In the days following this bottling up of Russia the Bosphorus began to look like a harbour which has been suddenly stricken with the plague. Hundreds of ships arrived from Russia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, loaded with grain, lumber, and other products, only to discover that they could go no farther. There were not docks enough to berth them, and they had to swing out into the stream, drop anchor, and await developments. The waters were a cluster of masts and smoke-stacks, and the crowded vessels became so dense that a motor-boat had difficulty in picking its way through the tangled forest. The Turks held out hopes that they might reopen the waterway, and for this reason these vessels, constantly increasing in number, waited patiently for a month or so. Then one by one they turned around, pointed their noses toward the Black Sea, and lugubriously started for their home ports. In a few weeks the Bosphorus and adjoining waters had become a desolate waste. What for years had been one of the most animated shipping points in the world was ruffled only by an occasional launch or a tiny Turkish _caique_, or now and then a little sailing vessel. And for an accurate idea of what this meant, from a military standpoint, we need only call to mind the Russian battlefront in the next year. There the peasants were fighting German artillery with their unprotected bodies, having no rifles and no heavy guns, while mountains of useless ammunition were piling up in their distant Arctic and Pacific ports, with no railroads to send them to the field of action. CHAPTER X TURKEY’S ABROGATION OF THE CAPITULATIONS--ENVER LIVING IN A PALACE, WITH PLENTY OF MONEY AND AN IMPERIAL BRIDE