The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-05-08

would not nave trusted the life or 8 deg. From my slight knowledge of Greek I gathered that he was ctv- ing directions to the others. and 1t soon became evident that he was in vitfng them te murder us. He had got instructions from the submarine commander. he said, that no Eng lIshn7an who might reach the island was to leave 1t alive. I began to wonder how I could manage to des- troy my dispatches. but, got no op- portunity to do 20, and, strange to say, our enemies did not attempt ta search us.
 Such a cold -blooded business Il never saw There was the man gest- iculating and swearing, while thet feroCious company argued among themselves, but, fortunately had no stomach for the business. Some of them, 1t fs true, laid their hands up on the hilts of their long knives as though half persuaded to strike off our heads, but, while they were wrangIing, in came the Abbot or Prior, or whatever he was, and, just as plainly, he roared that he would have no violence done in the mon astery For that mans coming I thanked Heaven devoutly. Drops of precipitation had stood upon my forehead, and I indeed thought that my last hour had come.
 I tried to speak to the priest in Greek, but soon discovered he either did not or would not understand me probably the latter. If I was then inclined to think that he was fatherly protector of the widow and orphan, I have since altered my opinion, and I now believe that he would have killed us himself but for his fear of the British. That fear las endured in the islands of the Aegean since Lord Byron's day, and it is not wholly divorced from cer- tain sentiment towards us.
 A Nasty Position.
 The Abbot or Prior was like t72c Western bartender who did not CO., 1 ject to murder, but would not have any dead bodies found upon his premises. He suggested to the It. ermen that the wisest course would | be to take us out to sea and there throw us overheard. They agreed with him, and letting to their l knives, they commanded us to fol- l low them in the tone of a man who Is speaking to a dog.
 | There had been no chance of 1 speaking to my friend the Lieutenant E it was not until we stood on the l jetty of the cove that I got a word | with him. His view of the pro- ceedings was gloomy.
 l '"They will take us a couple of miles from shore, and there stick 1 their knives into us,'' he said, and it was impossible to disbelfeve him.
 Already the anchor of their boat was up and a gangway plank put out for us to go aboard. I should des- 1 cribe the craft as a kind of LeYan- tine dhow, with 8 great lateen sail and a cabin aft. There were seven | or eight men aboard, but the Ger man agent was not one of them. ! We pushed off at last just as it was growing dark, and, the wind falling away to a whisper, we lay fer a long 1 time in the blight seeing the lights l of the monastery once more, and all
 the scenes as 1t had been when the sea cast us up and we believed that
 we were saved.
 have often speculated about that | voyage and it's meaning.
 | Why did the men not take us up to the hills and murder us there, or | throw us over the cliffs, or pitch
 us into the sea, directly we had clear
 ed the harbor? Was it possible that we might be more useful alive than dead to their German taskmasters. ] I am sure that our captors, while real | ly looking out for a Kings messer g. CT, did not know that they actually had him in their hands. The Lieu tenant always declares that their real object was to put us on board an
 Austrian submarine, where we could
 have been bullied into giving informa- . Looking ba ok to the night I real
 Iy think that they meant to take us
 to the U boat, but only in order tc
 make sure that neither of us was the
 Kings Messenger. If such was the
 case, being the wanted, I would cer-
 tainly have got short shrift. Mere
 murder would have been so easy tc
 them. and yet they did not murder
 us, but continued to sail their dhov
 out to the open sea. and that with r on any more notice of us than If we
 had been cattle.
 Rescued.
 Tn the end we sailed into g heavy
 mist, and lay there helpless Q Ions
 time. I thought, in truth, that this
 was the finish of it all-end Cer-
 tainly if they had known for certain
 who I was the end it would have
 been.
 Such a state of suspense endured
 some three full hours. We were stiI
 in the sea fog when it WIS broken and that most unexpectedly. Out 0; the loom of the fog there came
 burst of gunf1re. first the sound O
 heavy cannon, then the roar of ,
 machine gun. The effect upon the
 crew, of the dhow defies all words tc repeat. Such terror have rarely
 witnessed. Some of them began tc
 chatter like parrots; some peered in to the mtsts, gabbItng all the time
 one fell at my feet, and appeared t be fnploring my mercy.
 The odd part of 1t was that the gun fire had ceased as suddenly at l it arose, and a dead silence fell T, me it was as disappointing a thing as ever happened. My hopes raised , to the highest pitch fell as swiftly |; zero. I saw the old condition o peril restored; the men grown bray, to truculence again, and murder nov | done without a thought. And it wa , tco much for me. With a wild hull loa, l signalled the distant shiI whatever she was.