and then going off and forgetting all about me. I never before saw such dirty table-linen as that of which the u Saratoff " boasted, and its clientele was on a par with its table-linen, for most of the people I met there — and they included some of the leading business men of the place — looked as if they made it a habit of sleeping in their clothes.
As a rule there was more noise than drunkenness in the " Saratoff," but occasionally, owing to some trifling circumstance, such as an air that recalled the Don or the Volga or the singing of the Tsiganes at the "Tachkent" or " Samarcande " in St. Petersburg, from the broken-down string band which performed in the verandah, a wave of intoxication would sweep over the place, and those overwhelmed by it would wake up next day in the Amerikansky Dom or the Yaponsky Dom, or perhaps in the middle of the street.
There were few outdoor amusements in Port Arthur. Sometimes I went with some Russian friends on a picnic to Pigeon Bay or Louisa Bay or the Waterworks, in which latter place a few stunted trees and several blades of grass made the scene look almost home-like.
Sometimes we hired a "sampan " (Chinese boat) and, passing down the formidable lane of battle-ships, had a swim and an al fresco lunch somewhere along the rocky coast. Horse-races were held once or twice a year on the parade-ground, and at these races a good rider named Collins won many prizes, and became in consequence a great favourite with the Russian officers. Collins, who is half English and half Japanese, is now serving a sentence of penal servitude in Japan, where he was arrested soon after the war broke out on a charge of espionage.
Port Arthur was a strange cross between Waldersee's Lager and a mining camp in the Wild West with a strain of the St. Petersburg salon. If it had been garrisoned by English troops it would have been clean, respectable, and deadly dull. Under the Russian regime it was very dirty and very gay. The Viceroy, the generals, the admiral and the higher civil, military and naval officers were continually giving dinners, but the two great social fixtures of each week were the balls at the Morsky and Garizonye Sobranie (Naval and Military Clubs).
The Naval Club was installed in an old Chinese temple near Admiral Alexeieffs house, and, on special occasions, the balls there were attended by the Viceroy, who never danced however, but generally sat at the head of the hall, talking to Madame Starck in German, for, like her husband the admiral, Madame Starck did not speak Russian very fluently,
After the Saturday night ball at the Military Club there was always a theatrical performance given by amateurs, and at every one of these performances Madame Stoessel insisted on playing the leading female part. Luckily she played well. Scenes from the Russian dramatists, generally Ozerov, Tolstoi, Tchekoff, Griboiedof, Tchirikov, Andreeiv, and Gogol, and from English, French and German dramatists, were usually selected. In January there was a fine exhibition of Russian and French oil paintings which the Viceroy had persuaded somebody, by the offer of a subsidy, to bring all the way from Irkutsk.
The balls were very enjoyable functions, and, owing to the overwhelming preponderance of the military element, very picturesque. The sight of the officers dancing the Mazurka in their variegated uniforms and with jingling spurs, while, outside, the clouds gathered thick on the political horizon, made me frequently repeat to myself that well-worn quotation from Byron in which the lamps shine o'er fair women and brave men. What added, in a way that I cannot quite explain, to the eerie feeling of impending disaster that sometimes took possession of us was the whisper which one heard repeated everywhere among the Russians, that the Viceroy who ruled this turbulent, doomed city owed his position to the fact that he was a natural son of the Tsar Alexander II. by a Roumanian woman, and the admiral's personal appearance lent some support to this theory.
As is generally the case in Russia, the dancing was the best in the world, and the music was such as is seldom heard in the Far East; but, unfortunately, the tragic events which followed so rapidly make this gay music, when I hear it now, sound in my ears like a funeral march. To quote the Russian poet Vaesemsky:
That ballad! — 'tis now a funeral dirge, That dance! — the memories of it chill me, Like the sheeted ghosts of the dead.
Over a dozen dear friends whose acquaintance I made at these functions are now at the bottom of the Yellow Sea. Two of them went down in the Petropavlovsk.