Our colonel asked me somewhat nervously if it were possible that British soldiers occupied this station, and I answered that I did not know where they could have come from, unless some tremendous scheme of armyreform had been suddenly put into operation since last I had had news from England. This grain of comfort was, however, modified by the lurid description which I gave of the personnel of the railway we were just going to tackle. At the head of it was Mr. Kinder, a violent Russophobe, married to a Japanese lady; while all the leading employes, down to the station-masters and conductors, were also Englishmen, and generally ex-soldiers. " Naturally," I added, " they all take their cue from Mr. Kinder," and I assured the colonel that if he asked one of these English ex-soldier station-masters to hand over his books to him for inspection, the Englishman would undoubtedly refuse and there would probably be bloodshed. On hearing this, the colonel became very grave, but said that he had been ordered to see the books and must see them, bloodshed or no bloodshed.
The rumour that the British were awaiting them had a very enlivening effect on the Cossacks. At last, then, they were to meet face to face this powerful, hostile people who had, from their sea-girt fastnesses, directed all the anti- Russian movements that had taken place in European and Asiatic politics for the last hundred years. I must say that the Cossacks never rode with such spirit to encounter the Japanese, against whom they never seemed to have any grudge.
It was an ideal Christmas Eve. The moon was very bright. The cold was intense. The cloudless sky was studded with stars, and deep silence reigned over the vast plain which we were traversing, a silence which was broken only by the creak of leather, the jingle of steel, and the steady, rhythmic ring of twice two hundred pair of horses' hoofs on the ground, which was frozen hard as iron.
Save for the furious barking of the village dogs, there was a deathlike stillness in the sombre and sleeping villages through which we passed, and, of course, not a light showed.
The village wells looked like the empty sockets of gigantic candlesticks, the broad sheets of ice spread all round them, and the rows of frozen drops hanging from the slabs of stone looking, in the white moonlight, like melted candle-wax.
Alternately trotting and walking, and dismounting for about five minutes every hour in order to ease our horses, we at length drew near to Ta-ho-shan. The mountain which gives its name to the railway station rose above the horizon, and as it rose there was first one faint flash of light from its summit, then another; and several voices in our party exclaimed simultaneously: " They are signalling! "
In one of his novels, Sir Walter Scott makes some Highlanders whisper to one another in a tone almost of awe the name of one of the great rivers of Scotland which they are approaching by night during war-time.
In approaching this Anglo-Chinese railway we experienced the same superstitious feelings. I say " we," for, owing to the danger that now threatened all of us in common, we had become one gigantic argus-eyed monster with two hundred pairs of arms and one soul, in which mine was, for the time being, merged, — a monster that was rushing forward, perhaps to destruction. To-night we could understand how those Highlanders felt, for, under certain conditions, a railway becomes almost as romantic and as awe-inspiring as a great river.
We felt that we were rushing into the lair of an alien civilisation. We had jumped at one bound from the tenth century into the twentieth, but it was not quite certain yet how the twentieth would receive us, for armed foreigners travelling in time of war are sometimes received unceremoniously when they attempt, during the night, to enter places that do not belong to them.
In the distance a railway engine whistled. It seemed an alarm, a tocsin, and we all broke into a " riceyou " (trot). Then the railway lights came into view over the brow of the hill, and a high column of grey smoke shifting spasmodically hither and thither indicated the whereabouts of a railway locomotive. After my plunge into the Dark Ages, I watched that moving column of grey smoke with as much interest as I had, when a child, gazed on a railway locomotive for the first time.
In another moment we had reached the track. The Cossacks were left several hundred yards behind, and only the Russian officers and myself crossed the line and mounted the platform.
There was no resistance. There were no English soldiers, and only a few Chinese sentries, who fled at our approach. It was dark, so we produced lights and went into the station-master's room. The station-master, a small, putty-faced young Chinaman, clad in that long robe which a Celestial seems to wear day and night, came towards us rubbing his almond eyes vigorously and repeatedly, and seeming to be considerably confused. He gazed in astonishment at his armed visitors,
whose huge woolly busbies, superabundance of clothing, and icicle-laden beards and furs gave them on that Christmas morning the appearance of a number of Santas Claus.
Colonel Plaoutine at once asked if there was an English station-master, or any foreigners in the place. No, there were no foreigners there just then. Our leader, who seemed to be relieved on hearing this, then asked if he could see the books, at the same time picking them up in a casual sort of way and opening them. These books did not indicate, however, that the railway was carrying any contraband of war to the Japanese at Newchwang.