There was a bit of rotten old stone pier sticking out from the jumble of houses on the shore. The sea was beating about it with great waves that hid it intermittently from our view, by the spray and spume created by their angry lashings. However, there did not seem to be any other place to land, so we ordered out our biggest boat, and with not a little difficulty got her into the sea without damage.
Then one by one we piled aboard, each waiting the moment to jump, while the crew on the France held the dancing shell away with poles. Four men and Morris formed the escort, and once aboard they gave away with a will as the close proximity to our tug threatened to upset us any minute. But once we got her head into the sea, and our four men tugging in rhythm at the oars, all went well. I had often been in a ship’s boat in a seaway, but nothing quite like this. Every minute a great sea would come racing in from the open waters and a mountain black it would sweep under our stern, lifting us high in the air, and then our little boat would go sliding back into the valley behind like a cat trying to climb a steep roof. Down, down we would go into the trough until our horizon was bounded only by the waves that had swept under us, and its big black brother following close behind. Each time we would mount the crest we would see the shore ahead and the France astern of us; each time we dipped the ridges of spray capped seas would shut them from sight. But each dip brought us nearer shore. As we approached the pier I saw that there was a kind of breakwater jutting out from one side and behind it a still patch of water. Between the pier and the stone masonry was a channel of perhaps fifty feet. Each moment the seas would go roaring through this little opening, whose walls were flanked with clouds of spray breaking on both sides. Then the next second back would come the wash to meet the next wave. This looked to me to be our best place to land. In fact, it seemed the only place. Waiting just the right time and mounted on the crest of a roller we came sweeping down toward this veritable millrace. Standing up in the stern to steer I encouraged the crew to pull their hardest. For a moment we hung on the crest and then like a toboggan we bore down toward the narrow passage, the sailors pulling their oaken oars till they fairly bent. For an instant we were in a cloud of spray and ’midst the tumult of the seas breaking over the masonry at either side, and then we shot into the quiet waters like a sled gliding over smooth ice.
In a few minutes we pulled up to a flight of stone steps and were arguing with a stupid Turk about passports. I forget the details now, but anyway we bluffed him, and ten minutes later I handed in a wire at the telegraph office to that home across the seas. I was wet, cold and wondering in the back of my head how in the world we would ever manage to get back to the France through that surf as I passed in the two words for home: “Merry Christmas,” and signed my name. Somehow I felt that the words did not adequately describe my own feelings, but then no one at home would know the difference, so it would not matter anyway. I called on the American consul and gathered from him a general confirmation of the story that I had picked up at Sinope. He was a nice man and very gossipy. His house was on a bluff overlooking the harbor. He was surprised to see us at all, and more surprised to learn that we had come in the France, which was plainly visible bobbing up and down in the harbor like a duck in rough water. His advice was to remain in port awhile, as we were going to have a big storm, and he thought the France ridiculously small at best. It was he who pointed out the French Mail to me and gave her as a precedent for remaining in port. However, as we had been having storms pretty steadily for a week, and as we were still intact, I told him that I thought we would go ahead anyhow. He was very cordial, and so I invited him to dinner on the France, but after verifying his earlier impressions of her by a careful scrutiny through a spyglass, he politely but firmly declined the pleasure.
Trebizond stands out in my mind as one of the most wonderfully picturesque places that I have ever seen. It is the contact point, as it were, between the East and the West. The setting is Oriental to a degree, with the streets filled with riff-raff and hodge-podge of a dozen different races. Here starts that great overland trail, across mountain plain and desert, that leads far far away into Persia, India, aye, and it is said even unto Turkestan and China itself. Long trains of the patient mangy camels, with their trappings of dirty red and their escorts of strange attendants, come with them from heaven only knows where, are moving through the streets toward the trail that lies beyond.
It is with a curious fascination that one watches the slow dignified movements that carry them over the ground at the rate of but a meager mile or two an hour. It seems impossible to realize that these melancholy beasts with their quivering pendulous lips and woebegone eyes, will keep up that same pace for weeks and months, hour after hour, until at last they lay them down in their distant terminus in the far off East that ever stands in our minds as the land of mystery.
Trebizond has a very mongrel population indeed, and it is a constant wonder to see so many different peoples packed into this one dirty town. There seems to be many Armenians, and as the reader no doubt recalls, this little port was freely mentioned in the press a few years ago as the scene of the ghastly massacres perpetrated on these dismal people. One always hesitates to criticize with a merely superficial knowledge, yet the Armenians impress one casually as being about the most unpleasant people imaginable. They have a genius for conspiracy and the making of fifty-seven varieties of trouble that is perhaps unique. The result is that every once in a while some Turk in a genial mood says, “Come on, fellows, let’s kill-up a few Armenians,” and the massacre is on. It does seem outrageous to do all these things, but one who sees the Armenians sometimes wonders if they don’t bring a lot of trouble on themselves by their own actions and characters.
The good kind missionary whom I met did not think so, and very likely he knew what he was talking about, while my opinion is merely a shot in the dark on a subject viewed superficially.
My friend the missionary took me around and introduced me to the governor, a somewhat besmirched gentleman in a dirty red uniform, who had eyes like a rat, which wandered over my person until I felt for my watch. He did not speak English nor I Turkish, so our conversation was not particularly entertaining. I don’t know what his opinion of me was, but my opinion of him was that he was about the worst looking specimen that I had ever seen. He had G-R-A-F-T written all over him in large letters.
He rather queered his town with me, and I went back to the harbor just at dusk. The wind had changed and the tide was running out, so that we managed to get out through the breakwater with nothing worse than a pretty severe wetting. The barometer (as usual) was falling. So I decided to have one more square meal before we put to sea. So it was nine o’clock when the anchor came up and we turned our nose away from the lights of the town, far more hospitable in appearance, by night than by day, and headed into the darkness that lay without.