CHAPTER XI
A GREEK WAITRESS, A GERMAN BEERHOUSE, A TURKISH POLICEMAN, AND A RUSSIAN SHIP
At half-past eleven of a scorching morning every Britisher at Psamatia marched away from the prison-house. As a result of the furore that followed White's escape, twenty-four hours earlier, the Turks were sending us into the interior of Anatolia. About fifty Tommies, with a detachment of guards, left first; and we—the fifteen officer prisoners—followed twenty yards behind them. In the rear was the Turkish officer in charge, with a screen of six guards, who showed fixed bayonets, loaded rifles, and smiling ferocity.
Three of us—Fulton, Stone, and myself—had made up our minds to slip away, or if needs be dash away, before the party entrained at Haidar Pasha, on the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora. The Turkish officer rather expected somebody to make an attempt, but knew not whom to suspect in particular. A little deduction might have told him, for, except F., the "do-or-die trio"—as the others had named us—were the only officers wearing civilian clothes, and one would as easily have suspected F. of an ambition to become the Sultan's chief eunuch as of an ambition to escape.
Some of the Tommies were disabled or still sick. As they trudged through the hot streets, oppressed by heavy packages and the relentless heat, their backs bent lower and lower and they began to straggle. Finally one man fainted. While he was being carried into the shade the officers obtained permission to relieve the weakest Tommies of their kits. Yet again, the Turks ought to have discovered the escape party, for the others saw to it that Fulton, Stone, and I should not be burdened with the parcels.
Meanwhile, the mid-day heat grew more intense, and the Tommies more exhausted. It became necessary, every half mile or so, to rest for a few minutes on the shady side of the street.
The "do-or-die trio" looked to these halts for their opportunity; but always the guards hemmed us in too closely for any chance of a break-away. A combined effort seemed impossible, so that the three of us accepted the maxim of each man for himself. Even to talk with each other on the march was imprudent, for earnest conversation, like earnest looks, must have attracted attention.
The first move was made by Fulton. We had halted on a narrow pavement, in the suburb of Yeni-Kapou. There followed a short interval of lounging repose, during which we sipped at water-bottles, while the Turkish officer did his best to fraternize. Turning round casually, in a search for possible opportunities, I saw Fulton sliding into a little booth of a shop, and then, with head bent over the counter, looking at postcards. As far as I could gather none of the guards had noticed him. He killed time by calling for more and ever more postcards.
Five minutes later the order to continue was given. We rose and arranged our packs, while Ms. stood in front of the shop window, so as to hide Fulton. But a Turkish sergeant counted us, and finding our number short by one, became excited and aggressive as he wandered around and checked his figures. Fulton's discovery was then inevitable. He made the best of things, when observed through the window, by choosing and paying for several postcards and leaving the shop indifferently, as if he had entered it with no ulterior purpose. The Turkish officer looked his suspicion, but made no comments.
Stone's turn came next. At Koum-kapou we rested below the wall of an old palace. When, as he thought, nobody was looking, Stone slipped through a side-entrance and sat down against a doorway in the left-hand corner of the courtyard. A guard darted after him, and dragged him back to us. The Turkish officer saw the commotion and wanted explanations; whereupon Stone complained that although he went into the courtyard merely to find shelter from the sun the guard had hustled him rudely. The watchful guard was reprimanded for want of politeness.
We passed from Koum-kapou to Stamboul, where crowds of befezzed men and veiled women gathered at every crossing to gaze their dull-eyed curiosity. Here, in the mazed streets of the Turkish quarter, I again petitioned Providence for some sort of a diversion, under cover of which we might run. But nothing happened. The guards surrounded us as if we had been wayward pigs being driven to the slaughter-house, and handled their bayonets suggestively.
At one point we could see the Maritza, down a side turning. We moved along the tram-lines toward the big bridge. Then, after a moment's delay at the toll-gate, we passed over the Golden Horn.
Three-quarters of the way across the bridge the Turkish sergeant leading us switched the column-head to some steps descending to the ferry stage for the Haidar Pasha steamboats. The Tommies were placed at one end of the wooden stage, with a separate group of guards, while the Turkish officer, who since the beginning of the journey had shown a desire to make himself pleasant, took the officer-prisoners into a little café for cooling drinks. We talked idly to the Greek waitress who served us; but at the moment I was too preoccupied to notice anything about her, except that she was plump and obliging.
Later we were grouped some distance to the left of the café, in a corner of the ferry stage opposite that occupied by the Tommies. There we remained for nearly an hour in the broiling sun, while waiting for the steamer which was to take us from Europe to Asia. People surged on and off the ferryboats that moored opposite us from time to time; but never once did the guards relax enough to allow anybody to fade into the crowd. The chances were made even more desperate by some German soldiers, who leaned over the bridge-rails above us and watched the changing scene.
"Our ship comes," announced the Turkish officer at last, pointing out to sea in the direction of Prinkipo Island. In five minutes' time, I knew, the party would be on board that steamer; and once aboard it I should have left behind all hope of escape from captivity in Turkey. Only five minutes! Had the gods leftnoloop-hole?
I searched among the crowd in every direction, ready to take advantage of the wildest and slimmest scheme that might suggest itself.
I heard Pappas Effendi and Fulton asking the Turkish officer if they might return to fetch some kit, which had been left in the café. The Turk nodded, and sent them away, escorted by his sergeant. I also had left some kit, I claimed on the spur of the moment, just as Pappas Effendi and Fulton were leaving us.
"All right," said the Turk, "follow your comrades."
In full view of the rest of the party I walked after Pappas Effendi and Fulton, and while keeping close to the sergeant, as if to show I was under his wing, took care to remain behind him so that he himself should know nothing of my presence.
The little group entered the café, first Pappas Effendi and Fulton, then the sergeant, and finally myself.
Inside the doorway was the plump waitress, who smiled affably. I stayed near her while the other three passed to the inside room, where we had been seated earlier. I fingered my lips warningly, and in soft-spoken French asked where I could hide.
The waitress gave no answer, but without showing the least excitement or even surprise, half opened a folding doorway that led to the kitchen. I planted myself behind it, while she entered the inner room and talked to the Turkish sergeant.
A minute later I heard the three of them—Pappas Effendi, Fulton, and the guard—tramp past my doorway and out to the ferry stage. Just then the arriving steamer hooted.
"Now," said this waitress-in-a-million, "they have gone, and so must you. The Turks may come any moment, and if they find you here I shall suffer more than you."
"Goodbye, and a million thanks," I said, fervently, and walked into the open.
Without even turning my head to see whether the disappearance was known I swerved to the right, and, taking great care not to attract attention by walking in haste, passed up the long line of steps leading to the bridge. I continued to look straight ahead, but I could sense the presence, only a few yards away, of the German soldiers who loitered by the railings. Fortunately, several other people were moving up or down the steps; and dressed as I was in a civilian suit obtained from the Dutch Legation, the Germans paid no more attention to me than to them.
I reached the pavement, and still not daring to look behind, crossed the tram-lines to the opposite side of the bridge. Then only did I turn round to find out whether I were followed.
Everything was normal. Not one of the idlers who lined the railings had noticed me; the usual traffic and the usual crowds ebbed and flowed across the bridge; the sun shone. I lit a cigarette and walked eastward.
Having crossed the circus of streets at the Galata end of the bridge, I turned to the right and made for the Rue de Galata. At the corner I looked back again. To my very great relief, I found that I was still not followed.
I was conscious of an intense exhilaration as, free at last, I rubbed elbows with the crowd of nondescript Levantines. It was the first time for months that I had ever walked the streets without the burden of an oppressive consciousness that a yard or two to the rear was an animal of a Turkish soldier. That sense of always being followed and spied upon and menaced and held on a leash had weighed so much on my mind that I had come to look upon a guard in the same light as an old-time convict must have looked upon the lead ball chained to his foot. The sense of freedom from this incubus was glorious.
I was worried about my chances of meeting the unknown Russian who had agreed to hide White and myself. According to the plan detailed to me some hours earlier by Vladimir Wilkowsky, he was to wait for me in a German beerhouse from two o'clock to four. I had been unable to escape in time for the appointment and it was now four-twenty.
Nevertheless, hoping that the Russian might have lingered over his drink, I decided to carry out the same arrangements as if I had arrived in time. These, I remember thinking as I strolled along the Rue de Galata, studiously unconscious of gendarmes and soldiers, were suggestive of a Deadwood Dick thriller, or of some sawdust melodrama at a provincial theatre.
Having entered the beerhouse (namedZum Neuen Welt), I was to pass down the main room until, on the right-hand side of it, I reached the piano. I must seat myself at the table next to the piano, order a glass of beer, put a cigarette behind my left ear, and look around without showing too much anxiety.
Somewhere near me I should find a man whose left ear, also, was adorned with a cigarette; or, if not already there he would arrive very shortly. He would occupy the table beyond mine—that is to say, the next but one to the piano. On no account must I speak to him in the beerhouse, although to make his identity doubly clear he might ask for a light, speaking in German. He would remain until I had paid my reckoning, then pay his own, leave theBierhaus Zum Neuen Welt, and walk toward Pera.
I was to follow him not too closely, always taking care to be separated by a distance of at least twenty yards, so that nobody might observe how my movements depended on his. Arrived on the fringe of Pera he would unlock a door, leave it open, and disappear; whereupon all that remained for me was to follow him into this retreat, where I should find Captain White already installed.
It was four-twenty-seven when I entered theBierhaus Zum Neuen Welt, a close-atmosphered café in the Rue de Galata. The customers inside it were few, but some of them caught my attention at once, for they included a group of German soldiers and a Turkish officer of gendarmerie, who was talking to a civilian. The table next to the piano was vacant, as were those surrounding it. I sat down, casually placed a cigarette behind my left ear, and ordered a glass of beer.
As I sipped the beer I looked around the room for the man of mystery. Nobody paid the least attention to me. Plenty of cigarettes were held in the hand or the mouth, but none in the cleft of the left ear.
Still with a faint hope that the Russian who was to hide me might return, I ordered a second then a third glass of beer, and made a study of every man present, in case one of them might be he. But nothing had happened, and nothing continued to happen. The officer of gendarmerie kept his back toward me, while the German soldiers grew boisterous over repeated relays of beer, and over mandolin strummings by a red-faced Unteroffizier. The proprietress, a German woman of an especial corpulence, dragged her fleshy body from table to table, and finally arrived before mine.
"You seem hot," she said in German. "You must have been walking too fast."
"No, I have merely been out in this atrocious sun."
"German?" she asked—at which I was delighted, for it proved that my accent, acquired many years before as a student in Munich, was not yet too rusty to pass muster.
"No, madam, Russian," I replied, hoping hard that she could speak no Russian.
"So!Plenty of Russians come here since the Ukraine was occupied, and the boats began to arrive from Odessa."
Now although the fat proprietress had paid such a compliment to my German accent, I remembered the five years since I had spoken the language continuously, and I was frightened that in any word she might detect an English accent. I grew more and more frightened and anxious, for it was very unlikely that the man with the cigarette would arrive now. I looked at my watch, and found the time to be five-twenty-five.
Finally the tension of trying to think clearly while answering the German female's questions was more than I could stand. I paid my bill, and returned to the Rue de Galata.
By now, I judged, the guards must have discovered my escape. Probably they were searching the streets for me; and probably the gendarmerie in Galata, Pera, and Stamboul had been instructed to look out for a European in a gray civilian suit and a black hat. I stopped at the nearest outfitting shop, bought a light-gray hat, and left the black one lying on a chair.
Deciding that the water would be safer than the land, I made my way back to the bridge, with the intention of chartering a small boat for a trip up the Bosphorus.
Then, crossing the open space facing the bridge, I was horrified to see Mahmoud, one of my old guards. He revolved undecidedly and peered among the crowd. Obviously he was looking for someone; and the odds were a hundred to one that the someone must be me.
I edged away from him without being observed, and dodged into the fruit bazaar among the quayside streets to right of the bridge.
This bazaar was one of the dirtiest in Constantinople. Millions of flies drifted over and settled on the baskets of tired fruit. The very stalls seemed ready to fall to pieces from decrepitude. The people, vendors and buyers alike, were dusty and ragged. A few loiterers squatted on the cobble stones and sucked orange-peel.
It was inevitable that in such a place my more or less smart Legation suit and my newly bought hat should attract attention. A policeman, of the "dog-collar" species, seemed particularly interested in them. I was leaving the bazaar by a narrow street that looked as if it might lead me to the subway station of Galata when he barred the way and said something in Turkish, while holding out his hand expectantly.
I failed to understand most of the words, but one of them—vecika—was enough.Vecikaswere the Turkish passports with which every honest, or rich but dishonest, civilian had to provide himself if he wished to remain at liberty. They might be demanded at any time in any place by any gendarme.
Naturally I could produce novecika. But I had the next best thing. That same morning I had discussed with Vladimir Wilkowsky the possibility of being stopped in the street by a policeman. His advice was that if it happened I must claim to be a German officer. I remembered being photographed in civilian clothes when at Gumuch Souyou Hospital; and before leaving Psamatia I gave myself a useful identity by signing one of the copies with a German name.
After searching an inside pocket, I now handed to the gendarme a photograph which went to prove that I was "Fritz Richter, Oberleutnant in der Fliegertruppen." Speaking [in fluent German, interspersed with a few words of broken Turkish], I protested violently that I was a German officer in mufti, and that he would get himself into trouble for having presumed to stop a German officer. And never was I more frightened than when uttering that bombast.
Half convinced and half browbeaten, the gendarme took the photograph, looked at it dubiously, and consulted a Greek from among the curious crowd that circled us. This man, it appeared, claimed to know German. I understood little of the conversation, but as far as I could gather the policeman asked if I really were a German officer; and the stallkeeper, reading the signature laboriously, informed him that it proclaimed me to be a Supreme Lieutenant of the Flying Soldiers.
"Pek ee, effendi," said the gendarme to me. He returned the photograph, salaamed, and apologized. He then went away. So did I.
I returned cautiously, through a combination of side streets, to the bridge-head, and I was much relieved to find that Mahmoud had disappeared. From the quay I chartered a rowing-boat, ordering the Turkishkaiktcheto row me up the Bosphorus.
"Are you Russian,effendim?" he asked.
"No, German," I replied, surlily. At that his conversational advances ended.
The train of thought started by the word Russian led me to decide that I had better spend the night aboard the Russian tramp steamer on which White and I were to travel as stowaways. Vladimir Wilkowsky, in fact, had told me to make for it if I failed to reach the hiding-place on shore, and to ask for M. Titoff, the chief engineer. Its name, I knew, was theBatoum, and most of its officers were in the conspiracy to help us, in return for substantial consideration. I knew that the ship was moored in the Bosphorus, but of its appearance or exact position I had been told nothing.
"Russky dampfschiff Batoum," I ordered thekaiktche, using the polyglot mixture which he was most likely to understand. But his voluble jabbering and his expressive shrug showed that he, also, was ignorant of where it lay.
"Bosphor!" I commanded, pointing higher up the Bosphorus and thinking that I would find the nameBatoumpainted on one of the five or six ships that I could see in the distance, moored in midstream.
But having rowed some distance up the Bosphorus and already passed Dolma Bagche Palace, I found no ship labelledBatoum. Most of the craft seemed to use only numbers as distinguishing marks. What was worse, most of them flew the German flag; although two of the masts sported a yellow-and-blue standard which I failed to recognize. Certainly none flew the Russian eagle.
Our only chance of finding theBatoumwas to ask directions. We visited several lighters near the quay; but thekaiktche'squestions to Turks and Greeks were unproductive. As a last chance I told him to row close to a large steamer, on the deck of which I could see some German sailors.
"Please tell me where I can find the Russian boatBatoum," I shouted in German, standing up while thekaiktchekept the little craft steady with his oars.
"Don't know theBatoum," said a sailor. "Here there are no Russian ships now. They've become German or Austrian."
"And those two over there?" I asked, pointing toward the vessels with the green-and-black ensign.
"Ukrainian."
"Thanks very much," I called as we sheered off. My mistake, I realized, had been in forgetting for the moment the existence of that newly-made-in-Germany republic the Ukraine. Any vessel from Odessa not flying the German or the Austrian flag would now be Ukrainian; and the yellow-and-blue standard must be that of the Ukrainian Republic. One of the pair flying this flag proclaimed itself to be theNikolaieff. It followed that the other, which was marked only by a number, must be theBatoum.
Having made thekaiktchetake me to the bottom of its gangway, I climbed to the deck. At the top of the gangway was a tall man made noticeable by a bristling moustache and a well-pressed uniform of white drill. Obviously he was a ship's officer, and as such he must be one of the syndicate whom Captain White and I were bribing. If so, he would know of Wilkowsky.
"Russky vapor Batoum?" I asked in pidgin-Russian.
"Da."
"Monsieur Titoff?"—pointing at him by way of enquiry into his identity.
"Niet; Monsieur Belaef."
"Droug Vladimir Ivanovitch Wilkowsky?"
He gave me a long look, smiled, and said under his breath: "Yes, meester."
These were the only English words known by Ivan Stepanovitch Belaef, first mate of the Ukrainian tramp steamerBatoum, from Odessa. And for the moment, at any rate, I was safe among friends.
At about armistice time I was hailed unexpectedly in Port Saïd by C., one of the British officers whom I had left behind on the ferry stage of the Golden Horn. He himself had seen me leave the café, climb the steps leading to the bridge, and fade into the crowd.
A few moments after my disappearance, related C., the Turkish officer called the roll of the prisoners, before taking them to the ferryboat. That roll-call almost led to the premature discovery of my escape; for when the Turk said "À-lan Thòm-as Bott,"fourpeople answered.
CHAPTER XII
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
"Monsieur Titoff," announced the first mate, entering his cabin with a hunched-up figure of a man, whose most obvious characteristics were shifty eyes, very high cheekbones and a shrivelled, yellow skin.
M. Titoff and I inspected each other with care as I rose from the only chair and shook hands. He, I knew, was the guiding spirit in the syndicate of mates and engineers whom we were bribing.
He produced a book of English phrases, with their Russian equivalents. Opening it at a prepared page he ran his finger down the list and said "Seegnal!"
"Signal?"
"Yess, ceegarette seegnal."
Remembering the arrangements for the beerhouse rendezvous, I placed a cigarette behind my left ear; whereat the chief engineer and the first mate smiled, and shook hands once again. Neither of them could speak any language but Russian, so that we talked with difficulty, exchanging half-understood patter from the phrase book.
After some strumming on the mandolin and balalaika by Titoff and Belaef, I slept on the first mate's couch, with my money tucked next to my skin.
Next morning I was introduced to the third mate, a stocky Lett who could speak German. Using him as interpreter Titoff explained his arrangements. I was to dress myself as a Russian sailor, leave theBatoum, and be led to the hiding-place in Pera. White and I were to remain there for a week, until the day before the ship sailed. We could then be concealed on board theBatoumuntil she was safely out of the Bosphorus.
Wearing some old clothes belonging to Kulman, the third mate, but with their rank badges removed, I rowed ashore. Kulman accompanied me, while Titoff, prominent in white drill, waited on the quay. Neither he nor the white-bearded old man to whom he was talking took the least notice of us, but turned and passed toward the Rue de Galata. The third mate and I followed, without, however, showing apparent concern in their movements.
At the corner of a side street on the far side of the Rue de Galata Titoff parted from his companion. Kulman followed suit by leaving me, after giving low-voiced instructions that I must follow the old man.
The stranger led the way up the hill, toward Péra, while I kept behind him at a convenient distance, on the opposite side of the road. For a quarter of an hour he moved through a succession of uneven streets and cobbled alleys, so that I soon lost my bearings.
I was not conscious of danger, however. In the faded old uniform of a sailor, and with my civilian clothes wrapped in a newspaper, I attracted little attention. Occasionally I looked into shop windows to divert the suspicions of any who might otherwise have noticed that I was following the ancient.
Finally the guide halted among the wooden houses on the outskirts of Péra, produced an enormous key, and unlocked an iron door. I slackened my steps as he disappeared inside the door, but passed through it a few seconds later.
Inside was half-darkness. Besides the old man I could see, dimly, an unkempt and unshaven figure, wearing an overcoat that was much too small for him. I looked at this apparition with puzzled doubt. Surely it could not be White, whom I had last seen running through the streets of Koum-kapou, in a perfectly respectable suit of Red Cross clothes? Yes, it must be, for it came toward me with outstretched hand.
"Glad to see you, old man," said the figure in the overcoat. "I don't know which of us looks the more comic."
"Why the dyed moustache, and why this?" pointing to a faded fez which protruded from one of his pockets.
White reserved his tale until Titoff's friend had left us, after promising to return with food and water.
While the guard was chasing him in Koum-kapou, White related, he turned the corner suddenly and saw an open doorway. He rushed into it, acting on impulse.
Just inside the door was a woman, who screamed. He put his hand over her mouth, then dodged down a narrow passage into the back room, while the pursuing guard raced past the house and up the street.
Very fortunately for White the woman was a Greek, and as such well disposed to the British. She hid him in a cupboard for an hour, and persuaded her husband, when he arrived home at midday, to provide a disguise.
White bought a fez and an overcoat, and blackened his moustache. The Greek was shorter and slighter than he, so that it was impossible to wear the overcoat without removing his own jacket and waistcoat. These he left in the house. The results, however, justified his loss, for when he went into the streets, during the afternoon, he was a perfect study of a broken-down Levantine.
He reached Galata too late for the beerhouse rendezvous, and was obliged, therefore, to spend the evening and night as best he could. As he wandered along the Rue de Galata a policeman stopped him and, according to the Near East habit, showed a cigarette without saying a word and signed that he wanted a light. This White supplied from the cigarette he was smoking. The gendarme passed on, without deigning to thank the wretched looking man in a faded fez and torn coat.
A café and two cinemas filled his evening. Afterward, unable to hire a room at any hotel or lodging-house, because he had novecika, he spent the night huddled behind a cemetery tombstone.
Next day he met Titoff's Russian friend in the German beerhouse, according to plan; and so to the hiding-place.
This hiding-place of ours was a disused workshop belonging to the Russian, who claimed to be a carpenter. Its only furniture was a crude bench and a long table. The floor lay inches deep in shavings through which the rats rustled all night and most of the day. There was one small window; but this we were told to keep covered by its iron shutter, in case somebody should look in from the street. A tiny yard led from the corner opposite the door to the bottom of a shaft, down which the dwellers on the upper floors of the building threw their rubbish.
In themselves these conditions were fairly bad; for apart from the lack of furniture, the atmosphere was always dusty and unpleasantly musty, and unless we opened the window the workshop remained in perpetual twilight. But the worst drawback of all was that only a flimsy partition separated us from the living room of a Turkish officer. His bedroom was above our wooden ceiling. Everything he did we could hear quite plainly, whether he coughed, spoke, whistled, removed his boots, or snored.
The Turkish officer, we realized, must likewise hear every movement of ours; so that whenever either he or his orderly or anybody else was in his rooms we maintained, perforce, a death-like stillness. We scarcely dared to whisper, or to tip-toe across the workshop on bootless feet. In the daytime, the striking of a match had to be masked by scraping the shavings, so as to make a noise like a rat. After daylight smoking was impossible, because the glimmer would have shown through the many cracks in the partition.
We slept side by side on the wooden table, with rolled-up coats as pillows. White once woke up in the middle of the night and was horrified to hear me talking in my sleep. Fortunately, the Turk above was not awake, and so missed the performance. Afterward we never slept at the same time, but kept watch in turn, in case one of us should snore or otherwise attract attention. Four of the nights were broken into by machine-gun fire from a near-by roof, during British air-raids.
On my arrival White had told me that we must be particularly careful in the mornings, just after the Turkish officer left the house. The noises from the living room then suggested that somebody, probably the Turk's wife, was tidying it. This happened on three successive mornings. What worried us in particular was a scrunching and scraping behind the partition, which suggested that the wife suspected our presence and tried to look at us through the cracks.
Each time this occurred we crouched at the bottom of the partition, fingered our lips warningly, and scarcely dared to breathe. On the fourth day, when the Russian brought our food, we told him our suspicions.
"We believe this Turkish officer's wife knows of us," said White. "Every morning she comes to the partition and seems to be looking through it."
The carpenter grinned.
"But," he explained, "the Turk has no wife. What you've been frightened of is his tame rabbit!"
Each day we hoped for news of theBatoum's date of sailing. Three times it was postponed; and, bored and wretched, we remained perforce in the miserable workshop.
Unable to keep our minds as inactive as our bodies, we took the risk of leaving the window half open during the daytime, so that we might study our Russian textbooks, in readiness for Odessa. Seated on the shavings in a position to catch the shaft of light that streamed through the narrow panes, we passed many hours with the copying and learning of Russian phrases.
When, after hours of study, our concentrative faculties became stale, the only alternative was to hope for success, and to live again in retrospect the extravagant happenings of the past few weeks. Most of the business usually associated with the crudest melodrama had been there, I reflected—spies, policemen, disguises, chases, female accomplices, and bluff. Decidedly it had been thrilling; but for the future I desired intensely to experience such thrills only at second hand.
But even in this secluded room we were not to be spared the atmosphere of movie-horrifics. Another stock thrill was inflicted on us—The Face at the Window.
There had seemed no likelihood of discovery from the street. Even if we bared the window from its iron shutter, nobody could see into the room without raising himself on the ledge, for the lower panes were coated with an opaque glaze. At mealtimes, therefore, we let in the daylight by withdrawing the shutter.
One morning, after breakfast, when the Turkish officer had left his rooms, I saw White stiffen suddenly as we cleared the table.
"Look natural," he whispered. "There's no time to duck."
I picked up a plank of wood and tried to appear as if my business were carpentry; for over there, four yards away, a fez was rising slowly above the glazed portion of the window. White performed convincingly with a tape-measure, the nearest thing to his hand.
The fez was the forerunner of a much-wrinkled forehead. Then came a pair of villainous eyes, a bent nose, and cheek-bones with light olive skin drawn tightly across them. The rest of the face remained hidden by the glaze. The Turk—for such he evidently was—have levered himself from the ground by means of the window-ledge.
"Don't take any notice of the swine," White murmured.
Outwardly calm, but inwardly nervous and shaking, I pretended to busy myself with the carpenter's tools, although it was difficult to withstand a shocked instinct to gaze at the Face. It remained for about two minutes of heart-throbbing tension, then disappeared, and left me gasping with the surprise and the shock of its visit. We heard somebody walking away from the building and down the hill toward Galata.
The Face might have belonged to a police spy, we speculated, but it might have been that of a casual passer-by who was indulging the curiosity in respect of other people's business which is common to most Turks. In that case no harm would be done, for the stranger had seen nothing suspicious—only a workshop, some tools and planks, a loaf of bread and a half melon on the table, and two coatless, collarless, unshaven, untidy-haired men who seemed to be working.
The carpenter showed fright on being told that a Turk had looked in at us, and said he must consult Titoff. Before he returned on the following morning the Face had again appeared, as before—first a fez rising slowly above the glazed pane, then a wrinkled forehead, then the villainous eyes and the crooked nose. It remained staring for a few seconds, and disappeared.
This time the Russian could contain neither his fear nor his impatience to get us out of the workshop. If we were caught, said he, it would only mean imprisonment for us; but him the Turks might hang as a spy. He told us to pack our belongings, while he went to theBatoumand arranged with Titoff for us to be taken on board.
An hour later a procession of three passed through the winding streets toward the quay. We left the workshop in turn, at intervals of a few seconds, for we had decided to walk separately, so that if one of us were stopped the others could make themselves scarce.
First went the carpenter, leading the way down the hill to Galata. I followed twenty yards behind him, still dressed as a Russian sailor; and about twenty yards behind me came White, in his fez and old overcoat. We scarcely looked at each other, but mooched along different sections of the road. Each was ready, at a second's warning, to dash down the nearest alley.
Until the Rue de Galata was reached the only people we saw were the dull-eyed and ragged inhabitants of the slum quarter that fringes Pera, sitting in their doorways and blinking in the heat of early afternoon. But when we crossed the Rue de Galata White almost rubbed shoulders with a couple of gendarmes.
Titoff was waiting on the quayside. White and I approached him, whereupon the Russian carpenter retraced his steps and left us. In my character of a Russian seaman I saluted theBatoum'schief engineer. He hustled us into a waitingkaik, and ordered thekaiktcheto row to theBatoum.
Kulman was waiting at the top of the gangway. He led us to his cabin, where, he said, we were to live for the present.
Meanwhile, the ship was still empty of cargo, and no definite date of sailing had yet been given. This uncertain delay was especially unfortunate because, apart from the growing risk of discovery, our money was diminishing at an alarming rate.
The door was perforce closed all day long, to prevent discovery by the captain. In the heat of those August days on the Bosphorus the stifling stuffiness of the unventilated little cabin became almost unbearable.
Yet we had one consolation. The port-hole could be left open without fear of intrusion by the Face, with its wrinkled forehead surmounted by a fez, its villainous eyes, its crooked nose, and its olive skin drawn tightly across the cheek-bones….
CHAPTER XIII
A SHIPLOAD OF ROGUES
Michael Ivanovitch Titoff, one-time chief engineer of the tramp steamerBatoum, proved to the dissatisfaction of Captain White and myself that he was a thief, a mean blackguard, a cunning liar, a cringing coward, a rat, and an altogether despicable cheat. Otherwise he was not a bad sort of fellow.
At the time when we lived on board theBatoumas stowaways her officers and crew were rogues almost to a man. Except Titoff and one or two of the crew they were likeable rogues, however, and applied an instinctive sense of decency to their unlawful dealings. For example, Andreas Kulman, the Lettish third mate, would cheerfully cheat the Turkish merchant who had chartered the vessel, and cheerfully smuggle drugs from anywhere to anywhere; but I never knew him cheat a friend or a poor man, or take advantage of a stranger in difficulties. To us, as prisoners escaping from Turkey, he showed many kindnesses; and if we had been without money he would have been willing to take us across the Black Sea without payment. The other mates were of the same type, if a trifle less obliging.
The second and third engineers—Feodor Mozny and Josef Koratkov—were among the few of our shipmates who could not be classified as rogues. They transgressed only to the innocuous extent of smuggling moneyed stowaways and contraband goods. They, also, showed White and myself many kindnesses; as did the second engineer's wife, who voyaged with her husband. Several evenings she spent in the heat of the frowsy little engine room, washing our only underclothes, while we sat in Josef's cabin, clad in nothing but the tunic and trousers of our Russian-sailor disguises.
We wore these disguises for the benefit of visitors to theBatoum, and not to throw dust in the eyes of the crew. That was needless, for, except the captain, every man belonging to the ship soon knew of us. The marvel was that with so many people privy to the secret it never leaked to the Turkish police. In pro-Entente circles ashore our presence on theBatoumwas widely known and widely discussed; and I count it a debt to Providence that the news was not carried to the Ministry of War by one of the city's many police spies. The crew were unlikely to betray us knowingly, for every man of them must have been concerned in something which might wither in the strong light of a police investigation. Besides, they were tolerant of the British, while disliking the Turks even more than they disliked the Germans.
The captain—a white-bearded, bent-backed Greek of about eighty—seemed incompetent, and well on the way to senile decay, but withal harmless. This voyage was to be his last before enforced retirement. He was as wax in the cunning hands of Titoff, who kept from him the knowledge that two escaped Britishers were aboard. Had he known he would have either insisted on our removal, or—more probably—demanded a large share of the passage money. It was easy to keep the ancient in ignorance, for apparently he knew less than anybody else of what happened on his vessel. Titoff assured us that should the captain see us in our disguise of Russian sailors he would remain unsuspicious if we took care not to speak. His declining mind had become too feeble to remember off-hand even the number of the crew; and much less could he remember their faces. Once I brushed by him closely, outside Kulman's cabin. He passed without a glance at me, looking on the ground and muttering into his beard.
The crew was a dubious mixture. Many—in particular the firemen—had been Bolsheviki until Austro-German forces landed at Odessa and Sevastopol and temporarily crushed Bolshevism in South Russia. Other ex-members of the bourgeoisie, but unable to make a living on land under present conditions, had become temporary seamen by the grace of friends connected with the shipping company that owned theBatoum. There was also a bright youth named Viktor, who, until the Bolshevist revolution, was a student. His father, a lawyer, had been killed in the rioting at Kieff that accompanied the Soviet rise to power; and the son, to keep himself alive, now swabbed the decks of a tramp steamer and submitted to being kicked by sailors and corrupted by Michael Ivanovitch Titoff. Viktor spoke French and German, and was therefore much in request as interpreter when the ship's officers bargained with their stowaways or invested in contraband consignments, or when one of them brought on board some cosmopolitan wench from Pera or Galata.
Our most interesting shipmate on theBatoumwas perhaps Bolshevik Bill the Greaser. One afternoon when White, dressed in sailor's clothes, was helping to paint the ship's side, a hard-faced giant in overalls approached him, produced a Russian-French grammar, and asked for a lesson. So far as his slight knowledge of French and slighter knowledge of Russian allowed, White did his best to comply. Thereafter the greaser became a close friend, following us round the deck in the evening, visiting us at odd hours during the day-time, and bringing us figs.
Like most of the greasers and firemen he was a Bolshevik. He was not a bloodthirsty Bolshevik, however, but one who, according to his own limited and crude conceptions of universal equality, wanted plenty of wealth, plenty of happiness, plenty of vodka for all. He was especially eloquent and brotherly when drunk.
Others of the Bolsheviki were idealists of a more exterminative type. Once, when White was playing cards with some firemen in the engine room, the talk swung to the Russian Revolution. A lean man, who until then had been too busy drinking to speak, began to describe the mutiny in the Baltic Fleet, of which he had been a sailor. In his intensity he seemed to live again through the horrors of it, as with gloating gesture he described how unpopular officers had been thrown into the sea with weights tied to their feet.
"That was bad, very bad," protested White in his halting Russian. "If you are in power and somebody has done wrong, he should be given a fair trial and, if convicted, put in prison. But to kill men merely because you dislike them is very wrong."
"Well said!" commented Bolshevik Bill the Greaser.
"No; well meant if you like," amended the lean fireman, as he patted White on the back; "but the Meester does not understand us. We would never do such a thing to English officers. We had them as instructors and found them true friends of their men. Our officers were very different. They hit us and ignored us and treated us like animals. We shall never be permanently free until they are all dead. We must destroy their class. Russia——"
His voice had been growing louder and more raucous. Suddenly it softened as he turned to White and said: "Meester, you know your business and we know ours. Have a fig." And the game of cards continued.
Yet, among the whole shipload of rogues, the only man who victimized us was Titoff, the chief engineer. When we first came aboard he demanded twelve dollars a day for food which, being stolen from the ship's supplies, cost him nothing. At the instigation of the second and third engineers we reduced the payment to six dollars a day. He blustered, but gave way and tried to make up the difference by cheating us over tobacco, cigarettes, newspapers, and other articles bought on shore. He paid twenty-five dollars for a revolver, and tried to sell it to us for thirty-five, as being the cost price.
We had left at Psamatia a store of clothes and tinned food, which was to have been smuggled on board by the Russian aviator Vladimir Wilkowsky. As the days passed and nothing arrived we suspected Wilkowsky of having either failed or fooled us. Then, at a party in Titoff's cabin one evening, I saw inside a cupboard some tins of biscuits and cocoa, of the kinds that were sent to aviator prisoners in Turkey by the British Flying Services Fund. Titoff could not—and in any case certainly would not—have bought them in Constantinople; for English cocoa and biscuits, if obtainable at all in the shops of Pera, fetched extortionate prices.
Although the mere sight of the tins provided insufficient proof, the inference was that Wilkowsky had sent our belongings and that Titoff had stolen them. But we delayed investigation and accusation until we should be safely out of Turkey, and in the possession of revolvers. Some time or other we meant to make Titoff suffer. Meanwhile, we were forced to wait until our moment came.
Delay followed upon heart-breaking delay, until we began to lose hope that theBatoumwould ever weigh anchor. In four days' time, it was promised, the cargo would arrive. Two days later the four days had stretched, elastic-wise, to ten, because a consignment of figs had not arrived from Smyrna. Then, a week afterward, a further extension of five days was reported, the Turkish merchant having failed to come to terms with the Ministry of Commerce.
It became impossible for us to remain in Kulman's cabin, which faced the captain's. The old skipper received many visitors, including Turkish officials, any one of whom might have been led by mischance to discover us. At Titoff's suggestion we moved to a small room on the bridge, formerly occupied by a wireless operator, in the days when theBatoumwas a Russian transport. The transmitter and receiver were still there, but had been out of action long since, for the Germans forbade the use of wireless by merchant craft in the Black Sea.
There we remained hidden for a succession of twelve monotonous days and nights enlivened only by British air-raids and by expeditions to the deck when sunset and twilight were past, and we could take exercise by tramping backward and forward, forward and backward, in the shadow. For the rest, we continued to study Russian, and received friendly calls from Kulman, Josef, Feodor, Viktor the Student, and Bolshevik Bill the Greaser.
Titoff visited us once only, when he searched for the platinum points on the Marconi transmitter. But already every morsel of platinum had been removed; and the chief engineer seemed disgusted that somebody else should have anticipated his latest idea for profitable villainy.
The tedium of inactive waiting, of day-to-day hopes and disappointments, was as unpleasant and irritating as a blanket of damp horsehair. Our only diversion was the kaleidoscopic view from the window, while the ship swung with the tides. Not fifty yards away the Sultan's summer palace stood in white stone prominence amid the dull, squat buildings of Galata. Looking across the Bosphorus, with its heavydhows, its ferryboats, its dancingkaiks, and its sun-glittering wavelets, we could see Seraglio Point, and, in the distance, the domed roofs and minaret spires of St. Sophia and the other great mosques of Stamboul.
Meals were served irregularly, for journeys from the kitchen to the wireless cabin were dependent upon the outgoings and incomings of the captain and his visitors. Whenever he or they came on the bridge we made fast the door, and crouched beneath the window.
Our supply of money continued to dwindle, until it was insufficient to pay the four hundred Turkish pounds which Titoff demanded as passage money. We hesitated to approach Mr. S. once more, not wishing to involve him in our danger. Yet we had no other method of obtaining funds. Driven to the distasteful course by urgent necessity we decided to compromise by communicating with him through intermediaries, instead of visiting his office ourselves.
Titoff was anxious to be employed as messenger, but we shrank from placing him in a position which he might misuse to blackmail Mr. S. We therefore resumed communication with Theodore, the Greek waiter, by sending him an envelope that contained instructions for himself, and a sealed letter for Mr. S. When Titoff went ashore to deliver the envelope to Theodore, Kulman accompanied him, as a check on his propensity to walk crookedly.
The pair returned with the welcome news that Mr. S. would cash our cheques in three days' time. Meanwhile, the stowaway syndicate had been offered new business. Fulton and Stone had appeared once again upon the escape-horizon, and were living in Theodore's house. Yeats-Brown, in his disguise, was paying them frequent visits. Theodore had approached Titoff with a proposition that on the night before theBatoumsailed the three of them should join us. The chief engineer and his partners rather shied at the increased risk, but the money offered was too much for them, and they agreed to take Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone.
And then, with the prospect before us of sufficient funds and three useful companions, we suffered yet another disappointment. At the time appointed for a rendezvous Titoff went to fetch the money which Mr. S. was to send by Theodore. He returned with an anxious face and the announcement that the Greek waiter had disappeared. He waited vainly for more than an hour in the Maritza restaurant, where the other waiters professed to know nothing of Theodore's whereabouts.
It now seemed that not only should we be unable to pay for our passage, but that we had lost the money paid by Mr. S. (so we surmised) in exchange for our cheques. Somewhere, we felt sure, there was roguery. Three likely and unpleasant possibilities loomed before us. Theodore might have stolen the money and then vanished; Titoff might have stolen it; they might have stolen it jointly. Our one legitimate hope was that Mr. S. might not have cashed the cheques before Theodore's disappearance.
Our only chance of discovering the truth was personal investigation. On the following afternoon White, again wearing his fez and old overcoat and with his moustache darkened, rowed ashore. He took the tram to the foot of the Golden Horn bridge, walked across to Stamboul, and entered the Maritza.
The low-roofed restaurant's appearance was as usual; but somehow the atmosphere seemed electric with suspicion. A Turkish officer of gendarmerie sat at a table near the door. Theodore was conspicuously absent.
White ordered a glass of beer, and while doing so asked for news of him. The waiter looked frightened, and left the table without a reply. When he returned White repeated the question. He was then told:
"He has fallen with the three British officers. I pray you not to talk of it."
"But I must know," urged White, speaking in low-toned, halting French. "I am a British officer myself"—for this waiter, also, had acted as an intermediary for prisoners. He now looked more frightened than ever, and took care to keep away from the neighbourhood of White's table.
Glancing round, White saw a Turk washing his hands in the little basin at the back of the room, while looking, slantwise but intently, at each man present in turn, but more particularly at the proprietor and the waiters.
After White's return to theBatoumwith the bad news we all but gave up hope of recovering the four hundred Turkish pounds; for the police would most certainly have taken whatever moneys were found on Theodore. We had, also, to reckon with the new danger that bastinado floggings might persuade the Greek into betraying us.
Next morning's issue of theLloyd Ottomanbrought detailed confirmations. Three British officers, said aFaits Diversparagraph, had been concealed in the house of one Theodore Yanni, a Greek waiter employed at a restaurant in Stamboul. The police surrounded the building and discovered them. They were taken to the Ministry of War Prison with Theodore, his two sisters, and his aged mother.
The Ministry of War Prison—"The Black Hole of Constantinople"! We could see the Ministry of War in the distance from the bridge of theBatoum, and knowing the horrors of its special punishment cells, we shuddered with sympathy for the strangely mixed party. Theodore himself, we supposed, would be hanged out of hand.
Our almost hopeless position forced us into the reckless decision to discover the truth by paying a personal visit to Mr. S. His office was in the Prisoners of War department of the Dutch Legation, where he helped to administer the British Red Cross funds.
The building was on the way to the Petits Champs Gardens, near the Pera Palace Hotel; and there I went, in my sailor's uniform, with Kulman as companion. At the door was a multi-lingual porter, whom I had seen when, before my escape, I once bribed a guard into letting me visit the Prisoners' Bureau. I hung back, and allowed Kulman to take the lead; for I feared that, despite the Russian uniform, the porter might recognize me by certain scars on my face, the legacy of an aeroplane crash. Fortunately he could talk Russian. In answer to Kulman he said that Mr. S. was out for the rest of the day. We left, therefore, and passed the afternoon in various cafés, where Kulman introduced me to friends as a German-speaking Lett.
Next afternoon, before starting for Pera, I was careful to make the tell-tale scars less evident by means of chalk and powder. This time we found that Mr. S. was in the Dutch Legation annexe, although engaged and busy. We walked up the stairway to the first floor and stood in the corridor outside Mr. S.'s office.
Only then did I realize the foolhardiness of the visit. Very much in evidence were two officials whom I had met as a prisoner; and I was forced to shrink behind Kulman when there passed a Jewishkavasswho knew me well, from having brought clothes and money when I was a hospital patient. Fortunately he went by with only a casual glance at the two men in sailors' uniform.
We waited twenty minutes, and still the man with whom Mr. S. was closeted remained in the office. Twice, speaking in French, I made application to the lady-secretary of Mr. S.; but already, before we arrived, three people had been waiting to see him, and I was told that we must wait our turn. Kulman became anxious and fidgety, especially when, looking down the stairs, he saw some Turks in the hall.
Standing near us in the corridor were two elderly Jews, who appeared to listen intently when Kulman thought fit to emphasize my uniform by addressing me in Russian. Presently one of them produced an unlighted cigarette, and, also speaking in Russian, asked me for a match. Without a word I complied, while Kulman, by himself beginning a conversation, forestalled the suspicions which would have arisen if the Jew had begun to question me. I avoided speaking to them by again visiting the lady secretary. Later, Kulman drew me aside and said that it was impossible to remain any longer with the two Russian-speaking Jews.
His nerves—and mine also, for that matter—became still more shaky when, as we passed through the hall doorway, the porter stared hard at me and then followed us with his eyes until we turned into a side street that took us out of sight.
Although I had failed for the moment to reach Mr. S., it was imperative that one of us should see him. A new method of approach was advisable, for I believed that the porter half thought he recognized me. If I returned he would be more than ever suspicious of the scars; for everybody in the Prisoners of War Bureau had heard of my escape. The only alternative was for White to go. His disguise as Turk would be useless, as most people at the Legation spoke Turkish well, whereas he spoke it indifferently, with an accent that reeked of English vowel-sounds. We canvassed various nationalities and roles, and agreed that he must accuse himself of being one of the American missionaries who were still at liberty in Turkey.
Wearing my suit of mufti and the felt hat which I bought on the day I escaped, White shook hands and left me, after a reminder that if he were captured my clothes would go to prison with him. He was far from cheerful, for it was Friday, the thirteenth of September; and he remembered that his capture in Mesopotamia had taken place on Friday, the thirteenth of September, 1915.
Anxiously and uncomfortably, I waited through several hours of strained inactivity, fearing that if White, also, were recognized at the Prisoners' Bureau, disaster might overtake not only him, but our benefactor Mr. S.
At six o'clock he burst into the wireless cabin with a beaming face and the joyous announcement:
"I've seen S., and the money's not lost."
White's Friday, the thirteenth of September, had been an exciting one. He walked into the doorway of the Prisoners of War Bureau, and speaking in English, asked for Mr. S.
"Name?" inquired the porter.
"Mr. Henry O'Neill, from Tarsus."
"Do you know Mr. S.?"
"Why, certainly, I'm a friend of his." And White felt in his waistcoat pocket, as if searching for a card.
"His office is on the first floor," said the porter, satisfied. "Go straight up."
With a gulp of relief White passed up the stairway. Like myself on the day before, he had to wait many minutes before Mr. S. was disengaged; and like myself he was horrified to see Levy, the Jewkavasswho had brought his letters and parcels to Gumuch Souyou Hospital. Thekavassbeamed, and delivered himself of an oily greeting, but failed to remember where he had met White.
"You speak as an Englishman," he said, after a few words of conversation. "You are a English prisoner, not?"
"Of course I'm an English prisoner," admitted White, slapping Levy on the back. "My guard's waiting outside."
Thekavassfetched a chair for White and seemed disposed to ask more troublesome questions. Just then the visitor who had been engaged with Mr. S. left the office, and White walked inside, praying that thekavassand the porter would not compare notes, and identify Mr. Henry O'Neill, of Tarsus, with the British prisoner whose guard was waiting in the street.
The door being closed White explained his real identity to Mr. S., and offered apologies for the dangerous visit to which he had been forced by our desperate situation.
"You needn't worry about the money," said Mr. S., "I had no chance of paying it. I've destroyed the cheques."
He went on to relate how, not wishing to trust the Greek waiter with a large sum, he had sent a clerk to pay the banknotes into the hands of Titoff, at the Maritza. The clerk visited the little restaurant on the afternoon when Titoff waited in vain for Theodore. He dared not deliver the money there and then, for a Turk appeared to be watching the Russian engineer. When Titoff tired of waiting and went into the street the Turk followed, and shadowed him. The clerk, in his turn, trailed the Turkish agent unobtrusively. The three of them travelled in the same subway car from Galata to Pera. Titoff passed into Taxim Gardens. So did the agent and the clerk. He sat down and ordered a drink near the bandstand. The agent chose a table near him, and the clerk stationed himself within sight of both. At last, giving up hope of an opportunity to speak with Titoff, the clerk returned to Mr. S. and gave back the money.
Mr. S., meanwhile, had heard of the capture of Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone, all of whom he had helped. He realized that he himself was in grave danger.
"I've had some sleepless nights over you fellows," he said to White. "I rather think I've been watched since the others were taken with Theodore, and I know your friend Titoff's watched. If Theodore blabs in prison, my neck will be almost as near the noose as his."
Mr. S., very rightly, was unwilling to advance us money for the present.
"The police want you badly," he pointed out, "and I'm probably a suspect already over Yeats-Brown and Company. If you're grabbed in Constantinople I want to be able to say with a clear conscience that I've given you no cash since you escaped. I shall know when theBatoumis due to leave, and do my best to help you on the day before she sails, when you're all but out of the wood. The difficulty will be in finding a messenger. An English lady[1]helped the fellows who were retaken, and she'd like to take you the money. But she's involved over them and the police are watching her."
Deeply appreciative of the great risks which Mr. S. was taking on behalf of not only us, but every prisoner who had tried to escape from Constantinople, White thanked him and left. At the top of the stairs he said good-bye to thekavasswho knew him as a prisoner; at the front door he nodded to the porter who knew him as Mr. Henry O'Neill, of Tarsus. And so back to his rôle of paying guest on theBatoum.
With eased minds and renewed hope we continued to live in our wireless cabin, and prayed to Allah that theBatoumwould sail soon, and that Mr. S. would find some means of sending the money. Away in the distance we could see the citadel of the Turkish Ministry of War, in which Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone were dungeoned. All Constantinople talked of the capture, and the word went round the cafés that Theodore was to be hanged as a traitor, for having helped enemy prisoners to escape.
Thereupon Titoff, mortally afraid for his own neck, wanted to get rid of White and me. He made our shortage of ready money an excuse for ordering us ashore; but we claimed to have grown too fond of him to part company, and said that if we did leave the ship it would be to give ourselves up to the police, with the request that our friend and colleague Michael Ivanovitch Titoff should join us to prison. Michael Ivanovitch then protested, out of the kindness of his heart, that he would take us to Odessa whether we paid the full amount or only part of it.
So the anxious hours passed, until at last the sickening period of delay ended with the arrival of a consignment of cargo. A succession of lighters left the quay and moored alongside us, and all day we listened with delight to the clatter and whirr of the winches as they transferred bales and barrels to theBatoum's hatches. The final and infallible date of departure, announced the Turkish merchant who had chartered the ship for her voyage to Odessa, was September the twenty-second—four days later.