The chief rogue glared his indignation as White handed a handful of banknotes to Josef, and voiced it when he received the balance sheet. He stood up and declaimed against the deductions, but soon subsided in face of the row of unfriendly faces, the grins, and the revolvers which White and I kept well in evidence. "There is nothing more to be settled," said White. "Here we are among friends. Now leave us." And Titoff went. At the door he turned and said to Josef with evil meaning in his voice: "I shall have business with you later." Josef laughed, and with a shaky hand poured himself out another glass of vodka. The last we saw of Michael Ivanovitch Titoff was his yellow face leaning over the side of the ship when, with Kulman and Josef, we rowed toward the docks. They were taking us on shore before the customs officers boarded the _Batoum_. The other stowaways, who were mingling with the legitimate passengers on the deck, were to come later. The harbour was chock-full of forlorn-looking craft, which had evidently lain idle for a long while. We dodged around and about several of them, so as not to give the appearance of coming from the _Batoum_, and then made for the nearest quay. On it was an Austrian officer. When we were some fifty yards distant he looked at us through field-glasses, and proceeded to detail a group of soldiers to various points on the quay, evidently with the object of stopping and questioning us. Kulman, who was at the tiller, gave an order to the sailor at the oars. We swung round a bend of the shore, and lost sight of the Austrians. Close ahead was another landing-stage. We moored beside it. Without waiting a second, but also without showing haste, we stepped from the boat and climbed the steps--Kulman and I first, and then Josef and White. Two Austrian sentries and some Russian officials stood at the top of the steps. They looked hard at us, but, satisfied by the uniforms of Kulman and Josef, merely nodded a greeting as we passed toward the dock gates and comparative freedom. CHAPTER XVI A RUSSIAN INTERLUDE Odessa, like the rest of the Ukraine, had exchanged Bolshevism for Austro-German domination and confiscation. Already, when we passed through the docks, it was easy to see who were the masters. Austrian customs officers controlled the quays; Austrian and German soldiers guarded the storehouses; Austrian sentries stood at the dock gates and sometimes demanded to see civilians' passports. Had we not been vouched for by the uniforms of the _Batoum_'s third engineer and third mate, the sentries might well have stopped White and me. Once outside the gates we hired a cab, and drove to an address given us by Mr. S.--that of the sister and the mother of a Russian professor at Robert College, Constantinople. Arrived there, we left Josef and Kulman, with very sincere expressions of goodwill.