an, with glasses and a vague, slightly smiling, preoccupied manner, who
acted as interpreter.

The governor and Philip were addressed as "Excellence," the secretary as
"Monsieur Le Directeur," and, considering that all concerned were only
half awake, and we only half dressed, the interview, which included the
exchange of cigarettes and many salutes, was extremely polite. We
joined the mutessarif and his secretary in a stroll about the town.

It was deserted--closed shutters, empty houses and shops, not so much as
the chance to buy a round, flat loaf of black bread--a shell of a town,
with a few ravenous cats prowling about and forgotten chickens pecking
the bare cobblestones. We saw the shell hole in the little Mohammedan
cemetery, where four people, "come to visit the tombs of their fathers,"
had been killed, the smashed mosques, yawning house-fronts, and dangling
rafters, and there came over one an indescribable irony as one listened,
in this Eastern world of blazing sun, blue sky, and blue water, to the
same grievances and indignations one had read in London editorials and
heard in the beet-fields of Flanders months ago.

The mutessarif took us to a little white villa on the cliff by the sea,
with a walled garden, flat black cedar, and a view of the Marmora, and
we breakfasted on tea, bread and butter, and eggs. Meanwhile the
hostages had been marched to an empty frame house on the beach, from the
upper windows of which, while gendarmes guarded the street-door, they
were gloomily peering when we returned to the launch. Philip, uneasy at
the emptiness of the town and leisurely fashion in which things were
likely to move, started for Lapsaki, across the Marmora, for food and
blankets, and Suydam and I strolled about the town. We had gone but a
few steps when we observed an aimless-looking individual in fez and
civilian clothes following us. We tramped up-hill, twisted through
several of the hot little alley-like streets--he followed like our
shadow. We led him all over town, he toiling devotedly behind, and when
we returned to the beach, he sat himself down on a wood-pile behind us,
as might some dismal buzzard awaiting our demise.

He, or some of his fellow sleuths, stuck to us all that day. Once, for
exercise, I walked briskly out to the edge of the town and back again.
The shadow toddled after. I went up to the basin beside the ruined
mosque, a sort of sea-water plaza for the town, and, taking a stool
out