As soon as we had had a hasty meal of preserves, I wrapt myself in my warm overcoat, without of course removing my clothes or boots or hat, or cameras even, and laid down on the " kang," but at about three next morning, before I had been more than twenty minutes asleep, one of the officers awoke me, saying that we were all leaving immediately. When I went out into the courtyard I thought I should have dropped dead, for the cold was something beyond all description. I had never before experienced such a temperature. I had never imagined that human life could exist in such intense cold. The Kirghiz desert, the Antarctic tableland, cannot, I said to myself, be half as bad as this. Owing to the snow which had fallen during the nighttime, and to the freezing of the natural vapour arising from my horse, that animal had the appearance of a pre-historic monster embedded in an Arctic snowdrift. Its breath had frozen on leaving its nostrils so that there was a horn of ice a foot long projecting from its nose, and lumps of the hardest ice of unequal sizes had become attached to its hoofs. I think that at that moment I would have sacrificed all my prospects in this world and the next for a warm bed and safety. But, unfortunately, I had to go, and, in a few moments after I had been awakened, I had saddled my horse, although the bit burned my benumbed hands like frozen mercury, and was riding along with the Donsky Cossacks. The earth was all a white blank, the stars were of extraordinary brilliancy, the cold prevented me from noticing more. I wore the thickest woollen socks that Tientsin could furnish, and over them I wore high felt-lined boots that would have been intolerably hot in the coldest English winter; but, in spite of all this, the cold stirrups burned through the soles of my boots like redhot irons, and, to save myself from the loss of my legs by frost-bite, I jumped off my horse and walked on foot. How long I walked I don't know, but I noticed that the hardy Cossacks were also on foot. At dawn we entered a deserted Chinese village at one end, while in at the other end came my friends the Verkhnyudinsky Cossacks and the men of the Caucasian brigade. I very soon explained to their satisfaction my ride across the Liao-ho, and they told me of the bloody battle of Sandypu and of how Mishchenko had been wounded during a desperate attack on the village of Wukiatsz, which a handful of Japanese had stuck to with their usual bull-dog tenacity.
Now, for the retreat from Sandypu. I had just made myself comfortable in a Chinese house, with my friends of the Daghestansky Polk, when the usual news came — instant retreat. It was now evening, and the snow was falling heavily. Displacing a fleecy pile of it from my saddle, I mounted and rode north through a country ensanguined, despite the thick white mantle which enshrouded it, by a blood-red glow extending all over the western heavens, in which the sun was now sinking.
Long after darkness had fallen, we reached a village in which there were lights and crowds of soldiers and officers, and stopped in the outskirts of it for some time, trying to locate ourselves. Under the impression that we were going to put up here for the night. I dismounted and entered a house, but soon discovered that my party had gone on elsewhere. Where to find them on such a dark night wTas now the question. Fortunately I encountered a soldier from the Daghestansky regiment, and followed him. It was very difficult to do so, however, for he rode a fine horse, and went at a break-neck pace, threading his way through crowds of other horsemen from whom it was difficult to distinguish him. In fact the only way I could distinguish him in the darkness was by the fact that the rump of his horse was grey and that a weapon by his side glinted at a certain angle.
So much ice had become attached to the hoofs of my horse, that the unfortunate animal seemed to be walking on four stilts, no two of which were of the same length, and, to make matters worse, I almost lost all feeling in my own extremities owing to the intense cold. I should have liked to walk on foot in order to restore my circulation, but I could not now do so, as I had got to keep up with this horseman.
Some time before daybreakmyguide and I blundered into a large body of cavalry standing compact and almost invisible on the outskirts of a village, and, in spite of the darkness, I could see at once from the multiplicity of strange banners which they carried folded up, that they were the Caucasians I was in search of. There seemed to be some difficulty about getting quarters in this village, for we had to remain on the outskirts for half an hour while our leaders held a heated discussion with some soldiers who were already in possession.