l among
men was always late, forgetful, rattle-brained, and credulous. And it
was Levy's gift to play up to this assumption, to hang on his employer's
words with breathless anxiety, to relax into a paternal smile when safe,
and to support his omelets and his delays with oaths and circumlocutions
stranger even than the dishes themselves. They were odd enough, those
dinners, sitting in our little oasis of light in that deserted town, not
knowing what the next hour might bring.

Next day we again went to Lapsaki, and, although the entire industrial
resources of the place had apparently been cornered in the meantime by a
Dardanelles Jew, returned with several more mattresses and the promise
of the remainder. We found the hostages more cheerful. With the relief
money Philip had distributed the day before, and the food they had been
able to buy, they had shaken themselves together, gifted cooks had
turned up, they had made a baseball out of rags, painted humorous signs
on the doorways of their rooms--they had actually begun to sing.

And now, with that curious subsequentness with which things sometimes
happen in Turkey, the mutesarif discovered half a dozen mattresses
himself, and announced that to-morrow there would be enough for all.
Nay, more--the government would allow each hostage four piasters a day
for food, a cook would be brought down from Constantinople and meals
served in a restaurant, that they might be saved, as his secretary
observed, from the unlovely "odeurs de'cuisine."

Then it was discovered that the men might stroll about town, provided
they were in groups. They went to the beach and discussed the
feasibility of swimming, they even demurred against the Constantinople
cook as limiting their means of amusing themselves; the aesthetic young
man recovered now, polished his shoes and put a lavender handkerchief in
his breast pocket. The hostages were in a fair way to annex the
deserted village, when a bombshell burst in the shape of a despatch from
the American ambassador that permission had been obtained for all to
come home.

The changing wind now swung full upon us. Scarcely had the message
arrived ere the mutessarifs secretary followed it, lamenting that we
must go. A peacock reposing majestically in the arms of a patient hamal
appeared at the front door, a souvenir for "his excellency."

Appeared also, out of thin air, a neat little horse and phaeton, and a
trooper perched on a high Turkish sa