On my return to Mukden I found the wildest tales in circulation regarding my departure from Mishchenko's force. Cossack officers said that they had seen me with their own eyes ride into Newchwang, a general at the "etat-major " had declared that he would have ordered the Cossacks to fire on me as I went off, if I had dared to leave him under the same circumstances. Kuropatkin had complained to Mishchenko about me. Mishchenko (who had not heard my version of the story) had casually told his men to hang me if I ever fell into their hands.
I found that I was as one excommunicated. The censor had wept at my treachery, and declared that his belief in human nature was shattered. Brother correspondents shook their heads dolorously, and said that it was all up with me.
The Russian diplomatists with whom I had travelled from Peking, and who were now my guests in Mukden, solemnly advised me, after seeing some prominent Russian officials, not, as I valued my life, to go back to the front. The soldiers might do something violent.
I went back, however, that very day. It was snowing and cold (20° below freezing-point at the time I started, but in a day or so it seemed to have gone down to 50° below freezing-point). I had now no Cossack with me, for PhilipofY was with Mishchenko, but I thought it imperatively necessary to explain matters to the general at once; so I set out alone, with but a very vague idea of where I was going to, for I knew that Mishchenko had left his old quarters, and was far away somewhere down along the Liao-ho.
Towards nightfall I reached the village of Sahudyapu from which Mishchenko had started on his famous raid; but as it was now the headquarters of General Grippenberg, a very severe disciplinarian, who had been maddest of all about my escapade, and who would have at once sent me back to Mukden if I had dared to call on him, I rode past as quickly as I could. The cold was now rendered intense owing to a cutting wind which blew from the north, and which seemed to penetrate to the marrow of my bones although it had to pass through no less than three thick coats each lined with sheepskin. It also blew snow in my eyes so that I could hardly see, and, anyhow, there was nothing to see — nothing but a vast snowy plain of infinite desolation. It was impossible for me to distinguish on the horizon where sky began and earth ended. I seemed to be caught in an immense sphere of snowy crystal. No words can express the bleakness of these polar wastes.
At last I knew what a northern winter meant, and realised the force of Nekrassov's description of that terrible monarch:
In the sepulchres, King Winter said, With flowers of ice I deck the dead; I freeze the blood in living veins, And in living heads I freeze the brains.
Under these circumstances I was delighted to meet with a red-bearded Donsky Cossack, who told me that he was riding to rejoin the detachment of General Mishchenko. We managed to converse, after a fashion, on quite a variety of subjects, and finally became fast friends.
By-and-by we met signs of life in this desert. The first signs of life consisted of a young Chinese woman and an old man who seemed to be her father, both of whom were being conveyed to the rear by a Cossack. Then came some more Chinese. An aged man was carrying on his back an old door! One young couple had with them an ass and a baby boy. I thought of the Flight into Egypt; but, alas! this child is more likely to be a Genghis Khan than a Christ. Then we met signs of battle, wounded officers and men being carried on stretchers, and a score or so of Japanese prisoners. I talked with the latter, and noticed that, far from being downcast, they spoke up cheerfully, asking me to give them cigarettes. One of them, however, looked very sad. He was a handsome youth, and, in contrast with the jeering Cossacks, he had the calm, unexpected, foreign face of an Egyptian statue, of a Rameses II. or a Queen Tai. Late that night my friend met other Cossacks from the Don, who had established themselves snugly in a Chinese hut, which they had managed to make as hot as an oven. The Cossacks welcomed me, and asked me to share their simple meal of soup, beef and black bread, which I very gladly did, although the beef was handed to me in hands which were none too clean. I gained their hearts by repeating snatches of Russian songs that I had picked up, but grieved them, I think, by going to