Consul, Mr Wrench, at which it was arranged that my hotel bill
should be defrayed from future earnings, my baggage was released by the
Consular influence, and next morning, at the appointed hour, my dragoman
and I were being pulled across the waters of the Golden Horn by a
pair of sturdy _caiquejees_, and were bound for the front. With what
a rebound of high spirits on my part it is quite impossible to say t I
thought I had never seen so beautiful a morning, and indeed the scene,
apart from all considerations of mood, was very charming. The receding
hill of Galata, with its bowers of green, its mosques and minarets and
palaces, lay steeped in the early sunrise, and looked as lovely as a
dream.

It was on the eve of the Feast of Bairam that we set out, and when
we arrived at Adrianople, the city was illuminated and the street was
filled with joyful crowds. News had arrived to the effect that a pitched
battle had been fought between the Russian army and the forces of
Raouf Pasha, and the Turks were reported to have been magnificently
victorious. But Adrianople saw another sight next morning when the
trains from Yeni Zaghra, where the action had taken place, crawled
slowly into the station with their burden of one thousand two hundred
wounded. To one who was new to war, the spectacle of this one thousand
two hundred was a reminder of its horrors. There was a good deal of talk
about the Russians having fired on the white protective flag, but if
they had broken the rules of civilised combat in that way they had been
but indifferent marksmen, for no one of the long row of carriages was
so much as scarred. It was evident, however, that the trains had been
unskilfully driven and that there had been checks and shocks upon the
road, for the wounded, who had been bestowed along the benches at the
beginning of the journey, were lying all higgledy-piggledy on the floor
when they arrived. I helped to carry some of them from the train to
the rough eight-wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne to
hospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel was not a cycle but an
octagon, and the wounded, who were jolted along the street, filled
the air with cries of agony. I made an immediate dash to the scene
of conflict and there I encountered seventeen officers who, with the
exception of the wounded I had seen already, were the sole survivors
of Raouf's army of seventeen thousand. One man, an artillerist, who had
been educated at Chath