CARRY ON!

A STORY OF THE FIGHT FOR BAGDAD

BY

HERBERT STRANG

ILLUSTRATED BY H. K. ELCOCK
AND H. EVISON

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW
TORONTO, MELBOURNE, CAPE TOWN, BOMBAY

PRINTED 1917 IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD.
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

CONTENTS

CHAP.
I    A TELL NEAR BABYLON
II    THE GAPING JAWS
III    THE BARBER'S APPRENTICE
IV    THE SHAVING OF BURCKHARDT
V    SECRET SERVICE
VI    THE DERVISH HEZAR
VII    A MAD RACE
VIII    ACROSS THE EUPHRATES
IX    FRIENDS OR FOES?
X    THE TRYST
XI    THE TRAP
XII    A REARGUARD ACTION
XIII    IN THE BRITISH LINES
XIV    THE ENEMY'S GUNS
XV    A RAID
XVI    CLOSING IN
XVII    RAISING THE SIEGE
XVIII    THE TIMELY BOMB

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOUR FRONTISPIECE BY H. K. ELCOCK.

A DASH FOR LIBERTY (see p. 102),

DRAWINGS IN LINE BY H. EVISON.

THE STRUGGLE ON THE TELL

A MOUTHFUL OF SOAP

THE PRISONER

THE LAST SHOT

A CAPTIVE IN BONDS

STRANDED

MAJOR BURCKHARDT IS DISTURBED

THE DASH FOR THE MACHINE-GUN

THE BARBER IS MOBBED

CHAPTER I

A TELL NEAR BABYLON

Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers," has been brought by Time's revolution once more into the foreground of the history of the world. The plains where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob tended their flocks and herds; where the hosts of Sennacherib, Shalmaneser and Alexander contended for "world-power" in their day; where the Arabs, heirs of ancient civilisations, reared a civilisation of their own until it fell under the blight of Turkish dominion: have become once more the battle-ground of opposing armies, the representatives of conflicting spirits and ideals.

This fertile land, whose history dates back many thousands of years, has long lain desolate. Swamps and marshes and the floods of the Tigris and the Euphrates cover immense tracts that were once the granary of the middle East. The old canals and irrigation works constructed by Babylonians and Assyrians are now obliterated by sand. Where once large populations throve and cultivated literature and the arts, now roam only a few tribes of Arabs, degenerate descendants of the race that at one time led the world in the things of the mind. Mesopotamia is the "abomination of desolation."

Here and there a mound—known to archæologists as a tell—marks the site of a buried city, and excavation has brought to light the remains of palaces and monumental tombs, and temples where "pale-eyed priests" chanted incantations to Assur and Ishtar and Merodach—the Baalim and Ashtoreth of the Bible. It was at one such tell that the story to be unfolded in the following pages had its beginning.

Early one morning in the autumn of 1916, any one who had chanced to be standing on this tell would have noticed, far in the eastern sky, a moving speck. It might have been a gigantic bird, but that, as it approached, its flight was swifter, more direct, more noisy. As it came nearer, it swept round in an immense circle, then descended in a spiral course, skimmed the surface of the