We Send Our Cable from Sinope and Then Sail for the Caucasus, Where Rumor States Revolution and Anarchy to Be Reigning Unmolested

After the meal mentioned so enthusiastically in the last chapter, we rowed ashore in the longboat and effected a landing at a decaying old pier (which in truth gave the appearance of being little used for the disembarking of the fish, skins, etc., before mentioned) and were welcomed (?) by a ragged crowd of open-mouthed, very dirty creatures that inhabit this interesting coast. Accompanied by Morris, the second engineer and Stomati, who was practicing his seven languages at once on such victims as seem to promise hope of intellect, we wound our way up a street of fallen-down dirty houses toward the telegraph station. Fortunately Stomati knew the word for “Telegraph Office” in the language of the country. I never felt quite so much like a brass band or an elephant as during that short journey to the “Imperial Ottoman Postal and Telegraph Office.” I am sure any circus that had such a following in its street parade would count the day a successful one indeed.

It was with a little dubiousness that I filed my wire, for the Turkish officials are far more strict in their censorship than those of any other government. But I hoped that a message originating at this out of the way place might get on one of the through wires and slip past the central station, where the censors preyed in Constantinople. For, as a rule, the actual senders care nothing about the contents of a dispatch, and, as a matter of fact, generally do not know the language, simply sending the letters as they read them. So I hoped mine might slip through the back door, as it were, and never be noticed by the officious uniformed functionary that sits in the front office of the Constantinople stations and reads other people’s confidential communications. This operator knew a little English, and at his first sign of suspicion as he read over my “story” of the revolutionary situation in Russia, I handed him a cigar and a golden English sovereign, which cheered him up so much that he stopped reading my message and went out and got me a dirty cup of Turkish coffee about as thick as molasses. Experience has taught me that there are two useful forms of influence; first, the exchange of pleasantries, accompanied by a coin of appropriate value, and, secondly, a polite but firm intimation that the “mailed fist” is available in case of obstreperous conduct. So, while the coffee was coming I wrote a short commercial message to the head of our London office, as follows:

Am filing an important press dispatch of 287 words. If it does not reach you simultaneously with this or shows signs of being tampered with, have the matter vigorously investigated by the proper authorities.

I knew that the commercial messages usually went promptly and were censored leniently, if at all. The operator also knew this fact. Also did a great light loom upon him as to complications which might arise, if the message were delayed. So without a word he went into the rear room, where ticked the instruments and my cable was started on its way. I learned weeks later, when I finally reached London, that the same messenger boy had brought both telegrams at the same time, the news dispatch being 287 words exactly.

As the ground felt pretty solid and comfortable, after the France, and as the coffee was not nearly as bad as it looked, we sat in the office until the last word had gone, and then engaged the Turkish operator in pleasant converse. He invited us into a more pretentious, if even dirtier, apartment (which might be termed his lair), and we signified that we would be glad to pay the price of the drink of the country, if his influence could procure the same. More cigars circulated. Kind words passed freely. After the foundation for and that peculiar atmosphere particularly adapted to confidences had been firmly established, we began gently to encourage communication on those subjects which had been passing over the wire between the Caucasus and Constantinople. Probably outside of this extremely dirty gentleman in blouse and red trousers, who now seemed so well disposed, there was not a soul in town who had any information on any subject that would have been of the slightest interest outside of the port of Sinope. But our host, in his leisure moments (which I gathered comprised a fair share of the twenty-four hours), had noted what the wires were saying. Once he had become aroused in the subjects of interest along his line, he had made it a point to interview such seamen and others that touched the little town. He really knew a lot. When he had finished, we flattered ourselves that we knew as much as he did anyway as to the situation up in the Caucasus up to the past ten days, when, as our friend opined, the extension of the cable into the Caucasus had been suddenly cut. Anyway, communications thence had ceased abruptly. What we learned in brief was as follows:

That the strikes and riots which had been prevalent all over Russia had hit the eastern end of the Caucasus, and hit it hard! Batuum, the main port at the end of the Black Sea, was in a ferment and filled with refugees. That the ships had all stopped going there, that the town was full of sweepings of the entire region plus Cossacks sent there to keep order. No one seemed to know which side the soldiers would take. It was reported that the Russian officials were besieged in one of the public buildings. That the troops were disloyal to their officers and were killing the population promiscuously, and that all of the decent citizens were shut up in their houses praying for relief. A French ship had brought out the last word ten days earlier, to the effect that a railroad strike was on and that towns were burning everywhere, and that anarchy was blazing in all quarters of the Caucasus. With this boat had come two hundred refugees, and it was said that there were hundreds more in Batuum hoping against hope that some ship would come and take them away. These were just a few of the things that the operator told us. To be sure, some of the facts conflicted, and a lot of the statements did seem a bit improbable. But before our interview was half finished I was convinced that, even though nine-tenths of the tales might be fabrications, there was enough left in the remaining tenth to make a cable. When we had pumped our informant dry, my mind was made up. We would certainly leave that very night for Batuum.

Our trip on the Black Sea thus far had been one of constant hardship, cold and discomfort, which makes a more unfavorable impression on one than do active dangers, though these too seemed quite stiff enough. The news results seemed so far, inadequate to the outlay, in the way of effort and endurance. One does like to feel in taking chances that there is to be an equivalent return in some direction. The outlook up in the Caucasus pleased us all. In the first place, there seemed to be important news features there, and in the second place, there were refugees (probably some of them Americans) who were praying for relief. So it did seem as though we would be justified in taking what risks presented themselves. After one has been in tight places one’s own self on various occasions, one has more sympathy for others suffering in a like manner, and the idea of perhaps getting some refugees as well as news appealed strongly. So before leaving the telegraph office I sent a wire home, mentioning briefly the situation and winding up with the following:

Shall bring off all American refugees would suggest that our State Department request the Porte (Which signifies the Sultan’s government) to permit American warships pass through Bosphorus and protect our interests which appear to be in danger that place.

I also sent a wire to the American Embassy at Constantinople on the same lines advising them that if I did not show up within a week to please make an effort to see what had become of us. After both of these cables were on the wire I felt that I had taken all precautions for the future that I could think about, and we returned to the France and put to sea.

About every day that winter seemed to be the same on those peaceful waters, as far as storm and stress were concerned. We were running up the coast of Asia Minor a few miles off shore all of that night and the next day. It is a bleak and barren shore, with snow-covered mountains rising abruptly from the ragged rocks, against which the sea beat and frothed with a boom that came to us at sea, as loud as distant thunder.

It was about noon on the following day that I opened my diary to make the day’s entry. It was December 24th. Christmas eve! I had even forgotten that Christmas existed, and for the first time it occurred to me that we would celebrate rather a dismal day on the little France. It is the season of the year when one’s mind wanders far from wars and waves and tumult, and my thoughts drifted back across the broad Atlantic to a certain home, where festivities would be going forward apace on this day, and little children would be expectantly doing up bundles and trimming all with green and holly.

I sent Morris forward for the skipper and asked him if there was a cable station within range of us. Together we pored over the chart and figured that we might reach Trebizond by four that afternoon, if all went well, and the course was duly altered. Sure enough, promptly on the hour we rounded the point and sailed into the mere angle on the coast they call a harbor at Trebizond. Half a dozen ships lay at anchor riding the heavy swell that came booming in from the sea, and then swept on to break with grim fury on the shore a mile or so beyond. One of these ships was a French mail steamer of 3500 tons, which had been lying there for ten days waiting for the storm to abate, and the others had been standing by for varying lengths of time for a similar purpose.

There was a bit of rotten old stone pier sticking out from the jumble of houses on the shore. The sea was beating about it with great waves that hid it intermittently from our view, by the spray and spume created by their angry lashings. However, there did not seem to be any other place to land, so we ordered out our biggest boat, and with not a little difficulty got her into the sea without damage.

Then one by one we piled aboard, each waiting the moment to jump, while the crew on the France held the dancing shell away with poles. Four men and Morris formed the escort, and once aboard they gave away with a will as the close proximity to our tug threatened to upset us any minute. But once we got her head into the sea, and our four men tugging in rhythm at the oars, all went well. I had often been in a ship’s boat in a seaway, but nothing quite like this. Every minute a great sea would come racing in from the open waters and a mountain black it would sweep under our stern, lifting us high in the air, and then our little boat would go sliding back into the valley behind like a cat trying to climb a steep roof. Down, down we would go into the trough until our horizon was bounded only by the waves that had swept under us, and its big black brother following close behind. Each time we would mount the crest we would see the shore ahead and the France astern of us; each time we dipped the ridges of spray capped seas would shut them from sight. But each dip brought us nearer shore. As we approached the pier I saw that there was a kind of breakwater jutting out from one side and behind it a still patch of water. Between the pier and the stone masonry was a channel of perhaps fifty feet. Each moment the seas would go roaring through this little opening, whose walls were flanked with clouds of spray breaking on both sides. Then the next second back would come the wash to meet the next wave. This looked to me to be our best place to land. In fact, it seemed the only place. Waiting just the right time and mounted on the crest of a roller we came sweeping down toward this veritable millrace. Standing up in the stern to steer I encouraged the crew to pull their hardest. For a moment we hung on the crest and then like a toboggan we bore down toward the narrow passage, the sailors pulling their oaken oars till they fairly bent. For an instant we were in a cloud of spray and ’midst the tumult of the seas breaking over the masonry at either side, and then we shot into the quiet waters like a sled gliding over smooth ice.

In a few minutes we pulled up to a flight of stone steps and were arguing with a stupid Turk about passports. I forget the details now, but anyway we bluffed him, and ten minutes later I handed in a wire at the telegraph office to that home across the seas. I was wet, cold and wondering in the back of my head how in the world we would ever manage to get back to the France through that surf as I passed in the two words for home: “Merry Christmas,” and signed my name. Somehow I felt that the words did not adequately describe my own feelings, but then no one at home would know the difference, so it would not matter anyway. I called on the American consul and gathered from him a general confirmation of the story that I had picked up at Sinope. He was a nice man and very gossipy. His house was on a bluff overlooking the harbor. He was surprised to see us at all, and more surprised to learn that we had come in the France, which was plainly visible bobbing up and down in the harbor like a duck in rough water. His advice was to remain in port awhile, as we were going to have a big storm, and he thought the France ridiculously small at best. It was he who pointed out the French Mail to me and gave her as a precedent for remaining in port. However, as we had been having storms pretty steadily for a week, and as we were still intact, I told him that I thought we would go ahead anyhow. He was very cordial, and so I invited him to dinner on the France, but after verifying his earlier impressions of her by a careful scrutiny through a spyglass, he politely but firmly declined the pleasure.

Trebizond stands out in my mind as one of the most wonderfully picturesque places that I have ever seen. It is the contact point, as it were, between the East and the West. The setting is Oriental to a degree, with the streets filled with riff-raff and hodge-podge of a dozen different races. Here starts that great overland trail, across mountain plain and desert, that leads far far away into Persia, India, aye, and it is said even unto Turkestan and China itself. Long trains of the patient mangy camels, with their trappings of dirty red and their escorts of strange attendants, come with them from heaven only knows where, are moving through the streets toward the trail that lies beyond.

It is with a curious fascination that one watches the slow dignified movements that carry them over the ground at the rate of but a meager mile or two an hour. It seems impossible to realize that these melancholy beasts with their quivering pendulous lips and woebegone eyes, will keep up that same pace for weeks and months, hour after hour, until at last they lay them down in their distant terminus in the far off East that ever stands in our minds as the land of mystery.

Trebizond has a very mongrel population indeed, and it is a constant wonder to see so many different peoples packed into this one dirty town. There seems to be many Armenians, and as the reader no doubt recalls, this little port was freely mentioned in the press a few years ago as the scene of the ghastly massacres perpetrated on these dismal people. One always hesitates to criticize with a merely superficial knowledge, yet the Armenians impress one casually as being about the most unpleasant people imaginable. They have a genius for conspiracy and the making of fifty-seven varieties of trouble that is perhaps unique. The result is that every once in a while some Turk in a genial mood says, “Come on, fellows, let’s kill-up a few Armenians,” and the massacre is on. It does seem outrageous to do all these things, but one who sees the Armenians sometimes wonders if they don’t bring a lot of trouble on themselves by their own actions and characters.

The good kind missionary whom I met did not think so, and very likely he knew what he was talking about, while my opinion is merely a shot in the dark on a subject viewed superficially.

My friend the missionary took me around and introduced me to the governor, a somewhat besmirched gentleman in a dirty red uniform, who had eyes like a rat, which wandered over my person until I felt for my watch. He did not speak English nor I Turkish, so our conversation was not particularly entertaining. I don’t know what his opinion of me was, but my opinion of him was that he was about the worst looking specimen that I had ever seen. He had G-R-A-F-T written all over him in large letters.

He rather queered his town with me, and I went back to the harbor just at dusk. The wind had changed and the tide was running out, so that we managed to get out through the breakwater with nothing worse than a pretty severe wetting. The barometer (as usual) was falling. So I decided to have one more square meal before we put to sea. So it was nine o’clock when the anchor came up and we turned our nose away from the lights of the town, far more hospitable in appearance, by night than by day, and headed into the darkness that lay without.