Eastern Nights - and Flights Part 25

Here come I to my own again.

Fed, forgiven and known again.

Claimed by bone of my bone again, And sib to flesh of my flesh.

The fatted calf is dressed for me; But the husks have greater zest for me-- I think my pigs will be best for me, So I'm off to the styes afresh.

By early evening, we had calculated, the _Batoum_ should be leaving Turkish territorial waters and entering the Black Sea. Just before six there came the shock of a bitter disappointment. The captain's telegraph clanged, the engines subdued to dead slow, the vessel swung round into the tide and seemed to remain almost stationary for a quarter of an hour. We had expected a last search by the Turkish customs authorities at the outlet of the Bosphorus and surmised that this was the reason for the slackened speed. But a repet.i.tion of the whirring and clanking on deck, followed by a loud splash, showed that the anchor was in action again, and that something more important than a mere search was on hand. For two hours longer we remained in the blackness, unenlightened and very anxious. Then, after the usual removal of the boards and the lid, there floated through the tanks a low-voiced "_Signor!_"

Feodor, candle in hand, was waiting for us. He whispered a warning to make as little noise as possible, because two Turkish officials were on board. Having reconnoitred to make sure that the way to Josef's cabin was clear, he led us there. The delay, it appeared, was because the Turkish merchant had left some clearance papers at Constantinople. He had gone for the capital by automobile, and meanwhile two of the Customs Police would remain on the _Batoum_. The merchant was expected to return with the missing doc.u.ment next morning, when permission to leave would be given.

We slept in the cabin, and at dawn descended once more to the ship's bowels. We spent five more hours of purgatory in the ballast-tanks. The _Batoum_ remained motionless during three of them, but the last two were enlivened by the swish-swish of displaced water as it pa.s.sed the flanks of the vessel. Finally we heard for the last time the blessed signal "_Signor!_"

"_Fineesh Turkey_," said Feodor, as he smiled and helped us through the manhole. Gone was the Bosphorus, and in its place we saw the leaden waters of the Black Sea. From the port-hole of Josef's cabin we could distinguish many miles west of us the coastline of the country in which White had spent three years of the most dreadful captivity.

Feodor soon left us, for he had to bring other stowaways into the light of day. From every concealed cranny of the vessel men and women, almost as light-hearted as ourselves at deliverance from the Turks, were coming into the open.

One of the stowaways, a pa.s.sportless woman whom the aged captain was taking with him to Odessa, did not rejoice for some time. As hiding-place for her the ancient had chosen a deep locker in his chart room on the bridge. There she had remained for the past two days.

Now Katrina, the kitchen wench, knew nothing of the captain's lady.

That morning, not wishing to send him back to the bunkers, where he had spent the previous day, she thought of the locker as a temporary home for her own particular stowaway--a Turkish deserter with coal-blackened face, untrimmed beard, and decidedly odorous clothes. She dumped the Turk inside the locker, fastened the lid, and ran back to the kitchen.

The Turkish deserter landed with some violence on the captain's lady, and both received a bad fright as they clutched at each other in the darkness. Yet the lid could not be removed from the inside, and the shouts were unheard outside the little room. The air in the unventilated locker grew ever more stuffy and velvety as the two people continued to breathe it. Finally the woman fainted. The Turk, tired out after a long spell of cramped wakefulness in the bunkers and the kitchen, composed himself philosophically and went to sleep.

When the _Batoum_ was beyond the Bosphorus and all danger of a search the captain opened the locker to release his friend. He inserted an arm, and jumped with fright when, instead of a female, he produced a coal-blackened man. The woman revived when taken into the fresh air, but I should imagine that never again will she become a stowaway.

t.i.toff, fearing that some informer among the pa.s.sengers might notice us, still kept White and myself under cover all day, until we took our usual exercise on deck each evening. The other stowaways were mingling with legitimate pa.s.sengers, whose bedding was spread over the hatches.

I remember in particular a vivid-looking, much-jewelled Jewess, who was minus money and pa.s.sport. I found her exchanging violent words with two firemen, who were levying blackmail, using the Austrian port authorities at Odessa as bogey-men. When, with tears and protests, she had fulfilled their demands, two other ruffians from among the crew took their place and demanded money, or in default jewels.

All the stowaways, in fact, except ourselves, were blackmailed in this fashion. The woman thief was victimized less universally than the others because she was known to be the bo'sun's especial graft. As for us, we were under the protection of the ship's officers, and, more important still, we carried revolvers. In any case, Bolshevik Bill the Greaser was our good friend and a power among the crew.

On the second evening at sea the firemen stole a case of _arak_ from the cargo, drank themselves amok, and told Josef they were far too busy over private concerns to trouble about stoking the furnaces. The private concerns were mostly women from among the stowaways and poorer pa.s.sengers.

The fires sank lower and lower, the engine-power dwindled, the propeller revolved more and more slowly. Finally we came to almost a dead halt in the middle of the Black Sea. Throughout that night we crawled forward with a minimum number of revolutions; and even this small progress was only because the ship's officers took turns in the furnace-room to act as stokers. Next morning the sobered firemen graciously agreed to let bygones be bygones, and resumed work.

The rest of that nightmare voyage included only one incident worth recording. On the morning of the fourth day, when we should have been within sight of land, the horizon in every direction was blank. The Turkish merchant who had chartered the _Batoum_ was impatient to reach Odessa, and asked the captain for our position. The ancient tugged at his white beard, and said he was not quite sure, but would take soundings. These revealed shallow water, showing, according to the chart, that the ship must be some distance off her course.

The dodderer was astonished, and called the first mate into consultation. Belaef's calculations with s.e.xtant and compa.s.s proved us to be heading several degrees too far east, so that the then line of sailing would have taken us nearer Sevastopol than Odessa. Thereupon the captain handed over the ship's direction to the first mate. We edged northward, and sighted Odessa at noon of the next day.

The city, with its pleasant terraces round the hills that slope to the foot of the wide-curved bay, and its half-Western, half-Byzantine towers and domes gleaming yellow-gold in the sunlight, looked inviting enough. But for us it represented a gamble in the unknown. Odessa was in enemy occupation, and might be more inhospitable even than Constantinople. On the other hand, we should no longer be on the police list of wanteds, as in Turkey, and it would be easier to pa.s.s muster among Russians than among dark-skinned Levantines.

On the whole, we were optimistic. From Odessa a man with friends and money might make his way to Siberia, where were some Allied detachments; and if, as the latest news indicated, Bulgaria was about to be emptied of Austro-German forces, Odessa would be a good jumping-off point for Sofia.

Meanwhile, our immediate concern was to get ash.o.r.e without meeting the dock officials. Kulman and Josef promised to escort us, and thus lend the protection of their uniforms. We ourselves discarded seamen's clothes for the mufti worn when we escaped from the Turkish guards.

White still had no lounge coat, and although it was a hot day of August had to put on his faded old overcoat. For the rest, the luggage we were bringing to Russia--each of us possessed a toothbrush, some cartridges, a revolver, a comb, and a razor, a spare shirt, a spare collar, and two handkerchiefs--could be wrapped in two sheets of newspaper.

Before we left there was a dramatic ceremony when we paid for our unauthorized pa.s.sage, and incidentally got even with Michael Ivanovitch t.i.toff. He had reckoned on taking the money himself and dividing it as he pleased. We, knowing that t.i.toff could best be punished by hitting at his avarice, explained to Kulman, Josef, and Feodor that as they had done more for us than the chief engineer, we wanted them to receive a share corresponding to their risks and services, and proposed to hand all the money to them for distribution. From t.i.toff's share we would deduct the value of what he had stolen from us, and also whatever we thought excessive in his charges for food.

Each of the trio had his own grievances against t.i.toff, and all were delighted with the opportunity of making money at his expense. We prepared a balance sheet, and invited t.i.toff into Josef's cabin.

Josef, as t.i.toff's subordinate, had been scared of offending him. Four gla.s.ses of neat vodka, however, gave him courage, and when the chief engineer entered the cabin he was the most aggressive of us all.

"Michael Ivanovitch," he said, glaring at t.i.toff with bloodshot eyes, "we are no longer at Constantinople, and our friends here insist on a just distribution of their money. This"--handing him the balance sheet and a list of his own--"is how it will be divided."

The chief rogue glared his indignation as White handed a handful of banknotes to Josef, and voiced it when he received the balance sheet.

He stood up and declaimed against the deductions, but soon subsided in face of the row of unfriendly faces, the grins, and the revolvers which White and I kept well in evidence.

"There is nothing more to be settled," said White. "Here we are among friends. Now leave us."

And t.i.toff went. At the door he turned and said to Josef with evil meaning in his voice: "I shall have business with you later." Josef laughed, and with a shaky hand poured himself out another gla.s.s of vodka.

The last we saw of Michael Ivanovitch t.i.toff was his yellow face leaning over the side of the ship when, with Kulman and Josef, we rowed toward the docks. They were taking us on sh.o.r.e before the customs officers boarded the _Batoum_. The other stowaways, who were mingling with the legitimate pa.s.sengers on the deck, were to come later.

The harbour was chock-full of forlorn-looking craft, which had evidently lain idle for a long while. We dodged around and about several of them, so as not to give the appearance of coming from the _Batoum_, and then made for the nearest quay.

On it was an Austrian officer. When we were some fifty yards distant he looked at us through field-gla.s.ses, and proceeded to detail a group of soldiers to various points on the quay, evidently with the object of stopping and questioning us.

Kulman, who was at the tiller, gave an order to the sailor at the oars.

We swung round a bend of the sh.o.r.e, and lost sight of the Austrians.

Close ahead was another landing-stage. We moored beside it. Without waiting a second, but also without showing haste, we stepped from the boat and climbed the steps--Kulman and I first, and then Josef and White.

Two Austrian sentries and some Russian officials stood at the top of the steps. They looked hard at us, but, satisfied by the uniforms of Kulman and Josef, merely nodded a greeting as we pa.s.sed toward the dock gates and comparative freedom.

CHAPTER XVI

A RUSSIAN INTERLUDE

Odessa, like the rest of the Ukraine, had exchanged Bolshevism for Austro-German domination and confiscation. Already, when we pa.s.sed through the docks, it was easy to see who were the masters. Austrian customs officers controlled the quays; Austrian and German soldiers guarded the storehouses; Austrian sentries stood at the dock gates and sometimes demanded to see civilians' pa.s.sports. Had we not been vouched for by the uniforms of the _Batoum_'s third engineer and third mate, the sentries might well have stopped White and me.

Once outside the gates we hired a cab, and drove to an address given us by Mr. S.--that of the sister and the mother of a Russian professor at Robert College, Constantinople. Arrived there, we left Josef and Kulman, with very sincere expressions of goodwill.

The professor's sister received us cordially but calmly, as if it were an everyday event for two down-at-heel British officers to drop on her from the skies with a letter of introduction but without the least warning.

"Why, only three days ago," she related, "two officers of the Russian Imperial Army arrived here under like circ.u.mstances. They made their way from Petrograd, through the Soviet territory. They now occupy the room below ours."

Once again Providence seemed to have played into our hands; for when these ex-officers were asked how best we could live in the German-occupied city, they produced the two false pa.s.sports by means of which they had travelled through Bolshevist Russia. They now lived in the Ukraine under their own names and with their own ident.i.ty papers; and the false pa.s.sports, no longer necessary to them, they handed to White and me.

Without pa.s.sports we could scarcely have found lodging or rations, for every non-Ukrainian in Odessa had to register with the Austrian authorities. Tom White, therefore, became Serge Feodorovitch Davidoff, originally from Turkestan, and I became Evgeni Nestorovitch Genko, a Lett from Riga. This origin suited me very well; for the Letts, although former subjects of Imperial Russia, can mostly speak the German patois of the Baltic Provinces. My pa.s.sport made me a young bachelor, but White's allotted him a missing wife named Anastasia, aged nineteen.

There were still in Odessa a few British subjects who had remained through the dreadful days of the Bolshevist occupation and the more peaceful Austro-German regime. It happened that the professor's sister knew one of them, a leather manufacturer named Hatton. In his house we found refuge until other arrangements could be made. Like most people in Odessa, he showed us every kindness in his power, as did his Russian wife and her relations. It was, however, unwise to remain for long with an Englishman, for he himself would have been imprisoned if the Austrians discovered that he was harbouring two British officers.

The professor's sister played providence yet again, and produced another invaluable friend--one Vladimir Franzovitch B., a hard-up lieutenant in the Ukrainian artillery. Vladimir Franzovitch lived in two small rooms. The larger one he shared with us, there being just room enough for three camp beds placed side by side and touching each other. The second room was occupied by his mistress.

Obviously the situation had its drawbacks. It also had its advantages, as the rooms were in one of the city's poorest quarters. The neighbours, therefore, included no enemy soldiers, for the Germans and Austrians had naturally spread themselves over the more comfortable districts.

The _dvornik_ was an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard, with a bitter hatred of Bolshevism and all its works. The tale which Vladimir Franzovitch told of us--that we were English civilians escaped from Moscow--was in itself a guarantee that he would befriend us. He took our false pa.s.sports to the food commissioners, and thus obtained bread and sugar rations for Serge Feodorovitch Davidoff and Evgeni Nestorovitch Genko.