The hills along the coast of Asia Minor rise steeply from the sea, and with the clearing of the heavens they stood out radiantly in the morning sunlight, and in spite of the discomforts of the sea and wetness that was blowing across us still, our hearts rejoiced. After all there is nothing that revives one’s spirits like the good old sun. Great schools of porpoises were playing along beside the boat, and I amused myself until noon by practicing on them with my Colt, not so much to kill them as to increase my prestige, which wasn’t much at best, with my mongrel crew of Greeks and Turks, who enjoyed the target practice immensely, and, as Morris said, “Are sure impressed.”
An attempt to serve lunch proved a miserable failure, and as we were within a few hours of port, we postponed that enterprise until three o’clock, when we ran in behind the bit of a headland that juts out around Sinope.
Approaching Sinope from the north one sees little or nothing of the town until one rounds in behind the peninsula which sticks out from the mainland like the letter T, with the little port nestled in the shoulder of the letter. The books which I have since read say that it is a good harbor, but even after we had gotten around the point and anchored, the swell was enough to force one to walk gingerly along the deck to keep from being spilled across the rail. Personally (this is a true narrative and facts must be allowed) I had never heard of the place until I spied it on the chart when I was poring over that useful adjunct to navigation while we lay in the harbor of Sevastopol awaiting the Russians to give us our clearance papers. It does appear, however, upon investigation, that it has been on the map for a good long time. We even learned (to shame our ignorance) that Mithradates the Great, whose life is no doubt familiar to all our readers, first saw the light of day here as recently as 134 b. c. It was the capital also of Pontus, a name equally well known and distinguished. At lot of interesting people seem to have found this place, at one time or another. It seems that Mohammed Number II came in here in 1470 and created quite a sensation with the population at that time by capturing the place to the confusion of the survivors. A Russian Admiral with an ingenious name fought a naval battle with the Ottoman fleet here in 1853, and said fleet suffered its own loss with four thousand of its crew. This last interesting event decided England and France to interfere and brought on the Crimean war. Besides being famous for all these interesting incidents, Sinope exports fruit, fish, skins, nuts and tobacco. The day I was there all these useful products of its industries were not in evidence, or much of anything else, for that matter. But I take the word of the reference book (the refuge of all writers who travel) that on sunny days the inhabitants do as above mentioned.
So it was in this city of these remarkable traditions, linked with ancient history and seemingly with no connection to the modern world, that the France, flying the ensign of the Chicago Daily News, let go her anchor, to the astonishment of the natives, who, no doubt, knew more of the illustrious Mithradates and his doings than of the city of Chicago, which, in the form of the France, had so unexpectedly descended on their legend laden harbor.
So much then for the due we owe to the reader who wishes to be instructed. But in the meantime (even before the dawn of this knowledge was upon us) I had ordered Stomati to do his worst, and in fifteen minutes after we anchored we began the first substantial meal we had touched since leaving Sevastopol.
CHAPTER X
We Send Our Cable from Sinope and Then Sail for the Caucasus, Where Rumor States Revolution and Anarchy to Be Reigning Unmolested
After the meal mentioned so enthusiastically in the last chapter, we rowed ashore in the longboat and effected a landing at a decaying old pier (which in truth gave the appearance of being little used for the disembarking of the fish, skins, etc., before mentioned) and were welcomed (?) by a ragged crowd of open-mouthed, very dirty creatures that inhabit this interesting coast. Accompanied by Morris, the second engineer and Stomati, who was practicing his seven languages at once on such victims as seem to promise hope of intellect, we wound our way up a street of fallen-down dirty houses toward the telegraph station. Fortunately Stomati knew the word for “Telegraph Office” in the language of the country. I never felt quite so much like a brass band or an elephant as during that short journey to the “Imperial Ottoman Postal and Telegraph Office.” I am sure any circus that had such a following in its street parade would count the day a successful one indeed.
It was with a little dubiousness that I filed my wire, for the Turkish officials are far more strict in their censorship than those of any other government. But I hoped that a message originating at this out of the way place might get on one of the through wires and slip past the central station, where the censors preyed in Constantinople. For, as a rule, the actual senders care nothing about the contents of a dispatch, and, as a matter of fact, generally do not know the language, simply sending the letters as they read them. So I hoped mine might slip through the back door, as it were, and never be noticed by the officious uniformed functionary that sits in the front office of the Constantinople stations and reads other people’s confidential communications. This operator knew a little English, and at his first sign of suspicion as he read over my “story” of the revolutionary situation in Russia, I handed him a cigar and a golden English sovereign, which cheered him up so much that he stopped reading my message and went out and got me a dirty cup of Turkish coffee about as thick as molasses. Experience has taught me that there are two useful forms of influence; first, the exchange of pleasantries, accompanied by a coin of appropriate value, and, secondly, a polite but firm intimation that the “mailed fist” is available in case of obstreperous conduct. So, while the coffee was coming I wrote a short commercial message to the head of our London office, as follows: