syriac.