Toward the end of the afternoon the hostages, closely guarded, were marched up into the town and lodged in two empty houses—­literally empty, for there was neither bed nor blanket, chair nor table—­nothing but the four walls.  A few had brought mattresses and blankets, but the greater number, city-bred young fellows, unused to looking after themselves out of doors, had only the clothes they stood in.  The north wind held; directly the sun went down it was cold again, and, only half fed with the provisions Philip brought over from Lapsaki, they spent a dismal night,’ huddled on the bare floor, under their suitcases or whatever they could get to cover them, and expecting another bombardment at dawn.

We, on the contrary—­that is to say, Philip and his two guests—­were taken to a furnished house over-looking the Marmora—­the house, as it presently appeared, from the pictures of Waterloo on the walls and the English novels in a bookcase up-stairs, lately occupied by the British consular agent.  To his excellency a room to himself up-stairs, with a real bed, was given; the historians were made perhaps even more comfortable on mattresses on the dining-room floor.  We were all sleepy enough to drop on them at once, but another diplomatic dinner had been planned, it appeared, and Turkish politeness can no more be hurried nor overcome than can that curious impassive resistance which a Turk can maintain against something he does not wish done.  It was nine o’clock before we sat down with the mutessarif, his secretary, and the voluble journalist to a whole roast kid, a rather terrifying but exceedingly palatable dish, stuffed with nuts, rice, and currants, and accompanied by some of the wine of Lapsaki, rice pudding, and a huge bowl of raw eggs, which were eaten by cracking the shell, elevating one’s head, and tossing them down like oysters.

The dinner was served by one Dimitri, a brawny, slow-moving Greek.  Dimitri was dressed in a home-spun braided jacket and homespun Turkish trousers, shaped like baggy riding-breeches, and his complete impenetrability to new ideas was only equalled by the solemnity and touching willingness with which he received them.  It was after he had served us in the ignoble capacity of dish-washer and burden-carrier for several days that we were informed one evening by the governor’s secretary, in his vague way, that Dimitri was an “architect.”

“Architecte naturel,” suggested the urbane Philip, and the governor’s secretary assented.  Slow Dimitri might be, but once he grasped an idea, no power could drag it from him.  When one asked him where he learned to build houses of a certain style, he always replied that so they were built by Pappadopoulos—­Pappadopoulos being dead these twenty or thirty years.  Dimitri, the secretary ventured, had been architect of the mosque on the water-front, and when he found that we were pleased with this idea, everything else in Gallipoli became Dimitri’s.  The lighthouse, the hospital, the three white houses by the quay—­we had but to mention a building and he would promptly murmur, in his dreamy, half-quizzical way;