The faithful Morris as I then learned had been surreptitiously laying in the wherewithal for this banquet at every port. A young live pig at Sulina Mouth, a goose at Sinope, some birds at Trebizond and heaven only knows what besides. With the back panel of the sealed locker carefully slid out we tapped our liquid refreshment and in very truth the dinner proved a great success. Even the imported guests cheered up and by the end of the banquet were drinking toasts to me, the Chicago _Daily News_, to Morris, aye, and even unto the fat live pig, alive no longer, alas. It was midnight when we wound up and sent our guests ashore and ourselves turned in for the night after a day perhaps the most varied in experience that I have ever lived through. CHAPTER XIII _We sail Away from Batuum with a Beat, Official Dispatches, Foreign Mails and a Boatload of Refugees That Keep Us Awake Nights_ I had hoped to sail away from Batuum the day after Christmas, but so fierce was the storm that it was impossible to take on coal. All this day and well into the next the roar of the sea on the breakwater sounded in our ears like a never-ending bombardment of big guns. Not in the memory of the oldest inhabitant had such a furious tempest raged within the harbor. Even the buildings along the shore were in danger and the beautiful little yacht clubhouse, a fraction of a mile above the port, was completely carried away by the great waves that broke beyond their accustomed bounds and crushed the frail structure as though it had been but a house of cards. But there is an end of all things and on the morning of the third day the wind abated and only the heavy swell that surged without in the winter sunshine was left to tell the tale of wreck and devastation that had swept the coast during the past days. By ten o’clock I had two barges of coal alongside and a double crew at work passing baskets over the side and emptying them into the bunker holes in the deck. It was vile stuff that we were getting and the engineer fairly tore his hair as he saw the little better than dust being poured into his bunkers. “She will never make steam on that rubbish,” he kept crying again and again. Yet it was all that there was in Batuum and we had to take it or leave it. So we took it and at war prices at that. It certainly was a scandal and it broke my heart to pay out fifteen dollars a ton for stuff that in any other market would have gone begging at three dollars. But there was no alternative, so we took it, paid out our Rodwaner gold and smiled.