CHAPTER XX

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A JOURNALIST, VOLUME II

IN TWO VOLUMES

WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN

1901

[Illustration: W. Stillman]

CONTENTS

CHAP.

XX. CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE

XXI. THE CRETAN INSURRECTION

XXII. DIPLOMACY

XXIII. ATHENS

XXIV. ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS

XXV. RETURN TO JOURNALISM

XXVI. THE MONTENEGRINS AND THEIR PRINCE

XXVII. THE INSURRECTION IN HERZEGOVINA

XXVIII. A JOURNEY IN MONTENEGRO AND ALBANIA

XXIX. WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA

XXX. THE WAR OF 1876

XXXI. RUSSIAN INTERVENTION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1877

XXXII. A JOURNEY INTO THE BERDAS

XXXIII. THE TAKING OF NIKSICH

XXXIV. MORATSHA

XXXV. THE LEVANT AGAIN

XXXVI. GREEK BROILS--TRICOUPI--FLORENCE

XXXVII. THE BLOCKADE OF GREECE

XXXVIII. CRISPI--A SECRET-SERVICE MISSION--MONTENEGRO REVISITED

XXXIX. ITALIAN POLITICS

XL. ADOWAH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER XX

CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE

Cholera was raging all over the Levant, and there was no direct

communication with any Turkish port without passing through

quarantine. In the uncertainty as to getting to my new post by

any route, I decided to leave my wife and boy at Rome, with a

newcomer,--our Lisa, then two or three months old,--and go on an

exploring excursion. Providing myself with a photographic apparatus, I

took steamer at Civita Vecchia for Peiraeus. Arrived at Athens I found

that no regular communication with any Turkish port was possible, and

that the steamers to Crete had been withdrawn, though there had not

been, either at that or at any previous time, a case of cholera in

Crete; but such was the panic prevailing in Greece that absolute

non-intercourse with the island and the Turkish empire had been

insisted on by the population. People thought I might get a chance at

Syra to run over by a sailing-boat, so I went to Syra. But no boat

would go to Crete, because the quarantine on the return was not merely

rigorous but merciless, and exaggerate to an incredible severity. No

boat or steamer was admitted to enter the port coming from any Turkish

or Egyptian port, though with a perfectly clean bill of health, and

all ships must make their quarantine at the uninhabited island

of Delos. Such was the panic that no one would venture to carry

provisions to that island while there was a ship in quarantine, and

during the fortnight I waited at Syra an English steamer without

passengers, and with a clean bill of health, having finished her term,

was condemned to make another term of two weeks, because a steamer had

come in with refugees from Alexandria, and had anchored in the same

roadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul, protested and insisted on

the steamer being released, and the people threatened to burn his

house over his head if he persisted; but, as he did persist, the ship

was finally permitted to communicate with Syra, but not to enter the

harbor, and was obliged to leave without discharging or taking cargo,

after being a month in quarantine.

At last an English gentleman named Rogers, who lived at Syra, an

ex-officer of the English army, offered to carry me over to Canea

on his yacht of twelve tons, and take the consequences. I found the

consulate, like the position in Rome, deserted, the late consul having

been a Confederate who had gone home to enlist, I suppose, for he

had been gone a long time, and the archives did not exist. There was

nothing to take over but a flag, which the vice-consul, a Smyrniote

Greek, and an honest one, as I was glad to find, but who knew nothing

of the business of a consul, had been hoisting on all fête days for

two or three years, waiting for a consul to come. I was received with

great festivity by my protégés, the family of the vice-consul, and

with great ceremony by the pasha, a renegade Greek, educated in

medicine by the Sultana Valide, and in the enjoyment of her high

protection; an unscrupulous scoundrel, who had grafted on his Greek

duplicity all the worst traits of the Turk. As, with the exception of

the Italian consul, Sig. Colucci, not one of the persons with whom I

acted or came in contact in my official residence survives, unless it

may be the commander of the Assurance, an English gunboat, of whose

subsequent career I know nothing, I shall treat them all without

reserve.

The Pasha, Ismael, I at once found, considered it his policy to

provoke a conflict with any new consul, and either break him in or

buy him over; and the occasion for a trial of strength was not

long coming. The night patrol attempted to arrest the son of the

vice-consul in his house, in which I had been temporarily residing

while the house which I took was being put in order, and over which

the flag floated. I at once demanded an apology, and a punishment for

the _mulazim_ in command of the patrol. The pasha refused it, and I

appealed to Constantinople. The Porte ordered testimony to be taken

concerning the affair, and the pasha took that of the mulazim and the

policeman on oath, and then that of my witnesses without the oath,

the object being, of course, to protest against their evidence on

the ground that they would not swear to it. I immediately had their

evidence retaken on oath and sent on to Constantinople with the rest.

The Porte decided in my favor, and ordered the apology to be made by

the mulazim. As the affair went on with much detail of correspondence

between the _konak_ and the consulate for some weeks, it had attracted

the general attention of our little public, and the final defeat of

the pasha was a mortification to him which he made every effort to

conceal. He denied for several weeks having received any decision from

the Porte, in the hope, probably, that he would tire me out; but as

I had nothing to do, and the affair amused me, I stuck to him as

tenaciously as he to his denials, and he had to give in. It was a very

small affair, but the antagonism so inaugurated had a strong effect on

the Cretans, who found in me an enemy of their tyrant.

Ismael was cruel and dishonorable; he violated his given word and

pledges without the slightest regard for his influence with

the population. I have since seen a good deal of Turkish

maladministration, and I am of the opinion that more of the oppression

of the subject populations is due to the bad and thieving instincts of

the local officials than directly to the Sublime Porte, and that the

simplest way of bringing about reforms (after the drastic one of

abolishing the Turkish government) is in the Powers asserting a right

of approbation of all nominations to the governorships throughout the

whole empire. When, as at certain moments in the long struggle of

which I am now beginning the history, I came in contact with the

superior officers of the Sultan, I found a better sense of the policy

of justice than obtained with the provincial functionaries.

Ismael Pasha had only one object,--to do anything that would advance

his promotion and wealth. He regarded a foreign consul, with the right

of exterritoriality, as a hostile force in the way of his ambitions,

and, therefore, until he found that one was not to be bought or

worried into indifference to the injustice perpetrated around him, he

treated him as an enemy. I always liked a good fight in a good cause,

and I had no hesitation in taking up the glove that Ismael threw down,

and my defiance of all his petty hostile manoeuvres was immediately

observed by the acute islanders and put down to my credit and

exaltation in the popular opinion. The discontent against his measures

was profound, and the winter of my first year in the island was one of

great distress. Ismael had laid new and illegal taxes on straw,

wine, all beasts of burden, which, with oppressive collection of the

habitual tithes (levied in accordance not with the actual value of the

crops, but with their value as estimated by the officials), and short

crops for two years past, made life very hard for the Cretan. Even

this was not enough; justice was administered with scandalous venality

and disregard of the existing laws and procedure. Not long after my

arrival at Canea, the hospital physician, a humane Frenchman, informed

me that an old Sphakiot had just died in the prison, where he had been

confined for a long time in place of his son, who had been guilty of a

vendetta homicide and had escaped to the Greek islands. According to a

common Turkish custom, the pasha had ordered his nearest relative to

be arrested in his place. This was the old father, who lay in prison

till he died.

The capricious cruelty of Ismael was beyond anything I had ever heard

of. One day I was out shooting and was attacked by a dog whom I

saluted with a charge of small birdshot, on which the owner made

complaint to the pasha that I had peppered accidentally one of his

children. Ismael spread this report through the town, learning which I

made him an official visit demanding a rectification and examination

of the child, which was found without a scratch. The pasha, furious at

the humiliation of exposure, then threw the man into prison, and as

he, Adam-like, accused his wife of concocting the charge, he ordered

her also to prison for two weeks, without the slightest investigation,

leaving three small children helpless. I protested, and insisted on

the release of the man, who had only obeyed the wish of the pasha in

making the charge against me.

Having no occupation but archaeological research and photography, I

decided to make a series of expeditions into the mountain district,

and to begin with a visit to the famous strongholds of Sphakia. The

pasha protested, but as I had a right to go where I pleased, I paid no

attention to his protests, and he then went to the other extreme,

and offered to provide me with horses, which offer I unfortunately

accepted. The horse I rode and the groom the pasha sent with him were

equally vicious. The man, when we saddled up the first day out, put

the saddle on so loosely that as we mounted the first steep rocky

slope the saddle slipped over the horse's tail, carrying me with it,

and the horse walked over me, breaking a rib and bruising me severely,

and then tried to kick my brains out. I remounted and kept on, but

that night the pain of the broken rib was such, and the fever so high,

that I was obliged to give up the journey and go back to Canea. I

found that the pasha had anticipated a disaster, and heard of it with

great satisfaction.

As soon as restored, I set out on a trip to the central district of

Retimo, then perfectly tranquil, the agitation in Sphakia, which

preceded the great insurrection, having already begun, and making

my venturing there imprudent. I was anxious to see something of the

provincial government of the island, as, in Canea, where the foreign

consuls resided, there was always the slight check of publicity on the

arbitrariness of the official, though what we saw did not indicate a

very effective one. I had a dragoman in Retimo, a well-to-do merchant,

who served for the honor and protection the post gave him, and his

house was mine _pro tem_., and over it, during my stay, floated the

flag of the consulate. We made an excursion across the island to the

convent of Preveli, situated in one of the most beautiful valleys

in the island, sheltered on the north, east, and west by hills, and

lying, like a theatre, open to the south, and looking off on the

African sea. The entrance was by a narrow gorge, and here we witnessed

one of those natural phenomena that still impress an ignorant people

with the awe from which, in more ancient times, religion received its

most potent sanction. The wind passing through some orifice in the

cliff far above our heads, even when we felt none below, produced a

mysterious organ-like sound, which the people regarded as due to some

supernatural influence. As all the modern sanctuaries in that part of

the world are founded on the ruins of ancient shrines, I have no doubt

that our hospitable shelter of that night was on the site of some

temple to one of the great gods of Crete.

That journey gave me a sight of one of the remarkable Cretan women,

whose reputation for beauty I had always regarded, judging from the

women in the cities, as a classical fable. I had been making a visit

to the _mudir_ of the province through which we were passing, and,

after pipes and coffee, and the usual ceremonies, I mounted my horse,

and, at the head of my escort, rode out of the mudir's courtyard, when

my eye was caught by the flutter of the robes of a woman in a garden

across the road. Around the garden ran a high hedge of cactus, and as

I leaned forward in my saddle to look through one of the openings, a

girl's face presented itself to me at the other side of it, and we

stared each other in the eyes for several seconds before she--a

Mussulman girl--remembered that she must not be seen, when, wrapping

her veil around her head, she flew to the house. The vision was of

such a transcendent beauty as I had, and have since, never seen in

flesh and blood,--a mindless face, but of such exquisite proportion,

color, and sweetness of modeling, with eyes of such lustrous brown,

that I did not lose the vivid image of it, or the ecstatic impression

it produced, for several days; it seemed to be ineradicably impressed

on the sensorium in the same manner as the ecstatic vision I have

recorded of my wood-life. I suppose such beauty to be incompatible

with any degree of mental activity or personal character, for the

process of mental development carries with it a trace of struggle

destructive to the supreme serenity and statuesque repose of the

Cretan beauty. Pashley tells of a similar experience he had in the

mountains of Sphakia, and he was impressed as I was.

On our arrival at the city gates, returning to Retimo, we had an

experience of the mediaeval ways of the island, finding the gates

locked and no guard on duty. We called and summoned,--for a consul had

always the privilege of having the gates opened to him at any hour of

day or night,--but in vain, until I devised a summons louder than our

sticks on the gate, and, taking the hugest stone I could lift, threw

it with all my force repeatedly at the gate, and so aroused the guard,

who went to the governor and got the keys, which were kept under his

pillow. The next day we had an affair with Turkish justice which

illustrates the position of the consuls in Turkey so well that I tell

it fully. The dragoman and I had gone off to shoot rock-pigeons in

one of the caves by the seashore, leaving at home my breech-loading

hunting rifle, then a novelty in that part of the world. When we got

home at night the city was full of a report that some one in our

house had shot a Turkish boy through the body. I at once made an

investigation and found that the facts were that a boy coming to the

town, at a distance of about half a mile from the gate, had been hit

by a rifle ball which had struck him in the chest and gone out at the

back. No one had heard a shot, and the sentinel at our doors, set

nominally for honor, but really to watch the house, had not heard any

sound. The boy was in no danger, and he declared that the bullet had

struck him in the back and gone out by the chest. My Canea dragoman,

who was reading in the house all the time we were gone, had heard

nothing and knew nothing about it; but, on examining the rifle, I

found that some one had tried to wipe it out and had left a rag

sticking half way down, the barrel. This pointed to a solution, and an

investigation made the whole thing clear. The dragoman's man-servant

had taken the gun out on the balcony which looked out on the port,

and fired a shot at a white stone on the edge of the wall, in the

direction of the village where the boy was hit.

The _kaimakam_ of Retimo sent an express to Canea to ask Ismael what

he should do, and received reply to prosecute the affair with the

utmost vigor. He therefore summoned the entire household of the

dragoman, except him and myself, to the konak, to be examined. As they

were all under my protection I refused to send them, but offered to

make a strict investigation and tell him the result; but, knowing

the rigor of the Turkish law against a Christian who had wounded a

Mussulman, even unintentionally, I insisted on being the magistrate to

sit in the examination. The pasha declined my offer, and I forbade any

one in the house to go to the konak for examination. I then appeared

before the kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house

was accused. There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a

Catholic, and a bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the

dragoman, with whom he had had litigation. He declared that the shot

came from the direction of the town, while the boy maintained the

contrary; and as, in the direction from which the boy had come, there

was a Mussulman festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested

the possibility that the ball came, as the boy believed, from that

direction, and put the surgeon to a severe cross-examination. I asked

him if he had ever seen a gunshot wound before, and he admitted that

he had not. Thereupon I denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun

to be frightened at the responsibility he had assumed, and the man

broke down and admitted that he might be mistaken, on which the

kaimakam withdrew the charge.

I knew perfectly well that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too,

that for accidental wounding he would have been punished by

indefinite confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy

intentionally. The refusal of the pasha to permit me to judge the

case, as I had a right to do, he being my protégé, left me only the

responsibility of the counsel for the prisoner, and I determined to

acquit him if possible. The bullet had, fortunately, gone through the

boy and could not be found; and, as the wound, though through the

lungs, was healing in a most satisfactory manner, and would leave no

effects, I had no scruples in preventing a conviction that would have

punished an involuntary offense by a terrible penalty, which all who

know anything of a Turkish prison can anticipate. The governor-general

was very angry, and the kaimakam was severely reprimanded, but they

could not help themselves. My position under the capitulations was

secure, but it made the hostility between the pasha and myself the

more bitter.

The accumulated oppressions of Ismael Pasha had finally the usual

effect on the Cretans, and they began to agitate for a petition to the

Sultan, a procedure which time had shown to be absolutely useless as

an appeal against the governor; and, while the agitation was in this

embryonic condition, I decided to go back to Rome and get my wife and

children. We were still in the state of siege by the cholera, and

there was still no communication with the Greek islands, so that I

accepted the offer made by my English colleague, the amiable and

gratefully remembered Charles H. Dickson, of whose qualities I shall

have to say more in the pages to come, of a passage on a Brixham

schooner to Zante. Sailing with a clean bill of health, we had to make

a fortnight's quarantine in the roadstead, and, taking passage on the

Italian postal steamer to Ancona, I was obliged, on landing, to make

another term of two weeks in the lazaretto, though we had again a

clean bill; and, on arriving on the Papal frontier by the diligence,

we had to undergo a suffocating fumigation, and all this in spite of

the fact that no one of the company I had traveled with had been at a

city where cholera had existed at any time within three months, or on

a steamer which had touched where the cholera was prevalent. At that

time there was no railway northward from Rome, and traveling was

conducted on the system of the sixteenth century, except for sea

travel.

I was not long cutting all the ties that bound me to Rome, though I

left a few sincere friends there, and, drawing a bill on my brother

for my indebtedness to the kind and helpful banker, an Englishman

named Freeborn, to whose friendship I owed the solution of most of the

difficulties and all the indulgences I had enjoyed while in Rome, I

started on my return to Crete in the problematical condition of one

who emigrates to a foreign land through an unknown way. I had money

enough to get through if nothing occurred to delay me, and no more,

for, with the high rate of exchange on America, I felt distressed at

the burthen I was laying on my brother, though I had always been told

to consider myself as to be provided for while he had the means, and

by his will when he died. His death took place at this juncture, and,

curiously enough, the draft reached him in time to be accepted, but he

died before it was paid. His will made no mention whatever of me, but

left all his property to his wife during her lifetime, and to three

Seventh-day Baptist churches after her death.

In our consular service there was no allowance for traveling expenses,

or provision of any kind for the extraordinary expenses which might

fall on the consul from contingencies like mine. The salary at Crete,

which had been $1500 during the war, was reduced to $1000 at its

close, and in future I had only that and what my pen might bring

me. Arrived at Florence on our way to Ancona, we found the Italian

government being installed there; and our minister to Italy, Mr.

Marsh, knowing my circumstances, insisted on my taking a thousand

francs, though his own salary, which was, as in my case, his only

income, was always insufficient for his official and social position

at the capital. I accepted it, and it was ten years before I paid it

all back.

Looking back on this period of my life from a later and relatively

assured, though never prosperous condition, I can see that most of my

straits in life have been owing to my having accepted the miserable

and delusive advantage of an official position under my government. I

was not indolent, and asked for an appointment not to escape work,

but to be put in the way of work which I wanted to do; and when I was

disappointed in the appointment to Venice I should have set to work at

home. But my position was a difficult one. The arts were for the

war times suspended; I could not get into the army, my mother in an

extreme old age was a pensioner at my brother Charles's house, and my

sister-in-law refused to allow me to remain in my brother's house. I

had, at an earlier date, in obedience to my brother's urgings and in

deference to the Sabbatarian scruples, refused all offers to go into

business, as he regarded me as his heir, and had formally and at more

than one juncture assured me that my future was provided for and that

I need have no anxiety as to money.

My brother had urged my acceptance of the post at Rome, and all the

disasters of my subsequent life came from that error. My temperament

and the habit of my life had always prevented me from anticipating

trouble, and I never hesitated to go ahead in what lay before me,

trusting to the chapter of accidents to get through, incessant

activity keeping anxiety away. I have never flinched from a duty, if I

saw it, have never done an injustice to man or woman, intentionally,

and at more than one moment of my career have accepted the worse horn

of a dilemma rather than permit a wrong to happen to another; and if

I have been erratic and unstable it has not been from selfish or

perverse motives. I have always been what most people would call

visionary, and material objects of endeavor have not had the value

they ought to have had in my eyes. As I look back upon a career which

has brought me into contact with many people and many interests not my

own, I can honestly say that I have not been actuated in any important

transaction by my own interest to the disadvantage of that of other

people, though I have probably often insisted too much on my own way

of seeing things in undue disregard of the views of others. Confronted

with opportunities of enriching myself illicitly, I can honestly say

that they never offered the least temptation, for I have never cared

enough about money or what it brings to do anything solely for it;

and, if I have been honest, it has not been from the excellence of my

principles, but because I was born so.

But if I could have conceived what this Cretan venture was to bring

me to, I should have taken the steamer to America rather than to the

Levant. The few days we remained in Florence, then still crowded by

the advent of the court, with its satellites and accompaniments, gave

me an opportunity to know well one of the noblest of my countrymen of

that period of our history, Mr. George P. Marsh. It is difficult even

now, after the lapse of many years since I last saw him, to do justice

to the man as I came, then and in later years, to know him and compare

him with other Americans in public life. As a representative of our

country abroad, no one, not even Lowell, has stood for it so nobly

and unselfishly; Charles Francis Adams alone rivaling him in the

seriousness with which he gave himself to the Republic. Lowell was not

less patriotic, but he loved society and England; Marsh in those days

of trial loved nothing but his country, and with an intensity that was

ill-requited as it was immeasurable. He took a great interest in our

little Russie, whom he pronounced the most remarkable child for beauty

and intelligence he had ever seen, and his interest followed us in the

tragedy of our Cretan life.

We sailed by the Austrian Lloyds' steamer to Corfu, with a bill of

health in perfect order, but on arrival at Corfu were ordered into

quarantine, because six months before cholera had made a brief

appearance at Ancona. Our consul, Mr. Woodley, came off to the steamer

to see me, for the American flag was flying from the masthead, as is

customary in the Levant when a consul is on board, and he proposed to

hire a little yacht for us to make the quarantine in, as otherwise we

should have to go to a desert island at the head of the bay, where the

only shelter was an ancient and dilapidated lazaretto overrun by rats,

and where we should have to pass two weeks dependent on the enterprise

of the Corfiotes for our subsistence. The yacht was accepted, and came

to an anchor off the marina, two or three hundred yards from the quay,

and we transshipped at once, as the steamer continued her voyage. The

putting us in quarantine was a monstrous injustice. We came from a

clean port, on a steamer which had not for several months touched at a

foul port; but the panic was such amongst the people that there was no

reasoning with them. We had not lain a day at the anchorage when the

fright of the Corfiotes at our proximity, as great as if we had the

plague on board, caused a popular demonstration against us, and the

health-officer coming off in a boat ordered us from a distance to move

off to the lazaretto island. I replied that if he was prepared to come

and weigh the anchor and navigate us there he might do so, but that no

one of the yacht's people should touch the anchor, and on that I

stood firm; and, as no one dared come in contact with the yacht in

contumacy, there we remained. The panic on shore increased to such a

point that Woodley and the health-officer had a quiet consultation,

and it was agreed to give us pratique immediately. We went that night

to the hotel, and the question was forgotten by the next day. The

Corfiotes are certainly the most cowardly people I have ever known,

and in later years we had other evidence of the fact; but, as they

disclaim Hellenic descent, and boast Phoenician blood, this does not

impeach the Greek at large.

We left Corfu by the steamer of the Hellenic Navigation Company on the

eve of the Greek Christmas, my family being the only passengers, and

without the captain of the steamer, who pretended illness, in order to

be able to enjoy the festa with his family; the command being taken

by the mate, a sailor of limited experience in those waters. The

engineers were English or Scotch, the chief being one of the Blairs.

What with the Christmas festivities and the customary dawdling, we did

not sail till 10 P.M., instead of at 10 A.M., and, to make up for the

delay, the commander _pro tem._ made a straight course for the port of

Argostoli in Cephalonia, our next stopping place. We made the island

about 10 A.M. of the next morning, and were well in towards the shore

when we were caught by one of the sudden southwesterly gales which are

the terror of the Mediterranean, and more dangerous than a full-grown

Atlantic gale. The cliffs to the north of Argostoli were in sight,

looming sheer rock above the sea line, and the wind, rapidly

increasing, blew directly on shore, bringing with it a quick, sharp

sea, and getting up before long a cross sea by the repercussion from

the cliffs, so that in the complicated tumult of waters the old, heavy

paddle steamer rolled and pitched like a log, the water pouring over

the bulwarks with every roll either way. Soon, what with the wind and

the sea, she made nothing but leeway. They put her head to the wind,

and we soon found that even to hold her own was more than she could

do, while our port lay ten miles away dead on the beam, and the cliffs

dead astern.

The plunging and rolling of the ship made it impossible to stand or

walk on deck, and I sent Laura and the children to their stateroom and

to bed, lest they break their bones. The wind, a whistling gale, cut

off the caps of the waves and filled the air with a dense spray, and

the main deck was all afloat. There were no orders heard, none given,

nothing but the monotonous beat of the paddles and the roar of the

wind, and the crew were all under shelter, for it was no longer a

question of seamanship, but of steam-power; only the commander pacing

the bridge to and fro, like a polar hear in a cage, and the engineers

changing their watch, broke the monotony of the merciless blue day,

for, except a little flying scud, the sky was as blue as on a summer

day.

I walked aft to the engineers' mess-room, on the upper deck, and found

Blair and the two assistants off duty, seated round the table, not

eating, but mute, with their elbows on the table and their heads in

their hands, looking each other in the face in grim silence. We had

made friends on leaving Corfu, and were on easy terms, so that, as I

entered and no one spoke to me, but all looked up as if I were the

shadow of death, I began to rally them for their seamanship, but got

no word of retort from one of them. "What's the matter with you all?"

I said; "you look as if you had had bad news." "The matter is we are

going ashore," said the chief engineer. "This--fool of a mate has got

caught in shore and we can't make steam enough to hold our own against

this wind." I had not thought of this; I was chafing at the delay and

the discomfort to Laura and the children. What was the worst in the

case was still to be known. The boilers of the steamer were old and

rotten, and had been condemned, and, but for the sharp economy of

the Greek steamship company, would have been out already. The chief

engineer, when he found that the engines at ordinary pressure did not

keep the steamer from, going astern, had tied the safety valve down

and made all the steam the furnaces would make. "If we don't go ahead

we are done for just as much as if we blow up," said he; "for if we

touch those rocks not a soul of us can escape, and we shall touch them

if we drift, just as surely as if we blow up."

I went out of the mess-room with a feeling that it was a dream,--so

bright, so beautiful a day,--we so well, so late from land, and so

near to death! "Bah!" I said to myself. "They are fanciful; the cliffs

are still a couple of miles away, and something will come to avert the

wreck." I went down to the stateroom; Laura and the boy were unable

to raise their heads from extreme sea-sickness, but baby Lisa was

swinging on the edge of her berth, delighted with the motion, and

singing like a bird, in her baby way. I sat down in my berth--there

were four berths in each room--and watched her, and somehow the faith

grew in me that we were not going that way at that time, that the

hour had not come; and I went back to the mess-room to try to inspire

confidence in my friends.

The afternoon was now wearing on. Since 10 A.M. we had made no headway

towards our port, and when I looked at the cliffs it was clear that

they were getting nearer, and the wind showed no signs of lulling. Our

only hope lay in being able to drift so slowly that the wind might

fall before we struck, and if that did not take place before nightfall

it probably would not till the next morning. Rationally I understood

this perfectly, but I could not feel that there was imminent danger. I

had no presentiment of death, and nothing that I could do would enable

me to realize the real and visible danger.

The wind never lulled an instant or blew a degree less furiously; it

came still from the blue sky, and still we plunged and buried our bows

and shipped floods at every plunge; the wheels throbbed and beat as

ever, and no one moved on deck. The engineers changed their watches

and the captain unrelieved kept up his to and fro on the bridge. I am

confident that of all the men on board I was the only one who was not

persuaded that death was near. My wife never knew till long after what

the danger had been. We could already see that the water beneath

the cliff was a wild expanse of breakers, coming in and recoiling,

crossing, heaving, surging,--a white field of foam, where no human

being could catch a breath. The waves that swung in before this gale

rose in breakers against the cliff higher than our masts. We might go

up in their spray if we reached the rocks, but no anchor could check

our crawling to doom. To this day I look back with surprise at the

complete freedom, not from fright, but even from a recognition of any

real danger impending over us, which I then felt; it was not courage,

but a something stronger than myself or my own weakness; it was

not even a superstitious faith that I should be preserved from the

threatened peril, but a profound and immovable conviction that

the danger was not real; and the whole thing was to me simply a

magnificent spectacle, in which the apprehension of my shipmates

rather perplexed than unnerved me.

In half an hour more, the captain said, our margin of safety would be

passed,--drifting as we then drifted our stern would try conclusions

with the cliffs of Cephalonia. The sun was going down in a wild and

lurid sky, a few fragments of clouds still flying from the west, when,

almost as the sun touched the horizon, there came a lull; the wind

went out as it had come on, died away utterly, and as we got our bows

round for Argostoli we could hear the roar of the great waves that

broke against the cliffs, and could see in the afterglow the tall

breakers mounting up against them. In ten minutes we were going with

all the steam it was safe to carry for Argostoli, where we ran in with

the late stars coming out, and our engineers broke out into festive

exuberance of spirits as we sat down to dine together at anchor in

the tranquil waters of that magnificent port, where the Argonauts had

taken refuge long before us. Blair shook his head at my rallying him,

as he said in his broad Scotch tongue, "Ah, but no man of us expected

ever to see his wife and bairns again; that I can assure ye." We were

again indebted to private courtesy for a trip from Syra to Canea,

though the delay was long. I had made an appeal to the commander of

our man-of-war on the station to see us back to my post, but received

a curt and discourteous refusal. I am not much surprised when I

remember some of the occupants of the consulates in those days.