By six that night I had my evidence all in and was aboard the _France_ ready for the run to the uncensored cable in Roumania. CHAPTER VII _The France Does Her Best in the Run for the Uncensored Cable, Sticks in the Mud, but Gets Away and Arrives at Sulina Mouth with an Hour to Spare_ Every line of enterprise is subject to disappointment and the newspaper business is no exception. I arrived on board the _France_ with my mind picturing an eight-hour drive for the Roumanian cable, and my story in print in the afternoon edition of my paper the next day. “All right,” I called from the rowboat as soon as I was in hearing distance of the _France_. “Get up the anchor—let her go,” but the only reply I had as I climbed over the side of my ocean-going greyhound of a tug was the sad face of old man Gileti and a series of deprecating shrugs and gestures accompanied by a line of guttural explanations in Greek. Nothing is more exasperating than delays on a cable story, and the language that floated over the expanse of Odessa harbor when I finally learned what my skipper had to say was certainly a disgrace, even for a journalist. In a word, the old Greek had failed to get the _France_ port clearance, which meant that we could not get away until the next day, and that my precious “beat” must be delayed at least 24 hours. The whys and the wherefores were transmitted later by Morris, who spent an hour in getting the facts from the slow-witted old Greek. My chief of staff, secretary and steward was filled with disgust and had spent a half hour outlining through an interpreter to the wretched captain the enormity of his crimes. “Yes, sir,” he told me, “I have surely made old man Gileti sit up. I have put him wise to the fact that for a sure-enough dub and promiscuous fat-head, he has the rest of the world beat, yes sir, beat, backed into a siding with the switch locked. In fact, I regard that man, sir, as dead slow; yes, sir, slow, paralyzed in fact,” etc. Just how all these things had been translated I did not ask, but I did ask why the man had failed to get the shipping papers, without which we could not go to sea. When a skipper enters a port, he takes his papers ashore and leaves them with the authorities until sailing time, when an official brings them off and gives clearance of the harbor. If a ship sails without its papers, it loses all caste and is liable to confiscation by any warship that might get wind of the fact. Hence the necessity of the delay.