BECAUSE of the regulations regarding taking printed matter in one’s
luggage I was obliged to post to London some thirty packets of books.
Possibly by appealing to our Embassy at Petrograd I might have obtained
what is called a Foreign Office bag and have been immune from censor
revision. A considerable number of British subjects are accommodated in
this way. But it seems to me to be an incorrect thing to do.
I had bought some dozens of pictures and ikons. I had precious
manuscript which I should not dream of trusting to the post, and if
it had been proposed to confiscate that manuscript at Archangel as I
stepped aboard I should have remained in Russia to save it. But I got
through without trouble.
Our people at Archangel were extremely kind to me, and put me on a
returning ammunition ship, and I went all the way to Britain in comfort
and without change.
The boat was a turret ship, one of those with hollowed-in sides,
constructed to evade the true charges of the Suez Canal, where the toll
is according to the breadth of the vessel. It had been ten times a year
through the Suez Canal for twenty years, and now for the first time in
its history was in northern latitudes. The crew were shivering Lascars,
tripping about in one garment and looking more like girls than men.
Each and every one had received from the Government two warm suits of
underclothing, woolly trousers, coats, and wraps, but these things were
locked away in their boxes, and you could not persuade them to wear
one. For the Lascar is a real Jew in temperment and has a passion for
selling clothes and chaffering over them.
We steamed out gently through the traffic and along the narrow channels
of the many-mouthed river, and after some hours got clear into the
White Sea.[7]
[7] Seven lines concerning mines and buoys excluded by Censor.
When we passed a buoy the captain, who was rather a character, would
retire to his sitting-room, take up his concertina, and play “Land of
Hope and Glory,” the “Dead March” in _Saul_, “Ip-I-addy,” and other
favourites.
We sailed under sealed orders and did not sight another vessel except
British war-ships and patrol boats till we were nearing Lerwick.
In the Arctic there was calm, and we recaptured the light which
was fleeting with the approach to the equinox. The evenings grew
appreciably longer. It was cold, and the barometer was going down “for
ice.”
The captain and officers felt the cold badly, stamped to keep warm, and
came in to meals with red faces and bright eyes. “If there is a Gulf
Stream it ought to be warmer than it is,” said the captain. “Do you
believe in its existence?”