M Well, you're your own masters, gentlemen," dryly remarked the newcomer, turning away, after having given both of us a look. That look was too much for me: my race and my profession seemed to be on their trial before all these foreigners; and I told the doctor, once and for all, that I would not go back with him. Correspondents should not, I said, contract the habit of getting captured.
The officers with whom I decided to remain did not appear to care very much one way or the other. In fact, they seemed to regard me with distrust. So did the soldiers.
4 'What regiment do you belong to, golubchik (little pigeon)? " I asked of one of them.
" We don't tell these things to the likes of you," he answered gruffly.
Softening somewhat, about half an hour later (probably because that, in the meantime, he had got wounded in the arm) he asked me what "goobernie " (Government division of the Russian Empire) I came from. He asked this in the tone of a kindly judge giving a criminal a chance to exculpate himself, and when I told him that I came from a part of Europe which was not Russian, he seemed very puzzled. It was like saying that I came from another planet. Shaking his head sadly and incredulously, he turned away from me and never opened his lips to me again.
Meanwhile the doctor continued to make a sad exhibition of himself.
" Can any one give me a Red Cross brassard? " he cried, waving a bundle of rouble notes in the air, "for God's sake a Red Cross brassard! "
One youthful Feldsher hastily gave him one, but refused to take any money for it. Then the officer started for Mukden, without bidding any of us goodbye, and I have never seen him since.
Finding myself thus left alone among men who mistrusted me and who did not know me, I felt disheartened and desperate, and did my best to gain some sympathy from them, first by showing them my Russian credentials and then by climbing up the embankment and exposing myself to the dangers of the soldiers who lay there. This foolish performance seemed to touch them somewhat, and one of the officers then lent me a pair of binoculars, but I could see no Japanese. Coming down from the embankment I made the acquaintance of the other officers, who had now become friendly, and of the colonel, a brave old gentleman, who spoke to me in French.
As time passed, and I showed no signs of treason, by waving of flags or lighting of fires, or by any other suspicious performance, the private soldiers also began to relent and gather round me. One of them, called Soikin, had been more than a year in New York, but could not speak one word of English. He had spent all that year in the house of a German whom he called Baris Enche, a rich man who had seven or eight horses and who spoke Russian. It was a corner house, he said, and situated on the main street. He seemed surprised that I did not identify it from that description.
My conversation with Soikin was interrupted by the order to march. The colonel devoutly crossed himself and said: " In God's name (S. Bogom) let us go."
Night was now coming on, and, as the dust storm hid everything, our leaders thought that it would be a good time to break away. Their plan was to cross the railway, march as far as possible east, and then swing round towards the north, so as to get round the Japanese obstacle in front, instead of going bang into it.
I then mounted the embankment and stood, probably for the last time in my life, between the metals of that fatal railway, that idol of wood and steel, for which tens of thousands of brave men had died — in vain. From Port Arthur to Telissu, from Telissu to Ta-shihchiao, from Ta-shih-chiao to Liaoyang, from Liaoyang to Mukden, their bones were scattered on both sides of it, and, in the whirling dust, an army of gibbering ghosts seemed to rush northwards from a land over which the Russian eagles shall never wave again.
As I crossed the track I threw a glance at the plain behind. It was as desolate as the valley of dry bones. Its only occupants were two corpses. One, who wore the little iron cross of St. George which is given to soldiers, lay on his back, but as he was propped up behind, probably by his large canvas bag, he always seemed to be raising himself on his elbow. His mouth was wide open. His head hung far back, and he was glaring straight up at the sky with an awful expression in his frozen eyes. He seemed to be uttering a gigantic blasphemy against God.