CHAPTER IX
We Reach Sevastopol and Land in Spite of Harbor Regulations, Get a Story and Sail Away with It to the Coast of Asia Minor
The reader of stories of adventure naturally expects to have something sensational doing every minute. Why else, indeed, has he paid his money? But there are dull spots in even the most strenuous tales (that is, in real life), and the narrator of fact must blushingly, or, at best, hurry over the places where interest flags. Our trip from the Danube mouth to the Crimean Peninsula was unusual only in the fact that the sea was quiet, and that it was possible to remain in one’s bunk. No world diplomat ever felt more perfect satisfaction at a successfully executed international coup d’état than I did that night as, with money belts stuffed with gold, the France cut through the waves, turning up with her steel nose a ridge of ripples that left an ever wider wedge of silver in our moonlit wake. A square meal and a good cigar combined to make that evening a picture, which still stands out in my mind as an oasis in the desert of that Black Sea trip. At ten o’clock I took a “look-see” around the boat before turning in for the night, and found that every member of the crew, save the man at the wheel, had crawled off into some corner and gone to sleep. Even the look-out had squeezed himself into the chain locker out of the wind, and was making a sound like the exhaust of a gasoline launch. For a few minutes I was tempted to wake up the various delinquents, but when I thought of the past days and nights of cold and overwork, I softened and let them sleep peacefully on. The only danger on such a smooth sea that I could think of was collision, and that seemed improbable, as there were almost no ships navigating those waters just at that time, and, anyway, surely the other ship would keep watch and see us, even if we failed to see them. So we would be safe anyway. One comes to realize after a time that it is foolish to worry about dangers all the time. After months of being on needles and pins as to what the future has up its sleeve, one gets so tired that it is simpler to accept the inevitable and be killed outright (if so it is written on the cards) than to lay awake nights and think about it. So leaving the situation on “the lap of the gods,” I went to my cabin and rolled into my bunk without the formality of undressing, and in two seconds was sleeping with that indifference to fate and the morrow that only hardship, exposure and utter exhaustion can make possible.
The situation at Sevastopol, according to the rumors that had been circulating in the ports at which I had touched, were all that the most blood-thirsty correspondent could desire. The mutiny of the Black Sea fleet was but a recent history, and as no word had come from the Crimea for some weeks, it was generally supposed that further riot and bloodshed had been added to the long list of upheavals which had marked that year in the Czar’s dominions. So it was with keen interest that we stood on the bridge of the France the following morning and watched the white line of the snow-clad, low lying hills come out of the sea as we approached the barren bleakness of the historic battlefields of ’55.
We entered the harbor without molestation and anchored a few hundred yards from half a dozen sullen looking ships of war, which completed the dismal setting of the whole scene. We waited an hour or more, as usual in Russian ports, without our presence being noted in the slightest degree. Finally about nine o’clock a launch with a bevy of hungry waiting-to-be-fed port officials came aboard. Nothing could be done until a hot breakfast was placed before them. Then a few drinks and cigars warmed their hearts sufficiently so that they consented to commence the endless examination into our past, which forms such an important part of Russian procedure. About eleven they took their departure, with the instructions to us that we would not be allowed to land until our case had been carefully considered by those in authority ashore. This was most discouraging to one in a hurry to do business, and who had not the slightest intention of being left over night in the harbor. We watched the launch steam back to shore, and when it had finally disappeared behind some docks, and when, with my glasses, I had observed the portly officials walk off up a near by street, I ordered out my own long boat. Fortunately this hung on the side away from the harbor. Taking four of the best rowers and the faithful Morris, we pulled quietly away from the France, and, without further discussion, rowed around behind a bluff that sloped down to the water, in a little frequented part of the town, and without once being hailed, landed, climbed over said bluff, and walked boldly down into the main street of the town, just as though we lived there.
I made my base at the best hotel in the city and proceeded to pump everyone in sight as to the news of the hour in the Crimean port. Four hours of active work convinced me that the situation in Sevastopol had been vastly exaggerated, as indeed is usually the case with war or riot stories originating in remote localities. To the excited citizen caught in the hurly burly uproar and tumult of a mob, with shots ringing out and Cossacks charging about and riding people down, it no doubt seems as though the last great spasm of history were being enacted. A dozen killed and a score wounded look like hundreds to the man who has not seen corpses and wounded “in bulk.” In fact, there is nothing in the world so misleading as the importance of riots and the alleged losses. When one comes to analyze it, half the supposed dead prove to be only wounded or stunned, while the bulk of the alleged fatally wounded are only slightly hurt, or so badly frightened that they fall over each other in their anxiety to get away. All this to the amateur observer looks like a world sensation, but if one digests it all a day or two later, when the excitement has subsided, it appears that the police have merely dispersed a disorderly rabble with a few casualties. In the meantime, however, the excited witness, who perchance has never heard a shot fired in anger before, has sent out his story of “atrocious massacre by the police” with all the lurid details which, in his mind, are unparalleled. The story does not lose as it travels through the big centers of news distribution, and when it finally gets into the daily papers it gives the reader the impression that a world spasm has been enacted. The “special correspondent” is rushed to the scene of the occurrence, and when he arrives a week afterwards he finds the life of the town moving much as before, and a few bullet holes in some wall the only visible signs of the “horrible riot.” He learns that the revolutionists are in durance vile, and if he takes the pains to investigate, he will find a few poor peasants and a handful of long-haired, wild-eyed Russian students shut up in a dirty room. This, then, is a type of the great majority of Russian riot or revolution “stories.”
In the newspaper world it often happens that “no news” is really important news, though perhaps not sensational. And so it was in Sevastopol at this time. I was able to draft an accurate cable pricking the bubble of mystery and horror with which the outside world was then viewing the Sevastopol situation.
There are newspapers, I believe, that won’t stand for the “no news” types of communications, but expect and insist on getting their column a day, more or less, news or no news. This is the policy which has bred “yellow journalism.” It is no doubt a hard proposition to work for, and I am sure it is a hard one to work against, for I’ve tried it many times. The correspondent that represents a conservative paper has a truly mean time when he is on an assignment with a number of fellows who are cabling for the other type, for it is not at all uncommon for them to take rumors, or even fakes, agree on the details, and send them broadcast. Naturally, the man who is there and does not send such stories gets the credit of having missed a good thing and of being asleep on his assignment. But in the long run it does not pay (to put it on the lowest grounds), for the senders of inaccurate dispatches soon get discredited, and when they really turn up a good story, no one believes it, and its value is nil. The Chicago News asked for news—not space matter. For months at a time I have sent no cables home, and then suddenly turned loose with a thousand words a day. Their attitude was, and rightly, that their space was worth money, lots of it, and unless the news in itself was worth as much as that space, it was not wanted in the office. It was for this reason that I never had to pad or press with my stuff, and on this occasion, as on many others, I sent merely what it was worth, quite irrespective of the money we had been spending to get it, which is rightly no criterion as to the value of a bit of news.
From the British Consul, to whom I had letters, I learned some of the details of the earlier troubles, and of the mutiny of the fleet. At no time it seemed was the uprising of the sailors generally popular with those simple hearted folk. It was said that at least 75% of the men were unwilling participants in the romantic adventure of the then famous Lieutenant Schmidt, who stole one of the big Russian battleships and ran off with it, to the confusion of the rest of the fleet. The laborers at the naval station in Sevastopol whom we had supposed to be blood-thirsty wretches marching the streets, howling for the blood of the Czar, a Grand Duke or two, or, in fact, any old tyrant, had, instead of performing these picturesque acts, gone quietly to work and organized themselves into a police force to help patrol the city, and in this role they had shown themselves more effective than the regular police. Another good story gone wrong! The really obstreperous characters of the movement had been caught and were shut up on the ships that we had seen lying in the harbor.
There were some dramatic incidents, without doubt, during the few days in which the mutiny was at its height, but the capture of the ring-leaders resulted in its utter collapse.