Escape to Constantinople

Most of the orderliness of the previous day had evaporated and people were no longer standing in queues at small boat pickup stations, but, rather, were mobbing whatever boat was returning to the quay from having taken other boatloads of refugees out to the larger ships, and either trying to muscle or barter their passage.

Thinking of his fellow cadets, Pyotr didn’t try to board immediately but went from one end of the quay to the other, searching out evidence of the red-trimmed gray tunics of the Imperial Military Academy, now, of course, dirty and torn from months of wear and neglect. But he saw none. And he recognized none of the young men he rushed up to and turned so that he could look them in the face. None of the soldiers claimed to know anything about the cadets let alone where they were and how they had fared in the retreat.

As he searched, he saw the fleecing of the refugees that was going on by those who controlled the small boats. Boarding no longer was guaranteed save for the soldiers who could bolster their cases by brandishing whatever weapons they still possessed. The civilians were being made to surrender treasures and goods for passage.

How, Pyotr thought, was he to gain a place in one of the small boats? He still wore his red-trimmed gray tunic and he held the letter General Wrangel had written on his behalf, but he had no weapon, and he doubted a piece of paper would mean anything to the small boat captains.

As he was pondering this, he fortuitously came upon the lieutenant he’d met the previous day, who, with a small unit of soldiers at his direction, was still valiantly trying to keep the boarding of at least a couple of the tugboats as organized as his general had planned. The lieutenant was as good as the word he had given Pyotr the previous day. Proffering his apologies for the change in the atmosphere on the docks and the evaporation of the previous day’s orderliness, the lieutenant put the young Romanov directly into a departing tugboat. He also apologized about what he had said about the quality of the ships; the evacuation vessels in service today weren’t in better condition and accommodations as the ones of the previous day. If anything, they were even more derelict.