greeable. He would have to wait at Rustchuk to get his return cargo,
and could easily inspan a fresh engineer.

I worked about the hardest twenty-four hours of my life getting the
stuff ashore. The landing officer was a Bulgarian, quite a competent
man if he could have made the railways give him the trucks he needed.
There was a collection of hungry German transport officers always
putting in their oars, and being infernally insolent to everybody. I
took the high and mighty line with them; and, as I had the Bulgarian
commandant on my side, after about two hours' blasphemy got them
quieted.

But the big trouble came the next morning when I had got nearly all the
stuff aboard the trucks.

A young officer in what I took to be a Turkish uniform rode up with an
aide-de-camp. I noticed the German guards saluting him, so I judged he
was rather a swell. He came up to me and asked me very civilly in
German for the way-bills. I gave him them and he looked carefully
through them, marking certain items with a blue pencil. Then he coolly
handed them to his aide-de-camp and spoke to him in Turkish.

'Look here, I want these back,' I said. 'I can't do without them, and
we've no time to waste.'

'Presently,' he said, smiling, and went off.

I said nothing, reflecting that the stuff was for the Turks and they
naturally had to have some say in its handling. The loading was
practically finished when my gentleman returned. He handed me a neatly
typed new set of way-bills. One glance at them showed that some of the
big items had been left out.

'Here, this won't do,' I cried. 'Give me back the right set. This
thing's no good to me.'

For answer he winked gently, smiled like a dusky seraph, and held out
his hand. In it I saw a roll of money.

'For yourself,' he said. 'It is the usual custom.'

It was the first time anyone had ever tried to bribe me, and it made me
boil up like a geyser. I saw his game clearly enough. Turkey would pay
for the lot to Germany: probably had already paid the bill: but she
would pay double for the things not on the way-bills, and pay to this
fellow and his friends. This struck me as rather steep even for
Oriental methods of doing business.

'Now look here, Sir,' I said, 'I don't stir from this place till I get
the correct way-bills. If you won't give me them, I will have every
item out of the trucks and make a new list. But a correct list I have,
or the stuff stays here till Doomsd