Читать книгу The Cable Game. The Adventures of an American Press-Boat in Turkish Waters During the Russian Revolution онлайн

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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.