The Return to the Golden Horn and the End of the Assignment

It was just four o’clock three days later on the afternoon of December 30th that the tired little France poked her steel nose into the waters of the Bosphorus and, running around the first promontory, dropped her anchor in quiet waters just off the Turkish fort that stands sentinel at the eastern end of that wonderful cleft in the mountains that divide the East from the West, Asia and her mediÆval civilization from Europe and all her enlightened progress. Half an hour served to pass us through the customs and with hearts rejoicing and care free we steamed on through that picturesque gap. As we sailed around the bend I stood on the bridge and watched the dull, grim waters of the Black Sea cut off from view by the rising headlands. It was one of our typical days. The barometer was falling and the wind was coming up and the surly sea without was beating itself into one of its chronic rages that we knew so well, and its white-caps and froth seemed to whip angrily after us almost as though we were its natural prey and that it now beheld us eluding its maw.

With each turn of the screw we were getting into smoother water and in a few minutes were cutting up the still surface as a knife passes through cheese.

The relief of having it all over was excessive and I dare say we all behaved like children. I am sure that I did. I ordered up our good old American flag under which I had sailed for four months in the mine-sown waters off Port Arthur, the year before, and which during these last weeks had been snapping almost constantly at our fore, whipped by the bleak winter winds of the Black Sea. Its ends were frayed and raveled by the constant gales, yet with all its dirt of travel and disheveled parts, it looked good enough to me as it floated proudly at our masthead as we plowed serenely down the Bosphorus. I stationed Stomati at the stern to stand by the halyards of our big French ensign which, designating the nationality of our register, spread its ample bunting from our stern. And not a boat did we pass that did not get a cordial dip from us, and not a boat did we pass but I saw the men on the bridge turn and study through their glasses that rarely seen emblem that we bore at our foremast-head. Just before reaching the Golden Horn one passes Roberts College, perched high above the Bosphorus on a great bluff. The college, as all good Americans know, was founded by Dr. Washburn, one of our own true citizens who has brought greater glory to our Name and Flag in the Near East than all the ambassadors and warships that ever penetrated that remote land. With childish glee I went below to the engineer and bade him turn out all of his stokers and heap on all the coal he could crowd into the furnaces and speed up the engines to their topmost notch, for, as I told him, “I want the France to look and do her prettiest as we pass the American College.”

I returned to the bridge and swelled with pride as I glanced at the dense columns of smoke pouring majestically from our two chubby funnels, and the white wake that our screw was turning up astern as the engines beat out their maximum energy down in the bowels of the ship. As we were fairly abeam of the College I pulled the whistle lever and the deep foghorn bayed out its hoarse-throated blast. For a solid minute it roared and then came the response from the hill. Someone had heard the tumult and recognized the emblem that we carried, and in a jiffy windows were thrown open, and handkerchiefs, towels and sheets were waved frantically toward us. Again and again the France tooted in response and again and again Stomati dipped our ensign in salute, while the crew cheered hysterically, just as though they were all Americans.

“What a childish performance,” thinks the reader. No doubt it was. But after one has been at sea surrounded by indifference and hostility by the peoples one encounters and attacked by savage seas for two solid weeks, isn’t one to be forgiven a slight slip from dignity?

An hour later we were alongside the wharf and friends from the shore who had been advised that we had entered the Bosphorus came aboard to welcome us safely back. On the wharf was drawn up a company of savage-looking Turkish soldiers. They proved to be the Sultan’s welcome to his prodigals, returning from the storm-tossed Caucasus. I have never just fathomed the status of a refugee in Turkey, but I gathered then that it must be against the law to escape slaughter in a foreign land and come home to your own. Anyway my refugees were promptly marched off to jail, and they, their past and future faded forever from my interest.

I found wires urging me make haste for Russia and so turning the France over to her owners I hurried to the Pera-Palace Hotel and got into some clean clothes and while Morris was throwing my baggage together for the Berlin train, I was making my formal calls. First on Mr. Jay at the American Legation, who welcomed me cordially and showed me the wire all drawn and addressed to the State Department at Washington, advising them that the France had been wrecked. For two days it had lain on his desk and only been held up on receipt of my wire from Trebizond that I was on my way back to the Golden Horn. Now for the first time I learned in full of the widespread havoc of wreck and misery that storm had caused these past ten days. Dozens of ships had suffered disaster and the hope of the France’s safety, it appeared, had been well-nigh abandoned. But it was all passed now and Jay and I laughed at it that night as we sat in our evening clothes over our wine and cigars at the Club. A few words with the British Ambassador and the turning over of my mails and dispatches and my duties in Constantinople were over.

The carefully prepared cable from the Caucasus I had brought with me, and not daring to trust it to the Turkish wire, I had given it into the hands of a courier who had caught a train within the hour for the frontier where he had filed it in an uncensored telegraph office. I waited in the hotel for the few hours to elapse before a wire came to me from our London office confirming its safe arrival and then with my impedimenta I was on the train once more, hurrying for the Russian capital.

My story is almost done.

The situation was quietly adjusting itself.

Five nights I spent on the train and on the morning of the sixth day I was on the Nevsky Prospekt once more. Two weeks sufficed to reorganize our news service in Russia and to turn the situation over to our correspondent whose duty it was to look after affairs in that territory.

I had been doing war assignments pretty steadily now for more than two years and both my mind and body craved repose. My reprieve from further work came one night as I was chatting over Russian politics in one of Petersburg’s fashionable restaurants. I read my cable and sighed with satisfaction.

The assignment that had come to me months before in Peking was at an end. “Russia direct,” it had read and half around the world and into strange lands and among stranger peoples, it had carried me.

The next Nord Express that pulled from the Petersburg station bound for Paris carried me homeward turned and with a mind for the first time in months free from anxiety.

The situation was over.

My work was done.