In spite of these precautions nearly everybody in Odessa was living in a state of nerves as to what might happen. The erratic behavior of the mutinous fleet the summer before, headed by the battleship _Knias Potempkin_, had aroused general apprehension as to what extent irresponsibility might carry the situation. The people distrusted the army and the army the people. The soldiers hated their officers and the officers feared their own soldiers, and both officers and soldiers distrusted the population of the town, while the foreigners had no confidence in anybody. The so-called Jewish massacre a few months before did not tend to quiet the minds of the peaceful residents. At that time the town had been given over for three days into a free-for-all fight and general riot, where everybody killed anybody they had it in for, and a few Jews thrown in for luck. All of the foreign consulates had made detailed preparations for trouble. Rendezvous had been agreed upon for the mustering of the various flocks. A company of soldiers was to be allotted to each consulate to act as an escort to the water front, where ships were held in readiness for immediate departure to places of safety. The residents had been out of touch with the outer world for weeks, owing to the postal and telegraph strike and railroad tie-up. All seemed to think that their respective governments were trying to do something to relieve them and that the international fleet that at last accounts had been making its silly demonstration off the Dardanelles, was going to be allowed to pass through into the Black Sea. No one thought that the Sultan would make any objection to allowing a few cruisers to pass the Bosphorus to protect the trembling subjects of the European governments at the various ports, but while the foreigners at every port where Russian supremacy still held were sitting up nights waiting to be murdered, and praying for the protection of the blue jackets, six inch rifles and machine gun batteries, those very warships were sitting peacefully outside Macedonia, conducting their childish and ineffective bluff.