A SHIPLOAD OF ROGUES
Michael Ivanovitch Titoff, one-time chief engineer of the tramp steamer
_Batoum_, 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 the _Batoum_ as 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 the _Batoum_,
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 the _Batoum_ was 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 the _Batoum_.
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 the _Batoum_ was 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 the _Batoum_ would 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 the
_Batoum_ was 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 heavy
_dhows_, its ferryboats, its dancing _kaiks_, 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 the _Batoum_ sailed
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 the _Batoum_ with 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 the _Lloyd Ottoman_ brought detailed
confirmations. Three British officers, said a _Faits Divers_ paragraph,
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 the
_Batoum_, 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 Jewish _kavass_ who
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 Jew _kavass_ who had
brought his letters and parcels to Gumuch Souyou Hospital. The _kavass_
beamed, 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."
The _kavass_ fetched 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 the
_kavass_ and 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 the
_Batoum_ is 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."
[1] Miss Whittaker.
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 the _kavass_ who 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 the _Batoum_.
With eased minds and renewed hope we continued to live in our wireless
cabin, and prayed to Allah that the _Batoum_ would 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 the _Batoum_'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.