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 infantry-men, bronzed, well-built fellows, with heavy, high cheek-bones, longish noses, black mustaches, and dark eyes, who, whatever their qualities of initiative might be, looked to have no end of endurance and ability to stay put.  Bullock-carts dragged by big, black buffalo cattle, carrying their heads far back, as if their big horns were too heavy for them, crowded the street leading to the quay, and camels, strung in groups of five, came swinging in, or kneeling in the dust, waved their long, bird-like necks, and lifted up a mournful bellow, as if protesting in a bored, Oriental way, at a fate which compelled them to bear burdens for the nagging race of men.

It was to an accompaniment of these howls that a young Turkish officer came over to find out who these strangers might be.  We spoke of the hostages, and he at once said that it was an excellent idea.  The English and French were very cruel—­if now they chose to bombard. ...  “If a man throws a penny into the sea,” he said, “he loses the penny.  It isn’t the pocket-book that’s hurt.”  I did not quite grasp this proverb, but remarked that after all they were civilians and had done nothing.  “That is true,” he said, “but the English and French have been very unjust to our civilians.  They force us to another injustice—­c’est la guerre.”