Outside the west gate I called at a Lama temple, where I was well known, and found the old Dai-Lama greatly distressed about the burning of one of his houses, which had contained Russian stores. I felt vaguely refreshed by his irritation; for it proved that human nature had not, after all, been swamped and obliterated by the gigantic disasters that were happening. Incredible as it might appear, the old Lama evidently looked forward to a time when the world would regain its ancient calm. At that moment, however, he was very much afraid of the drunken stragglers who from time to time found their way into his courtyard, and he hailed my coming with great joy, for he seemed to think that I would prove a protector against these desperadoes, and,
as ill-luck would have it, one of them came roaring into the temple just while we were talking. Telling me to tackle him, the Dai-Lama hastily retreated to his room and carefully barred the lath-and-paper door thereof; but in China a door is very often little more than a symbol of privacy, and the big soldier could have walked through this one with but little knowledge that there had been any obstacle in his way. In a very mild and subdued voice I asked the soldier in Russian what regiment he belonged to; and, taking me probably, in his drunken condition, for an officer, he soon went out again after some incoherent mutterings; whereupon the Dai- Lama and his shaven monks emerged from their hiding-places and hailed me with one voice as their benefactor and their deliverer, whom Buddha would reward. I went away, however, as soon as my horse was fed, for I was very doubtful of being equally successful with the next straggler.
At the railway-station the ground was covered with the usual litter of a flying army, and hordes of Chinese, looking like wreckers, were appropriating as much of it as they could, including some damaged rifles and bayonets. Many Russian soldiers were passing by in fairly good order, but dead tired. They frequently sat or lay on the ground to get a few moments' rest. Two or three of them had disinterred pathetic proofs of Russian aspirations in the shape of several ice blocks, of which the commissariat had buried a great quantity in the ground with a view to the coming summer, and were eating the ice greedily. I rode between the burning houses at the station until I found that, owing to the ammunition left behind in them, bullets were flying about as in a battle.
On one occasion I approached a soldier who was lying on the ground, evidently in a dying condition, and took a snapshot of him, feeling at the same time that I was a brute for doing so. To atone for my heartlessness, I afterwards approached the poor man in order to see if I could not help him in some way, but was disappointed when one of his comrades told me gruffly that he was only drunk.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon I began to suspect that the rearguard action which I was expecting would not come off after all, and that, in fact, / was the rearguard. At first I intended, despite the scriptural injunction, to turn back again to my house, to take up some things which I wanted to carry along with me; but on seeing the enormous crowds of Chinese through which I would have to pass, I changed my mind, and, riding as fast as I could, I soon overtook some tired and desperate-looking stragglers, one of whom shouted at me to stop, his object evidently being to deprive me of my horse. He continued bawling after me fiercely for about five minutes; but I rode on, preserving at the same time an appearance of imperturbable deafness and calm, although I expected a bullet to whizz past my ear at any moment, for unfortunately the man had forgotten to let go hold of his rifle. I was rather glad when I overtook a young officer on a white horse and a few mounted infantrymen, and I hastily presented my credentials to the former, but he only said cheerfully: M O chort! (devil!)
/ don't want to see your d d papers," adding fiercely, M Have a cigarette! "
He belonged to the brave ist Siberian Corps which had suffered so terribly during this battle, and he told me that he had not heard till that very day of the retreat having been decided on. " We, the underofficers, know nothing," he plaintively remarked, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke through his nostrils; "the generals, you see, keep everything to themselves."