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'I will ask pardon if I'm mistaken, Sir, but you're the image of a man who a week ago was at Rustchuk, a man much wanted by the Imperial Government. 'A week ago I was tossing in a dirty little hooker coming from Constanza. Unless Rustchuk's in the middle of the Black Sea I've never visited the township. I guess you're barking up the wrong tree. Come to think of it, I was expecting passports.
One glorious morning in June 1875, I, with the true holiday feeling at heart, for the world was all before me, stepped on board the Rustchuk steamer at Buda-Pest, intending to go down the Danube as far as Basiash.
A monitor shelled Varciorova, Turnu Severin, and Giurgevo, situated on the Rumanian bank, and some small craft were captured at Zimnita. On the other hand, the Rumanians were reported to have begun a general bombardment of Rustchuk, an important Bulgarian port on the river.
Here again the Turkish defence was tame. The town was unfortified, but its outskirts presented facilities for defence. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the Russian attack and of artillery fire from the north bank, the small Turkish garrison gave up the town and retreated towards Rustchuk.
Bell's Geography. Vid, Sir Charles Fellows' Asia Minor. The correspondent of the Times in February, 1854, speaking of the great arsenal of Rustchuk, observes: "All the heavy smith work was done by Bulgarians, the light iron work by gipsies, the carpenters were all Turks, the sawyers Bulgarians, the tinmen all Jews." Lib. iv. fin. Sir C. Fellows. Bergeron, t. 1. Edinburgh Rev. 1853.
Accordingly, in the month of August 1885, orders were issued to Russian agents to fan the border dispute; and on August 12/30 the Director of the Asiatic Department at St. Petersburg wrote the following instructions to the Russian Consul-General at Rustchuk:
On the road from Rustchuk we had had uneasy slumbers. I woke next morning and, looking out from the broken window, saw that it was snowing. With a lot of trouble I got hold of a servant and made him bring us some of the treacly Turkish coffee. We were both in pretty low spirits. 'Europe is a poor cold place, said Peter, 'not worth fighting for.
I would have liked to hear what he had to say, for it would have been something to get the inside view of Germany's Eastern campaign, but I did not dare to wait. Any moment there might arrive an incriminating wire from Rustchuk. Finally he lent us a car to take us the few miles to the city.
At once he consented to fulfil his people's desire; and, travelling by railway through Bukharest, he reached the banks of the Danube and set foot on his yacht, not now a prisoner, but the hero of the German, Magyar, and Balkan peoples. At Rustchuk officers and deputies bore him ashore shoulder-high to the enthusiastic people.
I told him I was going on to Constantinople and would take Peter with me, and he was agreeable. He would have to wait at Rustchuk to get his return cargo, and could easily inspan a fresh engineer. I worked about the hardest twenty-four hours of my life getting the stuff ashore.
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