like leeches and we were not in the habit of
sticking at trifles.

'Well, you may imagine it wasn't difficult for me to move where I
wanted. My dress and the pass-word franked me anywhere. I travelled
from Smyrna by the new railway to Panderma on the Marmora, and got
there just before Christmas. That was after Anzac and Suvla had been
evacuated, but I could hear the guns going hard at Cape Helles. From
Panderma I started to cross to Thrace in a coasting steamer. And there
an uncommon funny thing happened--I got torpedoed.

'It must have been about the last effort of a British submarine in
those waters. But she got us all right. She gave us ten minutes to
take to the boats, and then sent the blighted old packet and a fine
cargo of 6-inch shells to the bottom. There weren't many passengers,
so it was easy enough to get ashore in the ship's boats. The submarine
sat on the surface watching us, as we wailed and howled in the true
Oriental way, and I saw the captain quite close in the conning-tower.
Who do you think it was? Tommy Elliot, who lives on the other side of
the hill from me at home.

'I gave Tommy the surprise of his life. As we bumped past him, I
started the "Flowers of the Forest"--the old version--on the antique
stringed instrument I carried, and I sang the words very plain.
Tommy's eyes bulged out of his head, and he shouted at me in English to
know who the devil I was. I replied in the broadest Scots, which no
man in the submarine or in our boat could have understood a word of.
"Maister Tammy," I cried, "what for wad ye skail a dacent tinkler lad
intil a cauld sea? I'll gie ye your kail through the reek for this
ploy the next time I forgaither wi' ye on the tap o' Caerdon."

'Tommy spotted me in a second. He laughed till he cried, and as we
moved off shouted to me in the same language to "pit a stoot hert tae a
stey brae". I hope to Heaven he had the sense not to tell my father,
or the old man will have had a fit. He never much approved of my
wanderings, and thought I was safely anchored in the battalion.

'Well, to make a long story short, I got to Constantinople, and pretty
soon found touch with Blenkiron. The rest you know. And now for
business. I have been fairly lucky--but no more, for I haven't got to
the bottom of the thing nor anything like it. But I've solved the
first of Harry Bullivant's riddles. I know the meaning of _Kasredin_.

'Sir Walter was right, as Blenkiron has to