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[Page 62]
After walking a mile or two we sighted a house which answered his description, but on going over to it we found it was occupied by Arab farmers. We spoke to them in Turkish but evidently they did not speak Turkish for they spoke to us in Arabic, which we scarcely knew a word of. We thought we had best get away while we were safe. After walking another 2 miles we came to a small village just half a dozen houses. My mate decided he would try his luck again at buying some eggs and bread. I remained just outside the village and waited till he returned. After half an hours wait he returned with four eggs and two juchupatties. We immediately set to work on them for we were ravenously by hungry. We still kept the onion in reserve. We moved off again and had not gone far when just as we were crossing a small ridge we found ourselves right on top of a military camp. Our Greek friend had warned us of these camps. We could see the sentries posted out we thought if we turned and went back they would have suspicions on us and come after us, so we decided to go straight forward into the dry bed of a small creek which we could see just to the left of the camp. We passed within 150 yards of one of the sentries but they took no notice. When we got to the creek we took shelter in the shade of the bank. We were pretty well concealed so we talked the situation over. Just after our arrival an Arab soldier walked along the bank. We saw him plainly but I don't think he saw us. After remaining there for about 20 minutes we decided that the best thing we could do was to walk back almost the same way we had come and then turn off leaving the camp well on our left. We did this and met nobody. When we got well clear of the camp we sat down in the shade of a tree. We were not there long when we saw an Arab soldier driving about a dozen sheep coming towards us. He came over to us, sat down, and commenced a conversation in arabic. We did not understand a word but he still kept on talking for fully 10 minutes. When the sheep had strayed away for some distance he went away. After another hours walk without meeting anybody we sighted what we knew to be the town of Tarsus. (16 miles from Mersina) We could see the chimneys of the two cotten factories which we knew were there. It was about 3 p.m. we were going to have a hard try to reach Tarsus by dark and attempt to buy some food. Just before dark we came to a small orchard and we could see some fig trees and made our way over to them to see if there were any but just as we were nearing them two men in a cart called out to us. We went over to them. I could see by their appearance they were Greeks. They wanted to know what we wanted trespassing on their ground. I replied that I wanted to know where the road leading to Tarsus was just for a blind, and they directed us. No doubt if we had told them who we were they would have given us some food, but we were not quite certain as to their nationality. We arrived outside Tarsus about 8.30 p.m. We made our way to several houses but in each case we were met by savage barking dogs and in our weak state we