“It’s good of you, Captain Foster,” said Sidney, “to let us use your bath.”
“Well, you see, the Princess Mary is not very modern, though she’s as stanch a little craft as was ever built, and she hasn’t got any bathrooms. Now you young gentlemen take your time, and come up on deck when you’re through. I shan’t come down till I see you out there.”
Captain Foster’s bath was a funny little short tub that the bather could just sit down in. The boys did not try even to sit down, but stood up, one at a time. There was plenty of water, however, and soap, and the scrubbing that followed was very thorough, and resulted in two well-renovated boys.
CHAPTER XX
A GREAT DISASTER
It had seemed to Sidney and Raymond that they had attained to the height of ease when they boarded the train at Tiflis after their tremendous tramp and were transported without effort on their part. But when the Princess Mary drew away from the pier at Batum and started westward across the Black Sea, the travelers felt that they were then enjoying sublimated luxury.
The great sea lay rippling gently under a peaceful autumn sky, and the little steamer drove steadily ahead on a level keel. It was as though they were navigating a small lake. Captain Foster’s cargo consisted wholly of oil, so that he put in at no ports, but made a straight run from Batum to Venice.
As the Princess Mary used oil for fuel, her crew was made up chiefly of engineers. There were only four sailors, one of whom was the captain’s first officer, and a cook. The mate, Mr. Wright, sat at the captain’s table, so with the boys there was a nice little party of four.
Captain Foster had a great fund of stories gathered during a sea life of forty years, and he remembered and was willing to relate them all. And as the voyage was very uneventful, the captain’s time was largely unoccupied, and he employed much of it in story-telling. So the boys had not a dull moment.
After two days of such sailing the Princess Mary entered the Bosporus. It had been Captain Foster’s custom to stop at Constantinople, but there had lately been so many rumors that Turkey was about to join Germany in the war that he decided to make no stop on that voyage. The ship, therefore, was headed to pass directly through, and the boys thought that they would see the interesting foreign sights only from a distance. There was the great city of Constantinople on one side, and the beautiful heights of Scutari on the other, both of which places they would have loved to visit. Then, as they were passing the entrance to the harbor of the Golden Horn, a launch flying the Turkish flag signaled them to stop.