Korniloff bade his chance host good-bye and was off on his journey
again before the regiment was stirring. He decided that he must trust
to his feet. He would march right across Hungary; and by means of his
map and compass he hoped to make so straight a line that it would not
take him more than a month. He was now in good health and in excellent
trim generally, and he had no fear of the journey if he could only get
enough food to keep him alive. He must not linger on the way, however,
for every hour was now of importance to him.
Having taken a crust and a cup of coffee at a wayside tavern full of
soldiers, he got out of the city while the day was still young. Then
began a long and dreary tramp, mostly alone, for the peasants in this
region were not communicative, for the simple reason that he could
not speak their language. He tramped for whole days without passing
anything bigger than small hamlets, and his conversation was limited
to asking, most frequently at farmhouses, for _kruh_ (bread) or _viz_
(water).
Sometimes the peasants would look him up and down and ask him,
"_Osztrak?_" ("Austrian?"), and he would nod his head.
Very rarely did he get anything without paying for it, and as he saw
his small stock of heller gradually disappearing, he had to be as
economical as possible with those that remained. He slept mostly in the
open air, since the weather was fine and there was little danger; once
he was given a "shake-down" in a loft, and once he paid a few heller
for a bed at a country inn.
Eventually Korniloff was reduced to almost his last pieces of money,
and he felt that he must husband these in case of a very pressing need.
A day came when he got nothing to eat but some wild strawberries picked
by the roadside. A woman whom he asked for a bit of bread chased him
away from her door with an oath, calling him "_Verdammten Osztrak!_"
The next morning he got some bread, but again a day passed with no food
but wild berries and water from a brook.
Things were getting worse and worse, but Korniloff knew he was near the
end of his journey, and would be safe in another three or four days if
only he could hold out. He had now been walking for nearly twenty days.