I asked myself on what charge, and answered, 'For knocking about a German officer.' They couldn't have me up for espionage, for as far as I knew they had no evidence.

I was simply a Dutchman that had got riled and had run amok.

But if they cut down a cobbler for laughing at a second lieutenant--which is what happened at Zabern--I calculated that hanging would be too good for a man that had broken a colonel's jaw.
To make things worse my job was not to escape--though that would have been hard enough--but to get to Constantinople, more than a thousand miles off, and I reckoned I couldn't get there as a tramp.

I had to be sent there, and now I had flung away my chance.

If I had been a Catholic I would have said a prayer to St Teresa, for she would have understood my troubles.
My mother used to say that when you felt down on your luck it was a good cure to count your mercies.