In the midst of these melodramatic doings, news came that Lord Chandos had reached Smyrna in the _Oxford_. Immediately Finch sent a special messenger to inform him of the Rais Effendi’s mysterious overtures and to ask for guidance in the matter without delay. “The noble Lord’s answer from thence was that he was hastening all he could to communicate to me His Majesty’s Commands and the Company’s Instructions, adding that he feard’ our latitude was not great on the submissive part.”[286] On receipt of this reply, Sir John notified the Rais Effendi that his successor was at Smyrna and that he hourly expected him at Pera: the pulling of the Pasha’s beard would have to be put off for a while. That and all other operations henceforth passed out of his hands.
For the first time after many years Sir John felt able to breathe. But patience to a man in a state of suspense is difficult. He counted the days, the hours, he consulted the weather prophets: it was the time of year when the Etesian winds setting N.E. rendered navigation in that corner of the Mediterranean exceedingly slow. The ship, faced by a thousand snares of sea and land, had to struggle along the Asia Minor coast, continually tacking and taking careful soundings, frequently casting and weighing anchor, and casting it again--now before Mytilene, now before Tenedos, until after a whole week’s voyage from Smyrna it reached Gallipoli--there to meet the millrace of the Dardanelles. So fierce was the current in that season and, owing to the tortuous nature of the channel, so dangerous, that ships had to wait at the mouth of the Hellespont for the wind to change before they could even enter the Straits. Sometimes they had to wait so long that, it is said, in Byzantine times, the corn which was transported from Egypt to Constantinople rotted on board. Sir John could not wait: “I long for dispatch, all delay being a just ground (if any can be so) of impatience.”[287] The moment he heard that the _Oxford_ had arrived at Gallipoli, he sent thither a brigantine with twenty oars and four boats to expedite the last stage of Lord Chandos’s journey. His Lordship, no less sensible of the need of dispatch, promptly left the _Oxford_ at Gallipoli and with a few servants performed the last 125 miles in the brigantine, landing at Constantinople incognito on Friday, July 22nd, “to my no small joy.”[288]