found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If
the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers;
for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to
be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized
carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown amid the straw.
They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while
the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and
the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were
appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so
wild as many that have succeeded.
The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
away.
“It is for another time--it is for another time!” said Kosmaroff and
Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
darkness.
In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
streets.
At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.
It was a miserable fiasco.
XXXV
ACROSS THE FRONTIER
Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and
the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great
length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the
alert night and day.
Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
The moon above the clouds was almost full.
“There is only one chance of escape,” Kosmaroff had said--“the river.
Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.
I will get a boat. Have you money?”
“I have a few roubles--I never had many,” answered Martin.
“Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat.”
And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city.
He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the
soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the
street corners. And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched with
him two days earlier.
Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had
found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light
filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was
probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire,
meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now from a
note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust.
Martin knew that Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would
find her. This was one of the hundred details to which the prince
himself had attended. He had been a skilled organizer in the days
when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the Austrian
frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed
by channels through which information could be poured at any moment day
or night, just as water is distributed over the land of an irrigated
farm.
Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of
his coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers
here night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and
those whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get
their sleep when they can.
To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where
the steps are--river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge
which are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a
sleepless interest in the prospects of a flood.
Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he
also had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had
a fit of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and
at the most deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps,
coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the
land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
“The water is running freely,” he said, “through the middle arch. I have
a boat out there on the ice. Come!”
And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the
river that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying
on the ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at
the edge of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it
flowed towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark
that Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat
before he saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity
of build used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
and spoke without haste or hesitation.
“Help me,” he said, “to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will
come out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before
dawn.”
The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times;
for there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
“We must lie down in the bottom of the boat,” said Kosmaroff, “and take
our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel.”
As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For
the castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been
partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these
lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in
trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and
were borne on the breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.
Kosmaroff sat up.
“Give me a piece of bread,” he said. “I am famished.”
But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills;
here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead
horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a
hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant
sea on muddy waters.
Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out, conscious
of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands of God.
When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above
the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here
and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big,
low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was
almost morning.
Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were
proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.
“Where are we?” he asked.
Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others
gray and muddy.
“I know where we are,” he answered, after a pause. “We have passed
Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
my teeth wouldn't chatter.”
“I have secured mine with a piece of bread,” mumbled Martin.
Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
“We cannot travel during the day,” he said, after a long examination of
the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. “We shall
not be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I
am afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some
large islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must
wait with him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through
Thorn.”
Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the
ice was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that
they could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which,
indeed, seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen
would attempt to cross the river now.
Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the
prince at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to
await them at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their
escape was being arranged, but they must await further instructions
before quitting their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these
further orders came by the same sure channel, which was independent of
the Russian post-offices.
The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through
that town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they would
find Captain Cable, in the _Minnie_, anchored in the stream ready for
sea. The instructions were necessarily short. There were no explanations
whatever. There was no news.
At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there.
The story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities. There
are persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day. There
are others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The arms are in
use in Central Asia at the present time, though their pattern is
already considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to walk along
the Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of it a large
building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling into disrepair.
If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet the patrol from
the neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards this road and the
river-side.
After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to
wait two days until the weather changed--until the moon, now well on the
wane, did not rise before midnight.
At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered
by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were
cold, and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon
enveloped them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them
into the mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at every
hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the night,
before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to approach
the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they navigated chiefly
by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound of church clocks,
the street cries of a town--these were Kosmaroff's degrees of latitude.
“We are getting near,” he said, in little more than a whisper. “What is
the time?”
It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes
at a great pace. It is still of a vast width--one of the largest rivers
in Europe.
The mist was very thick here.
“Listen!” whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low, regular
thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to halt.
They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to locate
sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to have
come from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind them this
time.
“Stop, or we fire!” it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp whistle,
which was answered by two or three others. There were at least three
boats close at hand, seeking to locate each other before they fired.
Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a
suppressed laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-post,
fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where Martin
lay concealed.
Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward
and peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the
officers were calling to each other.
“What was it--a boat or a floating tree?” they heard them ask each
other.
Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement in
the bottom of the boat.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“A bullet,” answered Martin. “It came through the side of the boat, low
down. It struck me in the back--the spine. I cannot move my legs. But I
have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the hole
the bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed
through Thorn.”
He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and
with a jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an
envelope, closed and doubled over.
“Put that in your pocket,” he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
“You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?” asked Martin, suddenly,
after a pause.
Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one side.
“Yes, I know her.”
“Give her that, or get it to her,” said Martin.
“But--”
“Yes,” said Martin, answering the unasked question, “I am badly hit,
unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn.”
And his voice was still cheerful.
XXXVI
CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter
from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather
rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient
city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England
pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
“I suppose,” wrote Deulin, “that you will soon be on your way home.
I think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through Dantzic
on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable there.”
This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot.
The writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the
letter as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it
were, of this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go
to Dantzic and to see Captain Cable there.
He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel.
He left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange Brucke,
where the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was not
pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more or
less his own master while travelling, and could break his journey at
Dantzic quite as easily as at Berlin.
Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none but
small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was deeply
versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable small
vessels to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
Cartoner knew that he would find the _Minnie_ not in dock, but in one
of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And
Captain Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the _Minnie_ just
above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels lie
in mid-stream. The _Minnie_ was deeply laden and lay anchored bow and
stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was ready for
sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor heralded her
departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners, love to do. It
adds to their sense of importance, and this was a modern quality little
cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his steam aggressively in
evidence. The _Minnie_ did not catch the eye of the river-side idler,
but conveyed the impression that she was a small, insignificant craft
minding her own business, and would be much obliged if you would mind
yours.
Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from
the steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of
a shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
“Come below,” he said, without enthusiasm. “It wasn't you that I was
expecting. I tell you that.”
Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which smelled
of petroleum, as usual. The _Minnie_ was a hospitable ship, according
to her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a tumbler with a
corner of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant swing-back bench
at the far side of the table, and sat down opposite to Cartoner himself.
“Was up the Baltic,” he explained. “Pit props. Got a full cargo on
board. Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let slip
to come to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard. That's all
I'm going to tell you.”
“That's all I want to know,” answered Cartoner.
“But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!” shouted Cable, suddenly, with
a bang of his little, thick fist on the table. “I've been thinking since
I lay here--been sleeping badly, and took the anchor watch meself--what
I want to know is whether I'm to be treated gentlemanly!”
“In what way?” inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
seemed to pacify the captain.
“Of course,” he admitted, “I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take any
bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat.”
“I think I can assure you on that point,” said Cartoner. “Nobody who had
to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in Dantzic. But
I do not know whom you are to take on board here.”
“May be as you can guess,” suggested the captain.
“Yes, I think I can guess,” admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
“But you won't tell me?”
“No. When do you expect them?”
“I'll answer that and ask you another,” said Captain Cable, getting
a yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. “That's
port--ship-chandler's port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind.”
For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
“I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night.
They'll likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night.
And now I'll ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in Dantzic
River, Mr. Cartoner?”
“A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do--Paul Deulin. Like
to read it?”
And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than
even to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
“No, I wouldn't,” he answered. He scratched his head reflectively,
and looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the
ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
“Got your luggage in the boat alongside?” he asked, at length.
“No. It's at the station.”
“Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard. You'll
come aboard and see this thing through, I hope.”
“Thank you,” answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for
his luggage.
“Mate's receipt?” inquired the captain.
And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest
as he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
“No stint of the wine,” he said, and went out on deck.
When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted himself
to the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the afternoon. For
the captain had been up all night, and fully expected to see no bed the
following night.
“If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb,” he
said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
sleep.
He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the anchor
watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to Cartoner, and
did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch three nights in
succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the deck side by
side, treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the
same reason, perhaps, they were silent.
Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
“Hope he is pleased with himself,” he said, as he stood at the stern
rail, looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. “For it is
his doing, you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're
tricky--the French. He's a tricky man.”
“Yes,” admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin, “he
is a tricky man.”
After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without
speaking. Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into
the night.
“There's a boat yonder,” he said, “coming down quiet, under the lee of
the land.”
They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards
them. Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of
the boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide
with perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.