A peculiar thing about the Russians in Tientsin was that, when introduced to them for the first time, they always asked me, with a certain odd intonation in their voice: " What brings you here?" — and I soon saw that this was a pass-word exchanged among their secret agents. I never tried to find out what the answer was, but, although I always remained outside the charmed circle, I felt that the Russians trusted me implicitly.
Before leaving for the north, I paid a visit to Mr. Lessar, the Russian Minister at Peking, now, alas! dead. When I called on him, he was sitting before his desk with his legs extended on another chair. He wore the uniform of a general, and was looking very worn. He told me that he had been in Central Asia and had known Skoboleff; but most of his conversation was devoted to a heated exposition of the dangers to which European and American interests in the Far East were exposed through the Japanese propaganda in China. He told me in the most earnest manner (and I must say that, owing to his ghastly appearance, for he was then dying, his words had a great effect on me) that the Japanese were working, through Yuanshih-kai and the Yangtsze Viceroys, towards the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. They were exciting a revolutionary spirit in the country. They were at the back of some of the powerful secret societies, and they were even using their Buddhist monks down in the south to scatter the seeds of revolt. The Japanese wanted in China a strong new Government, which would be able to unite with them against Europe; and England would be the first to suffer when Japan had attained this end.
Mr. Lessar protested against the enormous quantity of ammunition and supplies that the Japanese were bringing into Newchwang through Chinese territory and against Admiral Togo's seizure of the Elliott Islands, a breach of neutrality of which the Powers had taken no notice. He would not, however, allow me to publish his name in connection with these remarks, so that I made no use of them at the time.
I returned to Tsinmintun with a number of Russian Legation officials who were going home that way to Europe, and I again met my Tommy Atkins friend at Shan-hai-kwan, and heard from him a lot of strange stories about the prosperous Anglo-Chinese railway, for which he worked. It seems that since the war began, and especially before the fall of Port Arthur, the Russians had spent enormous sums in bribing the employes of this railway to convey food, ammunition, etc., from Tsinmintun to Shan-hai-kwan, or some other port, whence it was shipped to Port Arthur by captains who had also received enormous bribes, and who would each of them have been rich beyond the dreams of avarice if they had succeeded in bringing their precious freight of explosives into the beleaguered fortress. In spite of this outlay of money, which must have come to millions of pounds sterling, Japanese agents — not one of whom received, I suppose, more than a pound a week — nipped nearly every scheme in the bud. Most of those they did not nip were nipped by Togo's blockading squadron.
I left Tientsin for my Cossack camp with the greatest delight, for, after such a long absence from cities, the life of Tientsin disgusted me. To be separated from my horse, to sleep within four walls, to eat my meals in a restaurant, was intolerable. I could not understand how the people of Tientsin lived the unnatural life they led. I failed to comprehend how a clerk could sit all day at a desk, and great was my pity for the shop-boys who had to wear immaculate linen, and whose only exercise consisted in vaulting over the counter. I felt that I knew immeasurably more of life than they did, for I had seen wholesale death. I was accordingly delighted when, on reaching Tsinmintun at nightfall one day, I found there a force of about twenty Cossacks awaiting to convey my friends from the Legation, inside the Russian lines.
Assuming again my Russian top-boots, leathern jacket, belt, "polshubok," and cap, I went along with them on my faithful horse, which an English railway employt had kindly taken care of all this time, and for which I had now brought, by way of New Year's gift, a beautiful new English bridle that I had purchased in Tientsin. Three or four hours' headlong gallop in the dark brought us across the Liao-ho and to the first Uape, a very clean one, where we had a rousing reception.
At last, after wandering long amid narrow streets and unsightly houses — at last I had come home!
CHAPTER VI