“There is one other matter,” said Sidney. “I would like to send a cable to our mother in New York. We couldn’t make the man at Tiflis understand, and she must be awfully anxious about us.”
“I doubt if you can do that,” replied Captain Foster. “I don’t believe the Government will allow a message to be sent to a foreign country, but I’ll go around to the telegraph office with you and we’ll find out. You see, when there’s trouble, I don’t have to wire any owners, for I own the Princess Mary myself, so I don’t know whether the wires can be used now or not.”
“What sort of a cargo do you carry, Captain Foster?” asked Sidney, as they walked along.
“I load with crude oil for Venice.”
“Isn’t that an awfully messy cargo?” asked Raymond.
The captain laughed. “Oh, no; you wouldn’t know what I had aboard. There are tanks built into the ship, and the oil is pumped into them, and pumped out.”
By that time they had arrived at the telegraph office and the captain interviewed the man in charge, who spoke no English. After a short conversation the captain turned to the boys, and announced, regretfully,—
“He says you can’t send any message of any kind out of the country.”
“Poor mother, she will be sick with anxiety.” And Sidney’s eyes looked suspiciously moist. “She didn’t want us to come, Captain Foster. We had a bad time last winter getting away from the war in Mexico, and mother was sure something would happen to us this time, too. But that was before the war over here began.”
“Well, you know the old saying, ‘No news is good news.’”