_We Reach Sevastopol and Land in Spite of Harbor
Regulations, Get a Story and Sail Away with It to the
Coast of Asia Minor_
The reader of stories of adventure naturally expects to have something
sensational doing every minute. Why else, indeed, has he paid his
money? But there are dull spots in even the most strenuous tales (that
is, in real life), and the narrator of fact must blushingly, or, at
best, hurry over the places where interest flags. Our trip from the
Danube mouth to the Crimean Peninsula was unusual only in the fact that
the sea was quiet, and that it was possible to remain in one’s bunk. No
world diplomat ever felt more perfect satisfaction at a successfully
executed international coup d’état than I did that night as, with money
belts stuffed with gold, the _France_ cut through the waves, turning up
with her steel nose a ridge of ripples that left an ever wider wedge of
silver in our moonlit wake. A square meal and a good cigar combined to
make that evening a picture, which still stands out in my mind as an
oasis in the desert of that Black Sea trip. At ten o’clock I took a
“look-see” around the boat before turning in for the night, and found
that every member of the crew, save the man at the wheel, had crawled
off into some corner and gone to sleep. Even the look-out had squeezed
himself into the chain locker out of the wind, and was making a sound
like the exhaust of a gasoline launch. For a few minutes I was tempted
to wake up the various delinquents, but when I thought of the past
days and nights of cold and overwork, I softened and let them sleep
peacefully on. The only danger on such a smooth sea that I could think
of was collision, and that seemed improbable, as there were almost no
ships navigating those waters just at that time, and, anyway, surely
the other ship would keep watch and see us, even if we failed to see
them. So we would be safe anyway. One comes to realize after a time
that it is foolish to worry about dangers all the time. After months of
being on needles and pins as to what the future has up its sleeve, one
gets so tired that it is simpler to accept the inevitable and be killed
outright (if so it is written on the cards) than to lay awake nights
and think about it. So leaving the situation on “the lap of the gods,”
I went to my cabin and rolled into my bunk without the formality of
undressing, and in two seconds was sleeping with that indifference to
fate and the morrow that only hardship, exposure and utter exhaustion
can make possible.
The situation at Sevastopol, according to the rumors that had been
circulating in the ports at which I had touched, were all that the
most blood-thirsty correspondent could desire. The mutiny of the Black
Sea fleet was but a recent history, and as no word had come from the
Crimea for some weeks, it was generally supposed that further riot and
bloodshed had been added to the long list of upheavals which had marked
that year in the Czar’s dominions. So it was with keen interest that we
stood on the bridge of the _France_ the following morning and watched
the white line of the snow-clad, low lying hills come out of the sea as
we approached the barren bleakness of the historic battlefields of ’55.
We entered the harbor without molestation and anchored a few hundred
yards from half a dozen sullen looking ships of war, which completed
the dismal setting of the whole scene. We waited an hour or more,
as usual in Russian ports, without our presence being noted in the
slightest degree. Finally about nine o’clock a launch with a bevy of
hungry waiting-to-be-fed port officials came aboard. Nothing could be
done until a hot breakfast was placed before them. Then a few drinks
and cigars warmed their hearts sufficiently so that they consented
to commence the endless examination into our past, which forms such
an important part of Russian procedure. About eleven they took their
departure, with the instructions to us that we would not be allowed
to land until our case had been carefully considered by those in
authority ashore. This was most discouraging to one in a hurry to do
business, and who had not the slightest intention of being left over
night in the harbor. We watched the launch steam back to shore, and
when it had finally disappeared behind some docks, and when, with my
glasses, I had observed the portly officials walk off up a near by
street, I ordered out my own long boat. Fortunately this hung on the
side away from the harbor. Taking four of the best rowers and the
faithful Morris, we pulled quietly away from the _France_, and, without
further discussion, rowed around behind a bluff that sloped down to the
water, in a little frequented part of the town, and without once being
hailed, landed, climbed over said bluff, and walked boldly down into
the main street of the town, just as though we lived there.
I made my base at the best hotel in the city and proceeded to pump
everyone in sight as to the news of the hour in the Crimean port. Four
hours of active work convinced me that the situation in Sevastopol had
been vastly exaggerated, as indeed is usually the case with war or riot
stories originating in remote localities. To the excited citizen caught
in the hurly burly uproar and tumult of a mob, with shots ringing out
and Cossacks charging about and riding people down, it no doubt seems
as though the last great spasm of history were being enacted. A dozen
killed and a score wounded look like hundreds to the man who has not
seen corpses and wounded “in bulk.” In fact, there is nothing in the
world so misleading as the importance of riots and the alleged losses.
When one comes to analyze it, half the supposed dead prove to be only
wounded or stunned, while the bulk of the alleged fatally wounded are
only slightly hurt, or so badly frightened that they fall over each
other in their anxiety to get away. All this to the amateur observer
looks like a world sensation, but if one digests it all a day or two
later, when the excitement has subsided, it appears that the police
have merely dispersed a disorderly rabble with a few casualties. In the
meantime, however, the excited witness, who perchance has never heard
a shot fired in anger before, has sent out his story of “atrocious
massacre by the police” with all the lurid details which, in his mind,
are unparalleled. The story does not lose as it travels through the
big centers of news distribution, and when it finally gets into the
daily papers it gives the reader the impression that a world spasm
has been enacted. The “special correspondent” is rushed to the scene
of the occurrence, and when he arrives a week afterwards he finds the
life of the town moving much as before, and a few bullet holes in some
wall the only visible signs of the “horrible riot.” He learns that
the revolutionists are in durance vile, and if he takes the pains
to investigate, he will find a few poor peasants and a handful of
long-haired, wild-eyed Russian students shut up in a dirty room. This,
then, is a type of the great majority of Russian riot or revolution
“stories.”
In the newspaper world it often happens that “no news” is really
important news, though perhaps not sensational. And so it was in
Sevastopol at this time. I was able to draft an accurate cable pricking
the bubble of mystery and horror with which the outside world was then
viewing the Sevastopol situation.
There are newspapers, I believe, that won’t stand for the “no news”
types of communications, but expect and insist on getting their column
a day, more or less, news or no news. This is the policy which has bred
“yellow journalism.” It is no doubt a hard proposition to work for,
and I am sure it is a hard one to work against, for I’ve tried it many
times. The correspondent that represents a conservative paper has a
truly mean time when he is on an assignment with a number of fellows
who are cabling for the other type, for it is not at all uncommon for
them to take rumors, or even fakes, agree on the details, and send
them broadcast. Naturally, the man who is there and does not send such
stories gets the credit of having missed a good thing and of being
asleep on his assignment. But in the long run it does not pay (to put
it on the lowest grounds), for the senders of inaccurate dispatches
soon get discredited, and when they really turn up a good story, no
one believes it, and its value is nil. The Chicago _News_ asked for
news—not space matter. For months at a time I have sent no cables home,
and then suddenly turned loose with a thousand words a day. Their
attitude was, and rightly, that their space was worth money, lots of
it, and unless the news in itself was worth as much as that space, it
was not wanted in the office. It was for this reason that I never had
to pad or press with my stuff, and on this occasion, as on many others,
I sent merely what it was worth, quite irrespective of the money we had
been spending to get it, which is rightly no criterion as to the value
of a bit of news.
From the British Consul, to whom I had letters, I learned some of the
details of the earlier troubles, and of the mutiny of the fleet. At
no time it seemed was the uprising of the sailors generally popular
with those simple hearted folk. It was said that at least 75% of the
men were unwilling participants in the romantic adventure of the then
famous Lieutenant Schmidt, who stole one of the big Russian battleships
and ran off with it, to the confusion of the rest of the fleet. The
laborers at the naval station in Sevastopol whom we had supposed to
be blood-thirsty wretches marching the streets, howling for the blood
of the Czar, a Grand Duke or two, or, in fact, any old tyrant, had,
instead of performing these picturesque acts, gone quietly to work
and organized themselves into a police force to help patrol the city,
and in this role they had shown themselves more effective than the
regular police. Another good story gone wrong! The really obstreperous
characters of the movement had been caught and were shut up on the
ships that we had seen lying in the harbor.
There were some dramatic incidents, without doubt, during the few
days in which the mutiny was at its height, but the capture of the
ring-leaders resulted in its utter collapse.
What I did hear, however, was that there really was a fierce row in
progress down in the Caucasus, at the other end of the Black Sea, and
the details seemed to be sufficiently numerous and accurate to convince
me that I would be better off there than where I was. Anyway, it would
be only a question of a few hours before some “kill-joy” would hold me
up for my pass-port and learn that I was on shore without leave and be
sure to kick up a row that might delay me for days.
So, after getting a good square meal at the hotel and smoking a cigar,
I walked leisurely out to the remote nook among the rocks, where my
ship’s boat lay, and with no more trouble than at landing was rowed
back to the _France_.
As soon as I was aboard the captain raised the Blue Peter, that little
white centered blue flag, which says “I am sailing to-day. Please come
out quick and give me a clearance.” Of course, no one noticed the flag,
but as we had plenty of steam under our decks, we kept the fog horn
groaning dismally until the officials ashore, in sheer distress at our
tumult, came back in their launch. The man in charge was the same as
had come off to us in the morning, and almost his first words were that
it would be impossible for us to go ashore that day. So, looking as
disappointed as I could, and after a few protests at being kept in the
harbor all day without being allowed to go into their most interesting
town, I told him that we had decided not to wait any longer, and would
go away that very night if he would fix up our papers. The complacent
smile of the official who had succeeded in blocking someone in the
pursuit of his business wreathed his face. He was sure it was best for
us to go away, he told us, for it would be quite impossible for him
to permit us to land. If we would wait he would go back to his office
and fix our papers and have them aboard so that we might get away that
night. Strangely enough, he was as good as his word, and a little after
8 P. M. a launch came alongside, and the papers, properly viséd and
countersigned, in a sufficient number of places, which authorized us
to depart, were handed over the rail. Our friend then departed with
self satisfied regrets that we had been able to see nothing of their
beautiful city.
Sevastopol is an interesting town of nearly 60,000, replete in the
history of that ghastly siege of the Crimean war, the marks of which
are still traceable on the bleak hills lying about the town. But as
nothing of very keen interest related to this story transpired on the
occasion of my visit, I will not burden the reader with more than a
bare paragraph on the subject. The roadstead and the harbor and the
extensive establishments connected with them form the most important
features of the place. The great harbor fortifications which existed
at the period of the siege were planned in 1834. The hand defenses,
lines of trenches, and so forth, had not been fairly completed
when the allied armies of England and France commenced their siege
operations. Though compressed into a comparatively small space, the
real strength was enormous, five to six thousand men being engaged on
them daily during the eleven months of the siege. The garrison during
this period was usually about 30,000 men, and the number of guns said
to have been in position at the final assault was placed at 800,
though several times that number were rendered unserviceable during
the siege. The Russian loss in the defense has been placed at 80,000.
The fortifications and naval establishments were after the capture
destroyed by the allies, and by the treaty of Paris, which terminated
the war, Russia was debarred from building arsenals and maintaining a
naval force in the Black Sea above a very limited magnitude, but this
restriction was removed in 1871. The town has been completely rebuilt,
and since 1885 the fortifications have been actively replaced and the
docks reconstructed. Sevastopol has become a pleasant watering place,
and is Russia’s greatest southern Naval Headquarters.
It was a little after eight when a “Stand By” on the engine telegraph
and a “Heave Away” to Spero at the donkey engine brought the crew to
their stations. The gentle throb of the engines ahead and astern to
clear the water out of the valves and the chug chug and “clinkety
clink” of the anchor chain as it came jerking through the hawser hole
in the bow was the only sound on the stillness of the water, save
the occasional far away call of a sentry on one of the battleships.
While the deck crew were hoisting the anchor over the side and lashing
it into place, the _France_ swung gently about, and the steady
strengthening beat of her engines pulsed through the ship as she headed
out to sea.
The moon was all but full, and cast a silvery sheen over the still
waters of the harbor. Every prospect during the early afternoon and
evening had cheered us with a hope of a still night, but the “kill
joy” barometer that hung over our little fireplace had been steadily
falling. We had hoped that, like our weather men at home, it might
be on one of its breaks. But before we had fairly cleared the harbor
our friend, the moon, politely made its apologies, and, with a last
flicker of light, disappeared into a cloud bank. One by one the stars
that twinkled brightly in the cold, crisp air faded from sight, until
at nine o’clock the only light on the horizon was the steady glow of
the beacon on a bit of a peninsula that lay to the south of us. In
half an hour we had cleared this, and the _France_ was riding with
long sweeps over an oily sea that was coming up from the south in long
rippleless swells. An occasional gust of wind foretold what was coming.
With each minute the bursts became more frequent, and in an hour we
were running into a steady gale that by midnight had become a veritable
tempest, driving the waves before it in great sweeping billows, their
crests shrouded in spray that blew across our bridge and decks almost
unintermittently.
By midnight the hope of a night’s sleep had been abandoned, and the
roar and crash of waters flooding us at every dip, mingled with the
melancholy howling of the wind, that seemed to whip and circle around
our little craft like an avenging spirit, created a tumult, which would
have banished rest even had we been able to remain in our bunks. As a
matter of fact, this was a proposition which I abandoned after a few
futile attempts.
Earlier in the day I had weighed carefully our next move, and had
decided to run for the little port of Sinope, almost due south of
Sevastopol on the coast of Asia Minor. I wanted to go there for two
reasons: first, because it was a cable station, from which I could
send my Sevastopol story, and, second, because there I hoped I might
learn more definitely of the situation in the Caucasus, which had
been reported so acute at my last two ports of call. I figured that if
the outlook there was good for a “story,” I would keep right on down
the Black Sea, and if not, I would be within easy run of the Bosphorus
or any other point of interest. Hence it was that we were driving
southward through the storm on this winter night.
A description of the wretched night we passed would merely be a
repetition of those that had gone before, and so the reader can, and,
no doubt, will, gladly pass over the next few hours. Along toward
daylight I snatched a few hours of sleep, wedged in a corner of the
cabin, with pillows stuffed about me to keep me steady in my moorings.
We had reckoned on reaching Sinope by nine or ten in the morning at
the latest, but the gale and head sea had fought our every inch of
progress, and it was past that hour when we first traced through the
mist of spray ahead of us the range of dreary snow-capped hills that
loomed dimly before us, barely discernible with our glasses. By ten the
clouds began to clear and the face of the sun showed itself brightly
over the waters.
The wind died away as suddenly as it had risen, leaving the sea an
undirected tumbling mass of water, which seemed to lash at us from
every direction at once. I ordered breakfast served in my saloon, and
for an hour preparations were in progress, but the first attempt to
set the table resulted in a mass of broken crockery, and breakfast
being deposited in one corner of the saloon. I told Morris that I would
take my breakfast in the galley, where I could be right at the fountain
head of all good breakfasts. I found Stomati there hanging on to one
of the steel columns with one hand and holding a pot of oatmeal in
place with the other. A coffee pot was wired in place on the other end
of his stove, and the contents thereof were slopping out every time
the ship rolled. He announced that the coffee was ready, and while he
was taking off the wire the oatmeal pot, released for a second, leapt
nimbly from its place and landed in the garbage receptacle across the
galley. However, I did get the coffee and a piece of burned toast into
the bargain, which, after all, wasn’t too bad under the circumstances.
The hills along the coast of Asia Minor rise steeply from the sea,
and with the clearing of the heavens they stood out radiantly in the
morning sunlight, and in spite of the discomforts of the sea and
wetness that was blowing across us still, our hearts rejoiced. After
all there is nothing that revives one’s spirits like the good old sun.
Great schools of porpoises were playing along beside the boat, and I
amused myself until noon by practicing on them with my Colt, not so
much to kill them as to increase my prestige, which wasn’t much at
best, with my mongrel crew of Greeks and Turks, who enjoyed the target
practice immensely, and, as Morris said, “Are sure impressed.”
An attempt to serve lunch proved a miserable failure, and as we were
within a few hours of port, we postponed that enterprise until three
o’clock, when we ran in behind the bit of a headland that juts out
around Sinope.
Approaching Sinope from the north one sees little or nothing of the
town until one rounds in behind the peninsula which sticks out from
the mainland like the letter T, with the little port nestled in the
shoulder of the letter. The books which I have since read say that it
is a good harbor, but even after we had gotten around the point and
anchored, the swell was enough to force one to walk gingerly along
the deck to keep from being spilled across the rail. Personally (this
is a true narrative and facts must be allowed) I had never heard of
the place until I spied it on the chart when I was poring over that
useful adjunct to navigation while we lay in the harbor of Sevastopol
awaiting the Russians to give us our clearance papers. It does appear,
however, upon investigation, that it has been on the map for a good
long time. We even learned (to shame our ignorance) that Mithradates
the Great, whose life is no doubt familiar to all our readers, first
saw the light of day here as recently as 134 B. C. It was the capital
also of Pontus, a name equally well known and distinguished. At lot
of interesting people seem to have found this place, at one time or
another. It seems that Mohammed Number II came in here in 1470 and
created quite a sensation with the population at that time by capturing
the place to the confusion of the survivors. A Russian Admiral with
an ingenious name fought a naval battle with the Ottoman fleet here
in 1853, and said fleet suffered its own loss with four thousand of
its crew. This last interesting event decided England and France to
interfere and brought on the Crimean war. Besides being famous for
all these interesting incidents, Sinope exports fruit, fish, skins,
nuts and tobacco. The day I was there all these useful products of its
industries were not in evidence, or much of anything else, for that
matter. But I take the word of the reference book (the refuge of all
writers who travel) that on sunny days the inhabitants do as above
mentioned.
So it was in this city of these remarkable traditions, linked with
ancient history and seemingly with no connection to the modern world,
that the _France_, flying the ensign of the Chicago _Daily News_, let
go her anchor, to the astonishment of the natives, who, no doubt, knew
more of the illustrious Mithradates and his doings than of the city
of Chicago, which, in the form of the _France_, had so unexpectedly
descended on their legend laden harbor.
So much then for the due we owe to the reader who wishes to be
instructed. But in the meantime (even before the dawn of this
knowledge was upon us) I had ordered Stomati to do his worst, and in
fifteen minutes after we anchored we began the first substantial meal
we had touched since leaving Sevastopol.