Finally we crowded into two or three houses, at least the officers did so. The men lighted huge fires in the spacious courtyards of these houses and slept beside them.
Prince Nahitchivansky and the Caucasian officers insisted on my coming into the house which they occupied and taking my place on the warm "kang" where, after an hour or so, I slowly began to thaw.
Our next tribulation came in the shape of a frozen general and his men, all of them Donsky Cossacks, who insisted most emphatically that this village had been assigned to them. A long and heated debate on this subject raged between our adjutant and the adjutant of the Donsky general, the latter gentleman being apparently too frozen to speak for himself, and, while it lasted, our hearts almost ceased beating, for the prospect of having to leave our cosy quarters to face the biting cold outside was too terrible. It was like the prospect of being dragged from one's warm bed on a winter's day and thrown naked into a hole in an icy river, and the reader may therefore imagine the agonising interest with which I followed the contest between the prince from the frosty Caucasus and the general from the quiet Don.
Luckily it ended in an amicable compromise, the general being given a place on the "kang" and his followers being allowed to sleep outside. My companions did not sleep, however. They played cards, and the words "clubs," "trumps," "hearts," and "ya eegrayu; yapanemayu "("I play: I understand"), — the strange rhyme which one hoarse-voiced player kept repeating every few minutes, — were the last sounds I heard as I dropped off. On such occasions the congestion was terrible and was made worse, in the morning, by every one insisting on washing his face inside the hut. As a Russian officer, when he washes, requires the attendance of his orderly, who first pours water on his hands out of a cup and then pours it on his head, neck and face, it was generally impossible to cross the floor of a room without upsetting somebody or something.
Under these circumstances it might be expected that rows would take place, but the Russians were invariably good-natured and forbearing. For my own part I always washed outside, but as I could never pluck up sufficient courage to take off any of my three overcoats, I am afraid that my ablutions were of rather a perfunctory character.
CHAPTER VII
Just before the battle, which will for ever make its name celebrated, the city of Mukden was at its best.
In order to find that ancient capital presenting as picturesque and animated a picture as it did then, one must go back to the early days of the Manchus, to the days when Mukden was a real capital
For several reigns it has not received an imperial visit. The palace is in decay, and it is hard to discover what the Tartar-general does with the thousands of pounds sterling which he annually receives from the Court at Pekin for its upkeep. Probably he pockets them. Anyhow the continual neglect of the Court had doubtless a good deal to do with Mukden's loneliness two years ago.
When I came to Mukden, in April 1904, I found the city very dull, contrasting strongly in this respect with Liao-yang. Filled with temples and with Buddhist monks, it seemed to be a sort of faded ecclesiastical capital, like Kandy in Ceylon, Ayuthia inSiam, or Kyoto in Japan. When travellers landed at the bleak little shanty which serves as the railway-station, they found the place almost deserted. The station-master, a Greek barber, and a few officers and soldiers, were the sole inhabitants of this sequestered spot. There was no buffet, and no "jinrikshas"or other means of conveyance waited outside. As the city is miles distant from the station, this lack of transport facilities was a serious matter; and travellers had to walk toward that part of the horizon where they believed Mukden to lie, much in the same way as Red Indians out in the prairies of the Far West stalk stolidly homewards after leaving the train at some point where, barring the railwaystation, there is not a house in sight.
In the city itself there were only two or three houses where European commodities could be purchased. The streets were almost deserted, and the citizens had not yet got over their habit of staring at European customers as if the latter wore more than the regulation number of heads.
February 1905. — What a change has now taken place!
The station is provided with a buffet, into which I have only been able to penetrate] once or twice, owing to the throngs of officers, doctors, and Red Cross nurses that always fill it.