I had all that was necessary, for one bunch of official dispatches would answer my purpose as well as a dozen. Besides, I had a wire from Chicago that the State Department was also going to send me cables for delivery in the Black Sea. So far so good. I had a strong card, and I thought I knew how to play it so as to keep myself out of the hands of any irresponsible meddlers. The next day Sir Nicolas O’Conor presented me with two bottles of old Irish whiskey, and asked if I would carry dispatches and official documents to the British consul in Odessa. Without undue enthusiasm, I replied that I would be pleased to be of service to him, and he promised to send them around that night. At three in the afternoon, the _France_ slipped into the Golden Horn, after a terrible trip from Zungeldak. I went aboard with Pandermaly, and an hour’s investigation settled my mind. She was the boat for me. I knew enough about ships to know that if any steamer her size could do my business, it was she. Built in Falmouth, England, five years before, she was 125 feet long and 22 feet in the beam, with nice lines and a maximum draft, bunkers full, of 12 feet. Seven bulkheads and steel-plated construction steadied my mind on her toughness. The engines interested me next, for a tug in any angry sea is like a child in the lap of Niagara, but when I stepped down in the engine room my mind was made up. Triple expansion engines good for 1000 H.P., with two big Bellville boilers and a bunker capacity of 140 tons, enough to keep her at sea for ten days at a fair speed, looked good to me. I didn’t care much what the accommodations were, after I had seen the vitals of her, and was pleased when I found them fairly comfortable. Some cabin space forward had been converted into a hold for salvage pumps and wrecking apparatus and bunks for the crew. The rest of the accommodations was directly aft the engines. One entered a small saloon by a ladder through a hatch. Two tiny staterooms flanked a dining-room table, while a nice open fireplace opposite the stairs gave a homelike look that was most acceptable. An oil lamp hung above the table, while two others swung on pivots over the fireplace. Superficially, then, she would do.