Hearing, the day after my arrival in camp, that a party of two hundred men under Colonel Plaoutine was going to cross the Liao river next day, I determined to accompany it, for it would be rather difficult for my friend Colonel Pestitch to get hold of me in case I was away down somewhere in the rear of the Japanese army. The only other foreigner who joined this party was Lieutenant Ferdinand Burtin, a young French officer from Algeria, who had some time before joined Mishchenko's detachment as a volunteer, with the rank of " sotnik " or centurion.
Colonel Plaoutine's instructions were to cross the Liao river, which is the frontier of China, to proceed south as far as Davan, see if there were any Hunghuze in that district, or if the Japanese had been establishing any depots there, then march westward as far as the Kupanze-Tsinmintun railway and ascertain if that line were carrying any contraband for the Japanese.
His instructions went no further than this. He was not told to stop any train, or to arrest anybody; he was told, however, that he was not to allow himself to be over-powered. As a matter of fact, he went much further south than his instructions warranted. These were the ostensible objects of the expedition, but I suspected that a deeper object, unknown even to Plaoutine himself, lay behind, and at once wrote to the New York Herald, in a letter which was published about a month afterwards, saying that the real aim of the Russians in making this raid was "to reconnoitre the extreme left of the Japanese, with a view to sending Cossack expeditions that way in order to cut the railway south of Liaoyang."
Before we started on this foray there was a good deal of excitement among the Cossack officers who were to take part in it, at the prospect of coming in contact with the Chinese troops or with the English officials on the railway. Everybody wanted to join in this expedition, and, late on the night of December 20, while the Russian officers were discussing the perilous ride in front of them, three lads, all of them about fifteen years of age, who had run away from home in order to join Mishchenko, came to our leader and implored him to grant them permission to go also. A vivid representation of the long rides in front of them and of the risks they must undergo, seemed only to whet their appetite for the adventure. In their eagerness for danger they reminded me strongly of English or American lads. They were Russian Tom Sawyers or Huckleberry Finns. But, for some reason or other, they did not turn up next day.
The officers themselves thought that the danger from the Hunghuze would be great, and that if they attempted to enter any station where an Englishman was station-master, there would be a row, which might run like wild-fire round the world, and in which not only Russia and England but other nations as well might be involved.
They seemed greatly to relish, however, the prospect of coming directlyinto contact with these Englishmen, so troublesome, but so hard to get at; and the railway was always alluded to by them as the " English railway."
As is well known, of course, this Tsinmintun line had originally been almost an English strategic railway, run up from Shan-hai-kwan to a point as far north as Mukden, in order to counterbalance the Russian line on the other side of the Liao-ho, and to place the English in a position to watch Russia's descent from the north, and, if possible, to stop it. The previous relations of the Russians with the directors of this Chinese railway had not been of the most pleasant character. On July 8, 1900, they had grabbed the whole line and turned out Mr. Claud W. Kinder and his staff, a step which was somewhat resented in England, owing to the fact that the line had been chiefly constructed by British capital, and was, to a large extent, mortgaged to British bondholders. At Yinkow and elsewhere they had seized fifty miles of railway material, and all sorts of machinery and stores, and sent them all on to Port Arthur, and they behaved everywhere in the same rather high-handed fashion.
One thing that served to make the expedition popular among the Cossacks was their expectation that,
unless they came in contact with the English, it would not be those stubborn Japanese that they would be called upon to fight, but the Chinese.
" I like fighting the Chinese soldiers," quoth Philipoff. " As soon as they let off their rifles they run away. And, glory be to God, in China I have now, one of noble birth! a chance of getting a better horse! "
And, as a matter of fact, during this raid, Philipoff once brought before me a Chinese farmer, who was feverishly anxious to swap his good horse for Philipoffs bad one; but as I was afraid that pressure had been brought to bear on the Celestial, I would not consent to the transfer.