“I passed the sahib his paper at breakfast.”
“I carried water for his bath,” and so forth, until you are on the verge of nervous prostration listening to the uproar. The old travelers in India aren’t bothered so much, for they slap a few people, kick the porters, and insult the proprietor of the hotel, and by so doing prosper.
From Madras to Bombay is something over a thousand miles, which an express train makes in about thirty-six hours. The trains on this line are more comfortable than in the south of India. The gauge is wider, being five feet, six inches, which makes very smooth riding. The railroad bed itself is admirable, being well ballasted and with heavy steel, and the bridges throughout are the latest steel and masonry construction. Bombay, which was our destination, is the second largest city in India. Calcutta is the biggest and most filthy. Bombay is really a beautiful place, but was hot and sticky, and when we were there, steaming like a Turkish bath. The streets are broad and well kept, the buildings many stories and modern, while the general plan of the town affords many parks, squares and driveways. The people over there seem to be doing more business than in Madras, but even in Bombay it is very difficult to actually discover anyone in the act of doing anything in particular. After he has once gotten used to it, they say the foreigner gets to thinking there is no place like it, and though he may make an occasional break for home, in nine cases out of ten he comes back to the luxurious life and tropical heat of India.
Owing to mis-information, which was pleasantly given me by one of Cook’s officials, we missed the boat up the Persian Gulf by two hours. My personal experience with Cook’s representatives in the far east was that what they don’t know about the country in which they are stationed would fill a series of large volumes. There was not another boat for five days, so, cursing our luck and the genial young man, who had so glibly misdirected us, we took our baggage up to the Taji-Mahal Hotel, which is certainly one of the finest in the world. The Bombay papers were filled with telegrams of the situation in Russia. Inasmuch as I was stalled for a number of days, I sent my office a brief wire to keep them posted of my address in case a change of plan might seem advisable, and then settled down for my week’s wait. I was aroused the next morning about 5 o’clock by a yellow envelope shoved under the mosquito-bar of my bed by a docile Indian servant,—the never-to-be-avoided cable again. “Situation urgent,” it read. “Proceed quickest possible route Russia.” That settled it. I shouted for Morris, and by noon was steaming out of Bombay Harbor on a P. & O. liner headed not for the Persian Gulf, but for the Suez Canal. At Aden the Reuters dispatches that the agent brought on board told of the confusion and disaster in Russia. “Wires cut. Railroads in the hands of strikers and mutiny of sailors at Sebastopol,” ran the headings. I gave the steamship agent, who brought them on, a cable for my office in Chicago. “Port Said in three days. Wire more funds.” I had a few thousand in my money belt, but “Railroads and wires cut” suggested the need of money and lots of it to keep the pot boiling.
At Port Said the Imperial Ottoman Bank paid me a substantial remittance one hour after I landed. In the meantime Morris had gotten into a fight with one of those dirty heathen negroes who infest the Canal zone. It was a detail, however, at least for Morris, and in two hours we were on an express train speeding for Cairo. A night at Shepherd’s and then an express train for Alexandria, where I caught by minutes a dilapidated old barge called the Ismalia for Constantinople. My plan was Constantinople and then by boat to Odessa, and thence where the news was originating.
The Ismalia was the limit. She called everywhere there was a landing place. Her chow was vile, and the company worse, and every place we stopped the cable dispatches told of renewed disorders in Russia and the Balkans. Every hour that we lay killing time in the dirty ports at which we called I begrudged most bitterly.
The Piræus and Smyrna slipped past. At Mitylene the Powers were playing a puerile game on the Sultan, or, as the papers said, “Conducting naval demonstrations against the Porte.” The wily old monarch having been there many times before, no doubt recognized in it one of those oft repeated and inefficient bluffs which so delight the heart of the European diplomats. Anyway, he stood pat, and after the Powers had had their play and saw that there was nothing doing, they pulled up their anchors and sailed away, while the Turks smiled broadly. At dawn of the fifth day from Egypt we passed the Dardanelles, crossed the Sea of Marmora, and at six in the evening dropped anchor a mile outside the Golden Horn. Constantinople at last, and the threshold of our situation!
CHAPTER III
Constantinople at last!—The Threshold of the Russian Assignment—A Nation in Convulsion