At dawn next day we reached the station of Vangaleen, and it was strange to see the Russian letters on the station and the Russian buildings all around. The Russians now looked so wretched, dirty, red-nosed, and blear-eyed that, in comparison with them, Kentish hop-pickers would be regarded as models of fashion. We had only a few moments to stop at Vangaleen, but the Russians hastened to avail themselves of those few moments, some for the purpose of discharging the offices of nature in the open space near the train, and others of lighting a fire with lightning rapidity for the sake of boiling tea. " Much civilised! " said Hara, when he saw several of them using soap to wash themselves with. He had evidently thought that the Russians only used soap as an article of food.
Some of the prisoners stand stupidly around an ex- Russian interpreter, really a low Chinese coolie, who happened to pick up a few words of Russian somehow or other, while he prods them familiarly with a walking-stick, at the same time impressing on them the fact that "all this would not have befallen you if you had not come to ' our' country," indicating, with a wave of the walking-stick, the Japanese and himself. As regards their treatment in Japan, he explains to them authoritatively, but in execrable Russian, that they will get bread and rice, but no "vodka." A Russian remarks humbly that the Japanese prisoners are well- treated in Russia. " Oh, yes," says the " perevodcheek" loftily, "but the Japanese prisoners are very few — ' ochen malo ' — whereas the Russky prisoners are very numerous — one million! "
The bell announcing the forthcoming departure of the train now rang, and this coolie-" perevodcheek " made himself officious by driving the soldiers into the trucks with his cane, at the same time airing his knowledge of Russian expletives. Some, poor devils, suffering, perhaps, from bowel complaint, brought on by sleeping on the bare ground, were hardly in a position to re-enter their trucks just then; but the Russian-speaking Chinaman had no mercy on them, and the Chinese and Japanese, who had been watching their performances with the critical air of vulgarminded children watching strange brutes evacuating, were delighted at the uncouth stampede of these grey, bearded animals, adjusting their tattered clothing as they ran. The men who had been making tea were driven off mercilessly just before their water had reached the boil. O Russky! Russky! Thy illtrained " perevodcheek " has turned and rent thee!