There are rules for everything in Constantinople and Turkey, and the list of provisions which cover operations in Turkish harbors are as long as your arm. Among other things, there is a standing law which forbids the departure of any ship after the sun has set. An exception was made, however, on behalf of the France as she was registered as a salvage tug, and was licensed to come and go at her own free will, for even the Turks admitted that a sinking ship might well refuse to wait till morning before taking the final plunge. So it transpired that about one o’clock in the morning of the 16th of December, we pulled up our anchor, swung clear of the shipping in the Golden Horn, and with smoke pouring in clouds from our two red funnels, we turned her bows down the Bosphorus, towards the Euxine. The skipper had promised Odessa in thirty hours, and I was pleased enough as I turned in with the dispatches of his Britannic Majesty Edward the VII under my pillow.
I did not sleep long.
The moment we emerged from the Bosphorus into the Black Sea I knew it, and everyone else on the France knew it. The creak of timbers and the swish of clothes describing parabolas on their hooks, with the crash of glass inside the saloon, told me that we were at sea. A look through the small six inch port above my bunk revealed the intermittent light of the moon now and again breaking through fleecy clouds that were scudding across the sky. To the thud of the engines just forward of my bunk, I could hear the seas swishing past. The little port-hole was buried every other minute in seething froth as we rolled in the swell. We were doing a good fourteen knots an hour. I comforted my inward apprehensions with the cheering thought that this speed maintained would land us in Odessa even earlier than the captain had promised. I slept until daylight, when I was awakened by the increased rolling of the ship. The prospect of good weather, which the moon of the previous night had seemed to hold forth, was dissipated as I took a glance out of the port. The dull leaden sky had turned loose a very demon of a raw and piercing wind that was beating the sea into a passion of discontent. The France, straining and groaning in every joint, was valiantly driving her little nose into each sullen sea that rose before her as though to block her course and drive her back. In other seas that I had traveled, the sweep is long between the waves. Even on the Pacific a small boat can crest the waves, slip downward in the hollow and raise to meet the next. It was different here. Before a ship can recover from the first wave another sweeps her deck. In great black ridges of spray-flanked water, the seas crash upon the decks. Now they are dead ahead, now from the starboard quarter and now from the port. It seemed to me that it must be rougher than usual, but I said nothing. My instinct was to go on deck at once, but internal premonitions of disaster urged me to remain in my bunk for the moment. Morris, on the couch in the saloon, was groaning out his anguish in spite of his thirteen trips across the Pacific. I smiled as I listened to him.
“Morris,” I called.
“Standing by like steel, sir,” he answered in a weak voice as he staggered to the door of my tiny cabin. He was the palest colored man I ever saw. I was somewhat to the bad myself, but he looked so much worse than I felt that it cheered me up.
“Sick?” I queried.
“Not seasick, sir,” he replied, his pride and his thirteen trans-Pacific journeys holding him up, “but suffering from a touch of indigestion, sir. Indeed, it is nothing more. The fact is, I attribute it to the potted ham of last night, sir,” and he withdrew hastily.
A moment later the hatch was thrown open and Stomati floundered down the ladder in a cloud of spray. He shook the salt water out of his hair and grinned a little as he delivered a message from the skipper.
“Bad sea. No headway. Wanted my permission to slow down.” I was disgusted and told myself that the old man was flinching at the first sign of heavy weather.
“Tell him no,” I advised Stomati, who immediately disappeared. Ten minutes later Nicholas appeared as a second ambassador from the captain. He spoke excellent English, if he was a Greek. He explained that our 120 tons of coal brought us so low in the water that the ship was pounding badly. I looked at him and realized that he knew his business better than I did, so I told him to cut the speed down to 7 knots. Instead of improving, things seemed to grow worse with each succeeding minute. Even Morris, who was more than half dead to the world, did not need to be told that she was pounding fearfully. We could feel her lift her bows above the water, poise for a moment, and then, like the downward blow of a sledge-hammer, fall into the sea with a crash that shook her from stem to stern, like a rat in the teeth of a terrier. Every time she surged down the rush of water over her decks told us that she was shipping seas at every lurch. The crash of timbers and boards over my head seemed to indicate that we were really making a pretty heavy job of it. The noise and uproar of tons of water crashing against the steel deck-house overhead continued. Every now and again we would hear a piece of woodwork ripped off from some hatch or companion-way with a scream of nails loosening their rusty hold, and the snapping of breaking wood. By and by little drops of water began to leak down through the ceiling. I watched this drip mechanically, as it came faster and faster through the skylight and seams of the deck above my head, until at last the drip became a trickle, and the trickle a stream. Puddles began to appear on the floor, first on one side and then on the other, as the ship rolled heavily in the seaway. About ten the hatch opened and again the engineer appeared. He was wet to the skin.