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A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
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[Illustration: TOMB OF A CAUCASIAN CHIEF, SHOWING WHAT HE DIED POSSESSED
OF INCLUDING THE ACTUAL NUMBER OF HIS CARTRIDGES]
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A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
WITH SOME NOTES OF HIS EXPERIENCES
AMONG THE RUSSIANS
BY STEPHEN GRAHAM ❦ ❦ ❦
WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
AND TWO MAPS ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦
LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXI
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh
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CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PROLOGUE: HOW I CAME TO BE A TRAMP 3
I. ROBBED IN THE TRAIN 15
II. CHRISTMAS IN LITTLE RUSSIA 24
III. MUMMERS AT A COUNTRY HOUSE 38
IV. AT UNCLE’S 52
V. AMONG MOSCOW STUDENTS 60
VI. “LOVE US WHEN WE ARE DIRTY, FOR 73
EVERYONE WILL LOVE US WHEN WE ARE
CLEAN!”
VII. A NIGHT AT A SHRINE 83
VIII. THE DAY AFTER THE FEAST 94
IX. A MUSHROOM FAIR IN LENT 101
X. DEPARTURE FROM MOSCOW 108
XI. THE COMING OF SUMMER IN THE 117
CAUCASUS
XII. THE EPISTLE TO THE CAUCASIANS 124
XIII. A MOUNTAIN DAWN 131
XIV. AMONG THE INGOOSHI 138
XV. THE IRON NOT MADE BY HANDS 149
XVI. AT A MILL ON THE TEREK 156
XVII. THE GORGE OF DARIEL 163
XVIII. AT A VILLAGE INN 167
XIX. “THROUGH SNOW AND ICE” 172
XX. LAVRENTI CHAM KHOTADZE 176
XXI. ON THE ROAD TO TIFLIS 182
XXII. A TWO-HUNDRED-MILE WALK 188
XXIII. CLIMBING INTO WINTER 194
XXIV. A NIGHT IN A KOUTAN 199
XXV. OVER MAMISON 204
XXVI. ARRESTED 210
XXVII. FIVE DAYS UNDER ARREST 216
XXVIII. MR ADAM 224
XXIX. THE BAPTIST CHAPEL 235
XXX. THE WOMAN WHO SAW GOD 243
XXXI. ALI PASHA 248
XXXII. THE SORROWING MAN 255
XXXIII. THE CUCUMBER FAIR 262
XXXIV. OVER THE CAUCASUS 271
EPILOGUE: THE HORIZON 285
APPENDIX: HOW TO GET ABOUT—A 301
CHAPTER FOR PROSPECTIVE TOURISTS
INDEX 309
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ILLUSTRATIONS
1. TOMB OF A CAUCASIAN CHIEF, SHOWING WHAT HE Frontispiece
DIED POSSESSED OF, INCLUDING THE ACTUAL
NUMBER OF HIS CARTRIDGES
2. a. HARBOUR, NIZHNI NOVGOROD 8
b. OUTSIDE A SLUM BEERHOUSE, MOSCOW 8
3. a. A RUSSIAN STREET SCENE 58
b. A CAUCASIAN CHIEF 58
4. a. A STREET SHRINE, MOSCOW 82
b. PASSION MONASTERY, MOSCOW 82
5. A GROUP OF CAUCASIAN SHEPHERDS 120
6. INGOOSH WOMEN, WITH WATER-JAR 140
7. KAZBEK MOUNTAIN FROM THE NORTH-WEST 156
8. DARIEL GORGE: CASTLE OF QUEEN TAMARA AND 166
RUSSIAN FORTRESS
9. AKHTSAURI GLACIER, KAZBEK 174
10. GEORGIAN WOMEN 182
11. A KOUTAN 200
12. AN OSSETINE DWELLING 214
13. DEVDORAK GLACIER, GORGE OF DARIEL 242
14. a. “TURNING OVER COTTONS” 262
b. AN OSSETINE VILLAGE 262
15. KAZBEK POSTING-STATION 272
16. MLETI 282
MAPS
MAP OF RUSSIA 26
MAP OF VLADIKAVKAZ AND DISTRICT 128
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A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
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NOTE
Portions of Chapters VI., VII., IX., XI., XXVIII. appeared originally in
articles contributed to _Country Life_, and Chapter XXII. and parts of
II., X., XXXIII. in articles contributed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, to
the Editors of which journals the author desires to make all due
acknowledgment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
PROLOGUE
HOW I CAME TO BE A TRAMP
I BROUGHT myself up on Carlyle and found him the dearest, gentlest,
bravest, noblest man. The Life by Froude was dearer to me than the
Gospel of St Matthew, or Hamlet, or Macbeth, and that is saying much if
the reader only knew me. Carlyle was so near that I saw him in dreams
and spoke with him in words that were true, unquestionably. In the
vision world of my dream he behaved exactly as he would have done in
real life, I am sure of it. He was flesh and blood to me. Yet he died
and was buried before I was born. How strange! This man who died three
years before I was born was a friend closer to me than a lover, one to
whom I longed to say caressing words, one whom I longed to embrace and
fondle—to kiss even.
He made me work, the dear, irascible, eloquent old sage. I worked at his
bidding and set myself impossible tasks—impossible! I became a puritan,
serious, intolerant and heroic; and in moments of rapture, conscious of
the silence of the stars and the graves, I would sing to the night the
marching song:
“Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness,
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you,
Work and despair not.”
Carlyle was a true friend to me, he was not content that he only should
be my friend, I had to become the friend of his friends. Now, I am one
of the Great Society of his friends. I belong to the fellowship of those
that have seen The City. The Great Society has among its members many
children and many jolly tramps. Has the reader ever been introduced
personally to the Great Ones long since dead? I think these literary men
the great Friends of Mankind. They allow themselves to be known and
cherished—different from military heroes or scientists or explorers. One
would as soon love a waxwork as Napoleon. Yet even the despised and
rejected of the literary world are warm and smiling friends to their
readers. I, for my part, adored Ruskin and Browning as a young girl in
love with a new history mistress. I obeyed Ruskin, bought his works in
purple calf and looked up the long words in the dictionary. Then Rabbi
Ben Ezra entered into me so that I spoke with tongues. I learned the
poem by heart and recited it to sunsets. I ask myself now how I
reconciled “Work and despair not” with
“Not on the vulgar mass,
Called work must sentence pass.”
But of course both sentences are true; one is for one nature, the other
for another; I think I must have really belonged to the second category,
for have I not become a tramp!
I never felt so humanly close to Ruskin as to Carlyle. He had a way of
stating _the truth_. He liked to perch on his truths and crow. No, I
revered him, but decidedly didn’t like him. Browning made friends with
me. Then came Ibsen; and both Browning and Ibsen confirmed me in the
heroism of achieving impossible tasks. Has the reader seen the “Master
Builder,” the man who did the impossible twice? “It’s—fearfully
thrilling.” In these days I spouted: “Life is like the compound eye of
the fly. It is full of lives. Momentarily we died, momentarily are born
again. The old self dies, the new is born; the old life gives way to the
new. The selfish man wishes to remain as he is; in his life are fewer
lives, fewer changes. But the hero wishes to fulfil every promise
written in his being. He dies gladly in each moment to arise the next
moment more glorious, nearer to perfection. Oh, my friend, pay for the
new life with all the old. The life that thou hast, was given thee for
paying away so that thou mightest obtain something better.”
In myself I believed these words. I worked and read. I worked and threw
myself at the impossible. What Swinburne wrote is true:
“A joy to the heart of a man
Is a goal that he may not reach.”
I wrote lectures in which my style was so infected by the rhetoric of
the sage that listeners grumbled that they could not tell when I was
quoting and when I was using my own language. That was their defect;
they should have known Carlyle better! One lecture I specially remember.
It was given to some Essex folk. It related to Hero-worship. All the
artillery of Carlyle was in play. It was a subject supremely Carlylean.
Work, I praised, and heroic valour. But my message was: “In each of you
there is a Hero, let him out; in each man there is a Hero, see one
there,” which is not what Carlyle meant when he said: “Recognise the
Hero when you see him and obey.” This was, perhaps, a first divergency.
Carlyle was looking for a means to govern a nation wisely. I was moving
towards my tramp destiny.
That was in the year of the Russian Revolution and I had been learning
Russian very sedulously for some time. A literary ambition had
possession of me. I had said to myself—one must specialise to get on in
the world of literature. Carlyle specialised German. German things did
not interest me. I had long since learned to enjoy Turgeniev and Gorky
and Gogol in English translations, and Russia had become to me the most
interesting country in Europe. I determined to specialise on Russia.
Yes, and when, according to the newspapers, the bombs were flying thick
and fast, I took a return ticket for Moscow and went out. For luggage I
took a camera and a small hand-bag. The tramp has the soberest
conscience about luggage. He feels he can always _do without_. But, of
course, I wasn’t a tramp then. I may remark in passing that I lost none
of that luggage and had no trouble whatever with it. Few travellers
manage their first trip to Russia without vexatious misadventures. On
one occasion, however, when I was taking a snap-shot of a prison, a
soldier rushed up to me in terror and rage. He thought my Kodak was a
bomb.
What an excitement this journey was! I had never even been abroad
before. Now I went through Holland and across the whole of Germany and
into Poland. Two days after I had left England I was in Russia. I
arrived at Warsaw on the day the Governor was shot. I saw at once there
were more soldiers than people in the streets. I took a droshky to a
hotel, put down my things and strolled out to see the city. I was
arrested at once. Fifty yards down Marzalkovsky, the Piccadilly of
Warsaw, a soldier stopped me, searched me and handed me over to an
officer and six armed guards. I was put in the middle and marched off;
on each side of me a soldier held a drawn sword and was ready to slash
at me if I should attempt to bolt. I am sure the angels wept. Internally
I collapsed with laughter and at the same time I felt very rich. I was
having an experience.
I was released and was arrested again, and a Circassian guard punched me
in the stomach very hard, “for luck,” I think he said. They gave an
account of my arrest in the _Russ_ and said I had been nearly beaten to
death, but they didn’t know who I was. Somehow it came to England as the
arrest and flogging of Mr Foster Fraser, the well-known correspondent.
Poor Mr Fraser, it must have been awkward explaining to his friends that
it was not really he who was flogged.
[Illustration: HARBOUR, NIZHNI NOVGOROD]
[Illustration: OUTSIDE A SLUM BEERHOUSE, MOSCOW]
I was not a correspondent, but I wrote of my adventures, and it was very
pleasant to see my words printed in London newspapers. It was very
amusing to see myself styled “Our own Special Correspondent,” when, in
truth, I was only a free lance and had not even seen the face of a
London editor. Journalism is a cheap trade! At Warsaw I met
correspondents of many papers and had surprising glimpses behind the
scenes. There was a little American Jew there who knew almost every
language in Europe, who had an eye for every nationality, and who knew
the private history of all the women of the city. At one time he had
been hotel tout, interpreter, guide, but now was correspondent,
reporter, supplier of information. He was always hanging about the chief
hotel and watching for journalists hard up for copy. There were crowds
of English newspaper men who could not speak intelligibly in French, far
less in Russian. To such the American was a god-send. And Lord, what
stories they wrote home to England!
I left Warsaw for Moscow and Nizhni. When I left the American was a
lonely bachelor. When I returned his wife had found him. She told me her
story. She lost her man in New York and had chased him through the
States, and through Europe. He was always giving her the slip. I think
my trembling puritanism rose to the defence of my innocent soul. Life is
of all colours, but there are some terrible reds and scarlets one
doesn’t see in England. Warsaw to me was a wicked city. The wonderful
beauty of Polish girls I had then no eyes for.
I returned to England and was a local lion.
The trip brought me pleasant glory, but it had given me powerful hopes
and longings. I had been in the Kremlin and in the churches. I had been
a vagabond at the Fair of Nizhni Novgorod. I had seen the peasants and
their faces and eyes and lives. I learned many things from these peasant
faces. I said to myself at Moscow: “These people are like what English
people were when Edward the Third was king.” Of a face passing I would
say to myself: “There are three or four hundred years behind that nose
and mouth and eyes and chin.” The irresistible question came: “Are these
peasants not better off than the English clerk or labourer?” As a
question I left it.
England again! I returned, for I had an appointment there, comfortable
though not literary. Life had good things in store for me there—more
reading, new acquaintances, a new Friend even. I took up Russian more
seriously and commenced a translation of a novel of Dostoievsky. I was
learning to know others of that Great Society, and one day the Fates
brought me to Zarathustra. I was an unruly candidate for a place in the
society of the “free, very free spirits,” but a true candidate.
Puritanism and intolerance were now to be attacked. A thawing wind began
to blow upon the winter of my discontent. “Convictions are prisons,” I
read. And surely I was imprisoned behind many prison walls. I was in the
centre of a labyrinth of convictions and principles. I believed in work
and, at the same time, I believed in myself. Neitzsche reinforced the
belief in myself. I was doing work that was not congenial. I was in work
that imprisoned me and that prevented development. I was longing for the
new. Still in my heart lived the sentences: “Do the impossible, pay for
the New with all the Old.”
I wanted new life, broader horizons, deeper depths, higher heights. I
knew these might be purchased by giving up my appointment in London and
throwing myself into Russia. Yes, to go to Russia and live there, that
was my next step. I came to that conclusion one Sunday in June. In one
little moment I made that big decision. The tiniest seed was sown in
Time. The Fates stood by, the seed lived. To-day that seed is bearing
the finest blossoms. May each chapter here be a garland of its flowers
exhaling their life perfume.
I shaped my plans to the end.
“‘A Yea, a Nay
A straight line
A Goal’—saith Zarathustra.”
My Yea was Russia; my Nay, England; the straight line, the nearest way,
my Goal, the new life to be paid for with all the old.
In London I had made a Russian acquaintance, the son of a deacon of the
Orthodox Church, and just before my departure I received an invitation
to spend Christmas at Lisitchansk, a village some way north of the Sea
of Azov, some miles south of Kharkov. Russia had seemed dark,
enigmatical, terrible, but here at the last minute arms stretched out of
the darkness, welcoming me, alluring me.
On what was Old Year’s Night in England, though in Russia only the
eighteenth of December, I was at Dover. The lights of the harbour shone
on the placid water. The stars looked down upon my starting, the same
stars that were at that moment looking down upon my destination also, my
stars, the stars that through all my wanderings have shone down. One
Friend bade me farewell. At Dover, on the ship in the harbour in the
night, we embraced and parted. England herself grasped my hand and bade
me farewell. For a moment, in the stillness, the sea ceased to exist and
space was gone—Two hands were clasped between the lands.
My life as a wanderer began. I might say my life as a tramp began, for I
never worked again. I became, as the philosopher says, “full of malice
against the seductions of dependency that lie concealed in houses, money
or positions.” Whereas I had sold myself to work, I had now bought
myself back, I had exchanged dependence upon man for dependence upon
God, and had given up my respectable West-End home in “Berkeley Square,”
so that I might take up my abode in the West End of this Universe.
Perhaps not then, but now I ask: “Could anything be more amusing than
the modern cry of the Right to Work? The English are an industrious,
restless nation. And the prophets are very censorious of our
respectable, though not respected, class. “It is not enough to be
industrious,” says Thoreau; “so are the ants. The question is, What are
you industrious about?” No one questions the use of industry of one kind
or another. Dear Carlyle, my guide, philosopher and friend, I wonder if
he, in other realms, has learned the value of idleness. Perhaps now,
after a life-time of Nirvana in some Eden planet, he has smoothed out
his ruffled soul. Oh, friends, there are depths of calm and happiness to
be found even here, and not autumn stillness but spring calm, the joyful
peace of the dove brooding on the waters. I have learned to smooth and
compose a rough, tumbled mind until it was like a broad, unsullied
mirror reflecting the beauty of the world.
Two thousand miles from London there are new silences, pregnant
stillness, on the steppes, in the country places, on the skirts of the
old forests. No word of the hubbub of democracy need come through; not a
hoarding poster flaunts the eye; no burning question of the hour
torments the mind. A man is master of himself and may see or hear or
consider just what he chooses. That is, if the man be like me.
“You look up at the sky, as you lie under a bush, and it keeps
descending, descending to you, as though it wanted to embrace you....
Your soul is warm and quietly joyful, you desire nothing, you envy no
one.”
“... And so it seems as though on all the earth there were only you and
God....”
“All around is silence: only the birds are singing, and this silence is
so marvellous that it seems as though the birds were singing in your own
breast.” So wrote Gorky, the tramp. I almost wish he would write the
story of his vagabondage instead of being so serious over his
revolutionary propaganda.
I have shown how I came to be a wanderer. I will now add to this
prologue a word of dedication. The prose of this book is the story of my
travels; the poetry, when the reader may discern it, is the story of my
heart.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
ROBBED IN THE TRAIN
GERMANY is a safe country. One is not permitted to lose oneself there.
I, for my part, knew not a word of German beyond _nicht hinauslehnen_,
which means: don’t put your head out at the window; but I had no
misadventures there. The trains leave punctually, the carriages are all
clean, the porters know their duty. One contrast has particularly
impressed me. In Russia, in second or even in first-class carriages,
washing accommodation is very poor. Often there is no water, and there
is seldom a stopper to the hand-basin. There is a murky mirror but no
towel, indeed, no further convenience of any kind. In Germany, on the
contrary, even third-class accommodation is superb. There is a fresh
tablet of soap and a clean towel for each traveller; there is even a
comb and brush, if one cares to use them after others. But in Russia
third-class accommodation is unspeakably filthy, and I think that if one
mentioned the idea of soap gratis to a Russian official he would frown
as if overhearing revolutionary propaganda. Surely the Germans have the
cleanest faces among all nations, and their free wash seems to say: “For
God’s sake, don’t let a little piece of official soap stand between you
and cleanliness.”
But though Russian accommodation is inferior in this respect, it has one
great excellence: the trains run smoothly over the lines. One can make
the whole trans-Siberian journey from Warsaw to Shanghai and be as fit
at the end as when one started. The movement of the train is so
pleasantly soothing that one slips easily into slumber. Indeed, if one
wakes in the night and finds the train stopping in a station, one waits
and longs for the train to move again; minutes seem eternities. Then one
is entitled by one’s ticket to the whole length of a seat. No one
objects if one undresses, and at least one can always remove collar,
boots and overcoat. But German trains are noisy; they jerk and rattle
and tear through the night. They compare with Russian trains as a motor
omnibus might with a child’s cradle. One would stand more chance of
sleeping in the Inner Circle.
I arrived at Alexandrovo, the frontier town, at ten o’clock at night,
and took train on for Warsaw at 1 a.m. My luggage was registered through
to Kharkov. The customs officer informed me that it had been forwarded
and would be examined there. This was on the third day of my journey,
and I had had two nights without sleep. It was with a great deal of
gladness that I settled myself down in my Russian _coupé_ and hoped to
sleep a few hours. The third bell, the last bell, sounded, and the train
moved slowly out of the station and ground itself away over the heavy,
snow-covered track. The guards came and punched my ticket; then I lay
back and fell fast asleep. The white train moved over the white fields,
and the light wind blew the thick snow against the window panes, or
wreathed it in the gangways between the corridors. The train moved very
slowly, and every quarter of an hour or so stopped. The movement was
very weak and gentle, like the pulsation of an old man’s heart. When it
ceased, it seemed to have paused through utter exhaustion. I was
suddenly awakened by a touch on the shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a
man bending over me. I could have sworn he had been picking my pockets.
He smiled unamiably and asked a question in German. Getting no answer he
tried Polish; I replied in Russian. He wanted to know where I was going
to, and whether I was a German.
This man afterwards robbed me. Next time I woke up my heavy overcoat was
gone. I had hung it on a peg beside me, and when I looked for it it had
disappeared. And the smiling Pole who had been sitting opposite had also
disappeared. New people were in the compartment. In fact, the moment I
woke there were two men standing beside me and kissing one another
frantically. The train had stopped at a station. I was dazed. I thought
I was, perhaps, at Warsaw already. I was assured Warsaw was a long way
off, and then I discovered the loss of my coat.
The chief guard assured me the coat would be recovered. If I would give
him a rouble he would have the train searched. He took down notes of
what I said and pocketed the money, but the thief got clear away. The
flickering candle that illuminated the carriage was burning out. It was
so dark that one could not be sure whether anything were lost or not. My
astonishment was great when I looked under the seat and saw a man lying
there—a man with a smell. The guard came in at that moment and we hauled
the stowaway out. I thought it was the thief for certain. He was brought
out and searched. He was a tatterdemalion, out at knees and out at
elbows, thick with grease and dirt. His feet were wrapped up with
sacking, tied round with rope, and the rest of his attire was uncured
sheepskin. He hadn’t any ticket and was going to Warsaw. He offered the
guard twopence as a bribe, but the latter frowned terribly and asked
whether I would care to have him arrested. He whispered to me aside that
he felt quite sure we had caught the thief or an accomplice. If I would
give him two roubles he would make a declaration at the next station. I
should get my coat in a week at least. But I dissented, for I felt quite
sure such a disreputable-looking character as the moujik we had hauled
out was incapable of stealing a handsome overcoat. So the guard accepted
twopence from the man in lieu of a ticket, and was fain to disappear.
Russian trains are well heated. It is only when one steps out at a
station that one realises how cold it is. I soon began to realise what
the loss of my coat meant. At Kharkov there were forty degrees of frost.
The further into Russia the colder it became. My only protection was a
light summer overcoat and a plaid rug. My gloves, together with a
voluminous silk muffler, had been left in the pockets of the coat that
was stolen. When I went out at Kharkov the cold struck in on all sides,
and my moustache and eyebrows froze to solid ice at once.
Calamity followed close upon calamity. My registered luggage was nowhere
to be found. The customs officer was of opinion that it had been delayed
on the line. If I would leave ten roubles with him he would look after
it and forward it some time after Christmas.
The cup of misery seemed filled to the brim. For I was deprived of all
my clothes but the rough travelling things I stood up in. I pictured to
myself what a strange, shabby Christmas guest I should appear.
It was the 23rd of December, according to the old calendar; the morrow
would be Christmas Eve, and all shops would be shut. I went out into the
town and made good some of my deficiencies.
I had still a hundred-mile journey to make before I reached Lisitchansk.
The train left at 9 p.m. I telegraphed to my friend, asking to be met,
and then went off to buy a ticket. The booking-office clerk would not
issue tickets until he could be sure that the train would be run. The
last express from Sevastopol had arrived ten hours late.
I waited until midnight, and then at last a notice was put out
intimating that the train would start. So I purchased my ticket and took
my seat, and at two in the morning we moved slowly out. My impression of
that train is that everyone, including passengers, guards and driver,
was drunk. It was crowded with people going home for Christmas. It was
so crowded that there seemed to be no intention on the part of anyone to
sleep, and I could not get a seat to myself. At length, however, a very
friendly, though tipsy, Little Russian made an arrangement with the
occupants of a ladies’ compartment, and I got an upper shelf there to
lie upon.
When I awakened it was broad day and the train had stopped finally. A
lady on a shelf opposite was reading a novel. No one else seemed to be
in the carriage. I learned from her that we were snowed up. All the men
employed to keep the line clear were dead drunk. No further progress
would be made until after dinner. There was a forest on the right-hand
side, full of wolves, the girl said. I went along to the men’s
compartment and found that everyone had adjourned to a farm-house near
by to get dinner. Evidently thieves were not feared in that part of the
country. I followed the others to the house and had a good hot dish of
cabbage soup. It was a one-room cottage, and was packed with people. The
clamour was deafening. I think the family must have had an unusually
large supply of vodka, for the number of Christmas healths drunk was at
least treble the number of guests.
At about three o’clock the engine-driver, who was so drunk that he could
not stand up, was lifted into the engine and he set the train going.
Scarcely anyone was in the train, neither people nor guards, and there
was a rush to get on. But only about six were successful; the rest were
all left behind. We, at the farm-house, had no chance whatever. Somebody
said, “The train is starting,” and there was a stampede. Every vodka
glass was drained, the singing stopped, and the shouting and the
step-dancing, and everyone rushed out into the snow without, as far as I
could see, paying a farthing to the good woman of the house. But no one
stood any chance, and when I got out at the door the train had travelled
a hundred yards. The snow was a foot deep, and nothing short of a pair
of skis would have enabled anyone to cross it in the time.
_Que faire!_
I pictured to myself the train arriving at Sevastopol without passengers
or guards, and I wondered what would happen to all the unclaimed wraps
and bags, and how many roubles it would cost to get them out of the lost
property office. I could afford to smile. Most of my property was
already lost. Among the other passengers there was consternation. They
were like a pack of frightened children, whispering in awe-stricken
whispers. Two men insisted on telling me their fears—fears of missing
their Christmas, fears of exhausting the vodka supply, fears of wolves,
fears of freezing, and a fat man, who had fallen in the snow, kept
punctuating their remarks with:
“Devil take me! Lord save us!”
There was nothing to be gained by remaining where we were, so I set out
along the railway lines with six others who could walk. The next station
proved to be about four miles distant, and after three quarters of an
hour we came in sight of it. And in sight of the train! We had walked
very seriously and solemnly, like convicts marching to the mines. I, for
my part, felt like freezing to death. But at the sight of the train we
all burst into exclamation. The Russians gesticulated and waved their
handkerchiefs. Then suddenly we thought it might start out before we
reached it. The Russians began to run in that peculiar way all
foreigners run—as if someone were after them. We arrived in time,
feeling pleasantly warm.
I thought when the engine-driver had been remonstrated with he would
have backed the train to the wayside stopping-place. But no, he said
there was no time, and in ten minutes he started us off again. I have
never heard how they fared, these unfortunates who were left behind.
Late in the evening I arrived at Lisitchansk, and Nicholas, my London
acquaintance, was actually there waiting for me. He had brought a large
fur cloak and rugs. A little pony-sledge was at hand. We fitted
ourselves in tightly and gave the word to the driver, who whisked us off
through the keen air.
In twenty minutes we had climbed up the steep slope to the village and
threaded our way through the broad streets to the cottage of my friend.
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