"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.