A LULL BETWEEN THE STORMS 213
later these were graciously released. Somewhere a
number of agents and interpreters drew their well-
earned pay for the month of September.
In October I was detailed to proceed with the com-
mission that was to exchange the fifty odd Turks con-
fined in Malta with the British prisoners in the hands of
the Nationalists. We lay off Ineboli in the Black Sea
in a storm that blew out of the Crimea and roused the
sea until the destroyers dipped their sterns under each
mountainous wave. I went ashore to start negotiations
and found the Nationalists intensely hostile, offensive
and ungracious. All the pleasant good feeling which
existed towards us during the war was gone. I watched
the prisoners go ashore with mixed feelings. To see
Rahmi Bey and Reouf Bey free was to be glad that
justice was being done. To see Mazlum Bey, the late
commander of Afion-Kara-Hissar, and other foul crimi-
nals go scot-free was to feel to the full the humiliating
weakness of the British Empire ; for Mazlum was a
murderer in cold blood of British soldiers. As we sailed
away with only half the British prisoners which we had
expected to recover, I was glad to be finished with an
episode in which I had been so deeply involved and
which had befouled our good name for so long.
My gendarmerie area was now quiet except in the
south where the Greek troops held one shore of the
Gulf of Ismidt and we the other. Along our shore were
many Greek villages. Encouraged by the proximity of
the Hellenic troops, the villagers refused to pay taxes
and often brawled with the Ottoman officials.
The village of Pendik was especially bad. The priest