Titoff's methods of graft took him into many dubious by-paths, notably those around the offices of a Greek coal dealer. After preliminary plottings, with Viktor as interpreter, he ordered a hundred tons. The coal dealer delivered ninety, the bill for a hundred was presented to the Turkish merchant, and Titoff and the Greek split the value of the missing ten tons. It was easy enough for the chief engineer to make good the deficit by burning ten tons more on paper than in the furnaces.
With all this illicit traffic in men and goods there were some restless half hours during the last few days of our stay in the Bosphorus. Trouble was caused by the bo'sun's woman-thief, whose presence among us the Pera police suspected. Five times they searched for her. The bo'sun detailed a man to watch the shore, and whenever a police launch appeared this look-out would blow a whistle. All the stowaways then scurried to their various hiding-places.
White and I, being the most dangerous cargo, were given the safest--and certainly the dirtiest--hiding-place of all. This was in the ballast-tanks, at the very bottom of the ship, underneath the propeller shaft. The entrance to them was through a narrow manhole, covered by a cast-iron lid, about twenty yards down a dark passage leading from the engine-room to the propeller.
The alarm having been given, Feodor, the second engineer, would lead us along the passage by the light of a taper, remove some boards, raise the lid, and help us to wriggle into the black cavity below. Our feet would be covered by six inches of bilge-water while we crouched down, so as to leave him room enough to replace the iron cover and re-lay the wooden boards that hid it. Then, one at a time and with our knees squelching in the water, we crawled from tank to tank.
Half-way along the line of tanks were two that contained small mattresses, which the second engineer had placed in position for us. After the first day they were sodden with the bilge-water; but at any rate it was better to sit on them than in the water itself. The limited space, however, made it impossible for us to be seated in any but a very cramped position, with hunched-up shoulders rubbing against the slime that coated the sides of each tank. Standing was impossible, and lying down meant leaning one's head on the wet mattress and soaking one's feet in the drain of bilge that swished backward and forward with every motion of the ship.