It seemed a poor return for all the pains that I had taken in behalf of these wretched people. I called in Morris and told him that I wanted him to watch the refugees carefully from this time on, as I suspected that one of them at least, might be a desperate man, and the Lord only knew what he might be up to before we landed back in the Golden Horn. “Now, Morris,” I told him, “I am going to assign you to watch these men just as carefully as you know how and if you see the slightest sign of a single one of them making any move which in your judgment is going to endanger the _France_ and the lives of any of us I want you to shoot him on the spot!” And I gave him my big army Colt. The black man’s face shone with excitement and his teeth gleamed, as he replied: “Yes, sir; yes, sir. I’ll do just as you say, sir. And if I see anything suspicious, I’ll shoot him right through the head, sir,” and he went on deck to look for symptoms. But it proved unnecessary. Whether anything more was in the bunkers or not we never knew. Suffice it to say that we did not blow up, but kept blithely on our way towards the mouth of the Bosphorus, whence we had steamed nearly two weeks before. CHAPTER XIV _The Return to the Golden Horn and the End of the Assignment_ It was just four o’clock three days later on the afternoon of December 30th that the tired little _France_ poked her steel nose into the waters of the Bosphorus and, running around the first promontory, dropped her anchor in quiet waters just off the Turkish fort that stands sentinel at the eastern end of that wonderful cleft in the mountains that divide the East from the West, Asia and her mediæval civilization from Europe and all her enlightened progress. Half an hour served to pass us through the customs and with hearts rejoicing and care free we steamed on through that picturesque gap. As we sailed around the bend I stood on the bridge and watched the dull, grim waters of the Black Sea cut off from view by the rising headlands. It was one of our typical days. The barometer was falling and the wind was coming up and the surly sea without was beating itself into one of its chronic rages that we knew so well, and its white-caps and froth seemed to whip angrily after us almost as though we were its natural prey and that it now beheld us eluding its maw. With each turn of the screw we were getting into smoother water and in a few minutes were cutting up the still surface as a knife passes through cheese.