_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.