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
outside a little cafe, which had awakened since morning, took coffee.
The shadow blandly took coffee also, which he consumed silently, as we
had no common tongue, rose as I rose, and followed me back to the beach.

Out in the Marmora, which is but little wider here than the Hudson at
Tappan Zee, transports crammed with soldiers went steaming slowly
southward, a black destroyer on the lookout for submarines hugging their
flanks and breaking trail ahead of them. Over the hills to the south,
toward Maidos and the Dardanelles, rolled the distant thunder--the
cannon the hapless fifty, looking out of their house on the beach, had
been sent down to stop--and all about us, in the dazzling Turkish
sunshine, were soldiers and supply-trains, landing, disembarking,
pushing toward the front. Fine-looking men they were, too, these