the dog aboard upon
specific orders from Admiral Bristol. The commanding officer, Captain
Sharp was most helpful and kind. He gave Nelka his cabin and, also as
she had run out of everything, offered her his underclothes. Two
sailors were assigned to take care of Djedda.

They steamed back towards Constantinople, but had to delay the return
for they had to go out to sea for gunnery practice. Thus, Nelka must
have remained on the destroyer for four or five days before
returning. This was a very harrowing and needless expedition which
could have very easily ended in a tragic manner.

By summer the work of the Russian section of the Embassy was coming
to an end. My chief, Mr. Imbrie, received a new assignment to go to
Rumania, and we decided to return to France. The Embassy hearing
this, offered to give us a permit to travel to Marseilles on an
American Shipping Board vessel, which normally did not carry
passengers. They advised that it would be convenient for us and
inexpensive, the rate being only $5 per day for each of us, for a
trip of about five days.

We accepted with pleasure. It was also convenient for the
transportation of our animals, for by this time, in addition to
Djedda we had a small black dog and two young cats. One, Nuri, was a
small kitten which I picked up out of the gutter where it was nearly
drowned in the rain. That was a very wonderful cat who lived with us
for 18 years.

Late one evening we boarded the Lake Farley. The captain assigned to
us our cabin and we were underway. It was late July and when we
entered the cabin we found that the temperature must have been well
over a hundred. It was so hot that the floor was too hot for the cats
to walk on and they kept jumping back and forth from one bunk to the
other. The dogs we had left on deck.

So we went to the Captain and complained about the heat. He said he
was sorry he had nothing better but that the whole boat was at our
disposal and we could arrange ourselves wherever we wished. So after
looking everything over, we finally decided to sleep on top of the
chartroom. We climbed up there with a couple of blankets and settled
for the night under the stars. This was not bad but only the sparks
from the funnel kept raining down on us most of the time. But we got
used to this and stayed that way most of the trip. The captain was
American as well as the mate but the crew was of all nationalities,
the cook being a Turk. However it did not look as th