IN STRANGE WATERS
IN STRANGE WATERS
Onward again. Here a little village of mud-huts, with its clump of "feather-dusters," as Bob persisted in calling the palms; there a caravan plodding along the marshes against the sky-line. Flocks ofwater-fowl faring gracefully over the broad pools gave place to yellow sands, and the sands again to clear green water and sighing reeds.
At last the good shipOspreyemerged from the narrow, lonely, sluggish stream into the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean.
O-Hana-San was to give a party. She announced the fact with pride to her schoolmates, who, with the frankness peculiar to childhood, eagerly demanded invitations. Had they been older, they would have called on the lady who was to entertain, and, after flattering her and making their personal regard for her as prominent as possible, would have brought the conversation round to the party, in order to show that they knew all about it and of course should expect an invitation. Being little girls, they just said, one and all, "Oh, do ask me to come, Hana!"
Miss Blossom (for that is the English equivalent for her name) considered.
"I can only invite twelve," she finally announced. "Twelve girls," she concluded, with a sigh; "no boys."
"Why not?" demanded one of the larger boys, pushing forward. "You must ask me, anyway, Hana!"
O-Hana-San shook her head. "It is not permitted," she said. "I cannot invite you, Oto Owari. Only girls—no boys."
It was after school-hours. The children had been summoned to their tasks by a drum-beat, and at noon they had marched out of the schoolhouse, in orderly fashion, the boys in one division, girls in another. Once beyond the school limits, the two divisions became mixed. O-Hana-San was only nine years old, and Oto, being fifteen (this was about a dozen years before the building of theRetvizanand the cruise of theOsprey) considered that he did her great honour in applying for an invitation to her party. He scowled, at her refusal, and turned away abruptly.
"Come, Oshima," said he, to a comrade a little younger than himself, "let's go down to the shore." When Oto was disturbed in his mind he always wanted to "go down to the shore."
The town where he lived was on the west coast of one of the northern provinces of Nippon, the principal island of the group comprising the Japanese Empire. Oto was the son of one of the leading men of the place. He was a bright, earnest boy, and often, after he had been listening to the talk of his elders, he would gaze across the sea toward that mysterious country Korea, which he had heard his father say was "a dagger, aimed at the heart ofJapan." He longed to fight for the Empire, which he adored with all the passionate worship of the true Japanese. He was an adept at seamanship, in a small way, before he was fourteen; perfectly at home in the water or on it; and possessed with an ardent ambition to join the navy which his country was then building up in wonderful new ways, taught by the pale-faced folk of the other hemisphere. His father could give him but little hope of attaining his wishes, for he could not let the lad serve as a common sailor, nor could he afford to give him the higher education necessary for an officer.
Oto's boon companion since childhood was Oshima, the son of a rich family who occupied a handsome villa on the outskirts of the town. Oshima's grandfather had been one of the famousSamurai, who carried two swords. When the edict had gone forth suppressing the order, or depriving it of its essential characteristics, he had joined a band of Samurai who refused to obey the imperial command, and in a fight which followed he had lost his life. Oshima's father was a peaceful man who cared little for war, but the boy himself had inherited his grandfather's love of battle, and made up his mind to enter the army. The two boys talked with each other of their plans and hopes, often and earnestly.
By the time the lads had reached the rocky shorejust north of the village, they had forgotten all about little Blossom and her party. O-Hana-San was a great favourite with Oto, it is true, but when once the topic of the navy was raised, all other thoughts fled to the winds.
"Let us swim," said Oshima at length, when several prospective battles had been fought out, on sea and land. "I'm as warm as if I had been marching from Fusan to Seoul—where I shall march some day."
"Go you and swim if you want to," replied Oto. "I have a plan here to work out, for manœuvring a battle-ship in the face of the enemy, with the tide setting out from land, and——"
"Oh, bother your tides!" laughed Oshima. "Here goes for a dip into them. I'll come out in ten minutes."
He was soon in the water at a good distance from shore, gamboling like a porpoise, swimming on his back, treading, and performing all sorts of antics.
Oto had drawn a piece of paper from his pocket and was absorbed in tracing a diagram of a sea-fight. After a while he glanced up carelessly; then he sprang to his feet with a wild cry.
"Come in! come in, Oshima! Quick! There's a shark after you!"
At first Oshima did not understand; but he saw the other's gesture, and looked over his shoulder.There, not a hundred yards away, was the dreaded black fin, glistening in the afternoon sun, drifting rapidly toward him like the sail of a child's toy-boat.
The swimmer struck out for the shore with all his might. He was in a little bay, and Oto, springing down headlong over the rocks, perceived that his friend was a little nearer the southern point of land than the central beach from which he had started.
"Make for the point—the point!" he shrieked, gesticulating wildly.
Oshima veered to the right, and the black fin followed. Oto plunged into the sea and swam straight toward the shark. There was no more shouting now; only two dark heads bobbing in the waves, and the little black sail dancing toward them.
Oshima now began to beat the water with his hands, making a tremendous splashing. The great fish, startled by the commotion, paused, and the ugly fin seemed irresolute. Oshima was now swimming more slowly. Younger than Oto, and far less robust, he was becoming exhausted. Every moment he expected to feel the clutch of those terrible jaws. He struck out madly, but made little progress.
The shark, meanwhile, made up his mind. The new morsel was coming directly toward him, while the first seemed in a fair way of escaping to shallow water if not to the land itself. The monster, with a twist of his tail, turned again and made for Oto,though not very rapidly, for the splashing made the fish wary.
At last the critical moment came. Oto had heard an old pearl-fisher tell of many a battle with the man-eating sharks of the Pacific. As the huge creature began to turn, to seize his prey, the black fin disappeared. Quick as a flash Oto doubled himself in the water and dived. A moment later a red stain dyed the surface of the sea. The boy had drawn a sharp dagger from his belt and stabbed upward as his assailant passed over him.
There was no more battle. The shark had enough of Oto and fled for the depths of the ocean while his victor, watching sharply for his late foe, made his way ashore as swiftly as possible. He found Oshima stretched upon the sand, uninjured but almost unconscious from fright and exhaustion.
It was this incident, the self-forgetful valour of his son's friend, saving the former's life at the peril of his own, that led Oshima's father, a few days afterward, to make the offer that changed the boy's whole life. He proposed to the elder Owari to send Oto at his own expense to any naval school in the world, and educate him for the Japanese navy. Oto chose the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, as we have seen, and graduated with honour, resigning only to accept a post under his own Emperor.
Oshima meanwhile pursued his studies at the Military Institute in Yokohama, and received in due time his appointment as sub-lieutenant in the Japanese army. Entrusted with an important secret mission a few years later the two comrades went to America, performed their duties faithfully, and, in pursuance of direct orders from high authority, concealed their identity by returning as cabin stewards; the men of theOspreylittle dreaming that the meek, gentle "boys" whom they ordered to and fro on menial errands were officers, older and of higher rank than themselves, in the Imperial Army and Navy of Japan.
Thus the party of little O-Hana-San led to important results; for had not Oto applied to her for an invitation, and gone off to the shore sulking because of her refusal, Oshima would not have had his eventful swim, the shark would not have been disappointed in a meal, Oshima's father would not have felt the impulse of gratitude which influenced him to bestow a naval education upon his neighbour's son; in short theRetvizan'splans would never have been laid before the naval secret service authorities of Tokio, nor, in all likelihood, would Dave Rexdale have been so well served, in the absence of his two faithful Japanese stewards, on the outward cruise of theOsprey!
As for O-Hana-San, she had her party, and a gayone it was, as gaiety was reckoned in those parts. The little hostess duly sent out her invitations, and received her guests with all formality. Her dark, glossy hair was drawn back, raised in front, and gathered into a double loop, in which a scarlet bit of scarf was coquettishly twisted. She wore a blue flowered silk kimono, with sleeves touching the ground; a blue girdle lined with scarlet; and a fold of the scarlet scarf lay between her neck and the kimono. On her little feet were whitetabi, socks of cotton cloth, with a separate place for the great toe (which was a very small one, nevertheless), so as to allow the scarlet-covered thongs of the finely lacquered clogs, which she wore while she stood on the steps to receive her guests and afterward removed, to pass between it and the smaller toes. All the other diminutive ladies were dressed in the same style, and, truth to say, looked like a company of rather expensive little dolls.
Well, when they were all assembled, she and her graceful mother, squatting before each, presented tea and sweetmeats on lacquer trays; and then they played at quiet and polite little games until dusk, when the party broke up, and O-Hara-San (Spring), O-Yuki-San (Snow), O-Kiku-San (Chrysanthemum), and the rest bobbed nice little bows and said, quite after the fashion of their elders, that "they had hadsucha nice time," and went home.
In the years that followed, O-Hana-San, the Blossom and the prettiest girl in the town, had but little chance to invite Oto to her parties, nor could the gallant young Japanese take her to the Academy hops; but he wrote to her constantly, and now, as theOspreycut the waters of the Indian Ocean with her snowy stem, he thought of the dark-eyed Blossom in the far-off little village of Nippon; and, as he tripped to and from the pantry, and returned with delicacies for the cabin table, balancing himself gracefully against the rolling and pitching of the vessel, wondered how soon he should stand before her on the quarter-deck of his own ship, clad in the brilliant uniform of his rank. As for Oshima, he had been waiting eleven years for a good chance to give his life for Oto!
[Dick Scupp to his Mother.]
"On board the 'Osprey.'"December 20, 1903.
"Dear Mother:
"I take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well and hope you are the same. We left Manila two weeks ago and came to this place, which is Chefoo. It sounds like a sneeze, doesn't it? It is a Chinese port on Shantung Peninsula, pretty nearly opposite Port Arthur, which as you know is occupied by the Russians. I wish I could be home next Friday, which is Christmas. Tell Katy to think of me and I will bring home something in my box for her. I am sorry to say I have lost that pair of stockings you knit for me. I forgot and left them on the deck instead of putting them in my bag and Jimmy Legs got them when he came round, and popped them into the lucky-bag. I might have gone up to the mast the next day and claimed them, but a lot of us were going ashore (it waswhen we were at Shanghai) and I didn't want my liberty stopped, so I let them go, and Sam Bolles bought them at the auction afterward for nineteen cents. That is all I have to say at present.
"From your loving son,
"Richard."
[From Oto Owari to O-Hana-San.]
Translated.
"Sasebo, January 2, 1904.
"The exalted letter which you augustly condescended to send me on the 13th day of the 10th moon filled me with great felicity, to know that you are in ever-increasing august robustness, as you were tormented with light fever when I worshipped your eyebrow[1]a short time before. I do not know where I shall go next. I see Oshima almost daily at the barracks. A new ship is fitting out at the docks, theFujiyama, and it may be that I shall have an appointment to her, or it may be that I shall have to gounder the water. You will understand later. I am now awaiting orders. Although the war-cloud in the west is dark, the people in Tokio celebrated New Year's Day with rejoicing and festivity, as usual. The houses and shops, Oshima told me, were covered with fruits and flowers, and the streets decorated with flags andlanterns. Many bands of men marched through the city singing old war-songs of the Samurai. All the fairs were crowded. Pray condescend to take august care of your exalted health. I knock my head against the floor.
"Remembrance and respectful veneration.
"Oto.
"To O-Hana-San."
[Hallie to Lieut. Com. David Rexdale, U. S. N.]
Extracts.
"Boston, November 15, 1903.
"Dear Dave:
"You can't tell how anxious I am to hear from you. Your last letter, mailed at Suez, was a very short one. You told me you had a despatch from Washington ordering you to Shanghai instead of Hongkong, and I ought to have received a letter from that city; but I haven't and I'm worried about you. If it didn't cost so much I would cable instead of writing. Do write to me at once. If anything should happen to you[2]....
"In September I had a little visit with the Holmes. Norman has been detached from the Brooklyn Yard and appointed to theVulture, which probably will join the Asiatic squadron this winter or in theearly spring. Our old friend Tickerson has received his commission as lieutenant (first grade) and his wife writes me gleefully on the increase of pay as well as glory. Do you remember when you introduced me to her, at Annapolis? They say 'Girlie' is just as proud of her as he was in the old days, when the other cadets (all butyou, of course, Dave!) used to envy him as he walked down 'Lover's' with her.
"You would be interested in the football situation this fall, if you were here. O, if only....
"Well, as I was about to say, Harvard is of course straining every nerve to get into condition for Yale. The game comes off in about ten days, and I'm going over to Cambridge to see it. Who do you suppose is going to take me? Why, dear old Uncle Richard, who happens to be spending a few weeks East, on business. Little Hallie Holmes is the dearest baby in the world. Wasn't it lovely in Anemone to insist on naming her for me? Aunt Letitia is tremendously interested in two things—anti-vivisection and the Russo-Japanese trouble. She has attended several hearings at the State House, and at one of them she spoke her mind out so forcibly that old Jed, bless his heart, made a great racket pounding on the floor and set everybody applauding. He had sneaked in without Aunt's knowing it, and on reaching home washeard to express a strong desire to 'keelhaul them doctors.' He takes great delight in his lofty 'cabin' and regularly goes out 'on deck' at the top of the house every night, to have a last smoke and a 'look at the weather,' like Captain Cuttle, before turning in. Aunt Letitia reads every scrap she can find in the papers about Russia and Japan, and so, for that matter, do I. Sometimes my sympathies are with one nation and sometimes with the other. Of course Japan is ever so much the smaller of the two, and her people are so quick and bright that nearly everybody takes their side and hopes that if there is a war she will win. But then Russia sometimes seems to me less like a bear than a great Newfoundland dog, and, as somebody has said, it's fairly pathetic to see how she has been trying all these years to get to the water; that is, to the open ocean, where she can have a navy, big and well trained, like other nations. Her ships in the Baltic seem like boats in a tub. Anyway I do hope and pray that there won't be any war, after all. Surely we humans know enough, have got evolutionised enough, in this twentieth century, to settle a dispute without fighting like savages.
"I miss you every day.... Write to me as soon as you can....
"Your loving wife,
"Hallie."
[From Fred Larkin to Lieutenant Staples.]
"San Francisco, December 29, 1903.
"My dear Lieutenant:
"'If you get there before I do,Tell them I am coming too!'
"'If you get there before I do,Tell them I am coming too!'
"'If you get there before I do,Tell them I am coming too!'
"'If you get there before I do,
Tell them I am coming too!'
"As I expected, theBulletindoesn't propose to get left on any unpleasantness in the Extreme East, nor even to take its chances in a syndicate. It wants real news, straight from the front, and, naturally, it hits upon Yours Truly to pick it up. I wrote to Rexdale just before leaving Boston, so it is probably no surprise to you that I have crossed the continent and am about to embark for Yokohama. Indeed I may make my bow to you on the quarter-deck of theOspreybefore you receive this letter! The papers are full of correspondence and abstracts of diplomatic papers from St. Petersburg and Tokio. The language of these communications between the State Departments of the two countries is bland and meek as the coo of a dove or thebaaof a lamb; but mark my words, my boy—there's going to be a war, and a big one. Theremustbe, to justify my going out to report it! Do you remember how a reporter in Havana in 1897 is said to have cabled to the home office of a certain 'yellow' journal not unknown to fame, 'No war here. What shall I do?' And the editor of the newspaper cabled back,'Stay where you are, and send full reports. I'll provide war.' Well, our venerable and sagacious friend Marquis Ito, together with the amiable but distracted Ruler of all the Russias, will 'provide war' for me to write up, and that before many days. And the little Japs will strike first, see if they don't! Tell Rexdale, please, that I'm on my way. If anything good happens before I see you, 'make a note on,' and give it to me for aBulletinstory.
"Yours ever,
"Larkin."
[From Lieutenant Commander Rexdale to Hallie.]
Extract.
"Cavite, P. I., December 2, 1903.
" ... From Shanghai we were ordered to this port, where we have been lying for nearly a month, doing guard duty. Next Thursday we sail for Chefoo, the Chinese seaport not far from Wei-hai-wei, where Pechili Strait opens into the Yellow Sea. At that station we shall be quite near Korea and Port Arthur, and if there is any trouble we shall be spectators, though almost certainly not participants, so you need not worry when you see by the naval despatches at home that we are on the outskirts of the Debatable Land. It is hard, I've no doubt, for you to realise how the war-fever isgrowing, out here. I am told that the Japanese have been steadily preparing for this final trial of her strength with Russia for years past. You may be interested in the make-up of the Jap. army. Under the present law all males are subject to conscription at the age of twenty. There is no distinction of class, and there are no exemptions except for physical disabilities, or because the conscript is the sole support of indigent parents, a student in certain schools, or a member of certain branches of civil service.
"The first term of service is between the ages of twenty and twenty-three. Then the soldier enters the first reserve, where he serves between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. After that he goes to the second reserve, where his service is between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-one; and then to the general national reserve, which includes all males between the ages of seventeen and forty not already in active service.
" ... I was called off, yesterday afternoon, from my writing, and later in the day I learned that there is trouble in Seoul, the capital of Korea. There are lots of Japanese and Russians there, and, with the Korean natives hating all foreigners, there is material for a good deal of disturbance. Several riots have occurred in the streets, and it is said that our minister has cabled to Washington asking for awar-ship at Chemulpo, the port of Seoul. If the Department assents, the talk is that either theWilmingtonor theOspreywill be detailed for that duty. I must say I hope it will be our little ship, and so do all our officers. Midshipman Starr puts it very well: 'When I was a boy, I always liked to get right up against the ropes at a fire!' He isn't much more than a boy now, but he's a fine fellow, and I'd trust him to do his part in an emergency....
"Later.—TheVicksburgis the lucky ship, after all. She has sailed for Chemulpo, and a party of marines will be landed and sent up to Seoul to protect our Minister and all other Americans and their interests in the city. The gunboat is commanded by Com. W. A. Marshall, whom you will remember meeting in Washington at the ball three years ago. His ship is about the size of theOsprey, and carries six guns.
"I hear that the Japanese fleet at Nagasaki is removing all superfluous wood-work, filling its bunkers with hard steam coal, and preparing, in general, for business. We sail for Chefoo at 9A.M.to-morrow....
"Your loving husband,
"Dave."
FOOTNOTES:[1]"Met you."[2]Mrs. Rexdale has insisted that some portions of her letter, interesting only to her husband, shall be omitted.
[1]"Met you."
[1]"Met you."
[2]Mrs. Rexdale has insisted that some portions of her letter, interesting only to her husband, shall be omitted.
[2]Mrs. Rexdale has insisted that some portions of her letter, interesting only to her husband, shall be omitted.
Ivan Ivanovitch lived on the outskirts of a small village about one hundred miles north-east of Moscow. Like his father and grandfather and many generations before, he was amoujik, a peasant, with this difference: they had been serfs; Ivan was freeborn. His father now owned the hut in which he lived with his family of wife and three children—two girls, besides Ivan; he also owned a small patch of land, and an acre or two of tillable soil had been allotted to him when the serfs were emancipated, with a condition of slow payment to the Government, a few roubles at a time.
Up to the autumn of 1903 Ivan worked in the fields, bare-headed and blue-bloused, beside his father. The girls worked, too, for the father was lame and needed all the help he could get. He had leaned upon Ivan more and more as the years went by and his son grew from boyhood to sturdy young manhood. Every evening the family knelt before the crucifix on the wall of the living-room,and prayed for themselves, their country, and their "Little Father," the Czar, who spent all his time in far-off St. Petersburg, they were sure, in thinking of his "children," the people of the great Empire, and loving them and planning for their good. In return they almost worshipped him, as they did the figure on the crucifix.
"Soon you will have to serve as a soldier, Ivan," said his father one day. The older man had a great tawny beard and mane of hair like a lion's; Ivan resembled him more and more.
"That is true, my father."
"You are nearly of age."
"True, my father."
"But," put in his mother anxiously, "surely our boy will not have to fight?"
"Nay, Matouschka," said Ivan tenderly but manfully, "if the Czar commands, my life is his!"
Two months later he reported at the barracks at Moscow, and was duly enrolled in the 11th Regiment of Infantry, Third Division, First Reserves, of the Imperial Army.
At first the novelty was amusing, and Ivan enjoyed the companionship of his comrades in the ranks, the smart uniform and big fur cap, the music of the band, when they paraded in the great square and the crowds gathered to see. But the drill, drill, drill became tedious, and it was with rather a senseof relief that in the latter part of the following January he heard that the regiment was to leave Moscow for the Far East.
There was no time to say good-bye to his parents, nor could he have paid his fare to and from the village had permission been given. So Ivan took out his little brass cross, his "ikon," which, like every other Russian soldier, he carried in his bosom, and murmured a prayer for father and sisters and the little mother. Then he buckled on his belt, adjusted his clumsy cap, shouldered his musket and was ready.
"Where are we going, comrade?" he asked of his next neighbour in the ranks, as they marched to the railway station.
"I do not know. They say there is to be war."
"War—against whom?"
"The Japanese."
"Japanese? Who are they? Are they savages or white like us?"
"I can't tell you, Ivan. We shall know when we see them."
"Why do we fight against them? Where do they live?"
But his comrade could only shrug his shoulders. He had not the least idea of the answer to either question; nor had any man in the company, only a half-dozen of whom could read or write.
"It is the Czar's command."
Silently they plodded on, the snow whirling about them as they marched. Here and there a knot of people cheered them. This was pleasant. Ivan felt that he was really a soldier. When a lump came into his throat at the thought of the little hut in the lonely white waste far to the north, he gulped it down and broke into a hoarse laugh which brought down a reprimand from the nearest officer.
The troops were packed into a long transport train like cattle. When the cars stopped or started suddenly they fell against each other. Some swore and even struck out, but most were as mild and phlegmatic as the cows and sheep whose places they had taken. Ivan was of this sort.
"Never mind," he said to a man who trod upon his foot; "it is nothing. My foot is iron"; and when he was thrown against a neighbour: "Ah, what a blockhead I am! Will you not hit me, to pay the score?"
Most of the soldiers said nothing. As verst after verst of desolate snowy landscape was left behind they stood or squatted in the cars, silent, uncomplaining. Why should they find fault with cold and hunger and fatigue? It was the Czar's command. The Little Father in his palace was caring for them. It was theirs not to complain, but to obey.
There were many delays on the ill-constructed,overcrowded Siberian Railway, the black cord that stretched across a continent to Port Arthur and Vladivostok, seven thousand miles away. But whether it was seventy miles or seven thousand the rank and file of the army hardly knew or cared. Cold, hungry, stiff from constrained position, they bore all privations with calmness and even a sort of jovial good-humour. At night every soldier fumbled under his furs and heavy winter coat for his ikon, and his bearded lips murmured the sacred Name.
At length the rugged shores of Lake Baikal were reached, in Farther Siberia. Here there was another halt, for the railway itself came to an end, and the troops were ordered out of the train at early dawn.
"How can we go on?" asked Ivan stupidly. Before him a white plain stretched away to the horizon line. To the right were mountains; to the left, mountains. The ice-bound surface of the lake was swept by a bitter gale, which heaped up huge drifts and flung them away again, like a child at play. Behind the regiment of fur-capped soldiers, huddled on the frozen shore, was home; before them, what seemed an Arctic sea. The snow fell heavily, and drifted around their feet. "How can we go on?" asked Ivan; and a subaltern, breathing through his icy moustache, replied: "I do not know, private, but we must advance. It is the Czar's command."
When Russia, determined to establish a port on the open sea, though it were thousands of miles from her capital, built the great Trans-Siberian Railway, she progressed rapidly with her fragile, light-rail, single-track road until she came to Lake Baikal. Here Nature had placed what might well be deemed an impossible obstruction: a huge inland lake four hundred miles in length, eighteen hundred feet deep, bordered with mountains, whose sheer granite cliffs rose from the water to a height of fifteen hundred feet, and in their turn were overshadowed by snow-capped peaks. The lake at this point is forty miles wide. No bridge could span its storm-swept surface, no tunnel could be driven beneath its sombre depths. How was the obstacle to be surmounted? A weaker nation would have given up the task, as the French tired of working at the Panama Canal; Russia, ponderous, tireless, determined, almost irresistible, moved on. In the science of Physics, the momentum of a moving body is thus analysed and expressed: M =m×v. In other words, it equals the mass of the body multiplied by its velocity. If either factor be increased, the momentum becomes correspondingly greater. When Russia moves, the velocity is slight, but the mass is enormous. When the soldier, in the time-worn anecdote, tried to stop with his foot the slowly rolling spent cannon-ball, it snapped his leg like a pipe-stem. The nation thatopposes Russia must itself be of iron mould, or it will snap. Lake Baikal was a trifle, a mere incident to the civil engineers who laid out the Trans-Siberian Railway.
In the summer-time huge steam ferry-boats plied from shore to shore, transferring passengers and freight from the western to the eastern or Trans-Baikal section. From November to April the lake is frozen over, but during at least half of that time enormous ice-breakers, like the heaviest ocean-going tug-boats, crashed through the ice and kept open a canal from side to side.
These were temporary expedients. The engineers meanwhile had not been idle. They attacked the cliffs bordering the southern end of the lake, and began cutting a path through the solid rock for advancing Russia. Twenty-seven tunnels were to be bored, and have since been completed. While Ivan waited by the shore a dull boom came now and then to his ear, from the blasting. It was the relentless, unfaltering tread of Russia's iron heel.
But other means had to be provided, in that terrible winter of 1903, for the passage of troops and supplies, for although the great mass of soldiers did not understand, their leaders and the counsellors of state in St. Petersburg knew there was urgent need. A railroad was begun upon the ice itself, and before March was in actual operation. A thousand feet ofwater gloomed beneath the thin ice bridge. Once or twice there was an accident—a locomotive went through, or a few cars, and, incidentally, a few human beings. This was nothing. "Forward, my men! It is the Czar's command!"
The ice railway not yet being complete, there was but one way to cross Lake Baikal—by horse-power or on foot. High officials and favoured travellers secured sledges; the main body of infantry, including Ivan's regiment, having hastily swallowed a breakfast of army rations, set out on the march across the forty miles of ice plain, at "fatigue step." The bands were forbidden to play, lest the rhythmic tread of the soldiers, instinctively keeping time to the music, should bring too great and concentrated strain upon the ice.
Before they were half a league from shore the wind pounced upon its new playthings; it blew upon their sides, their backs, and their faces. It pelted them with ice-drops, with whirling masses of snow. They leaned forward and plodded on, unmurmuring. It roared like a cataract, and howled like wolf-packs; the air was so filled with drift that each man simply followed his file-leader, with no idea of the direction of the march, the van being guided by telegraph-poles set in the ice at short intervals of space. Hands and feet became numb; beards were fringed with icicles; the men in thedisordered ranks slipped and stumbled against one another. With the mercury 23° below zero, and a northerly gale, hurled down the entire four hundred miles of unbroken expanse of the lake, the cold was frightful.
Ivan turned his head stiffly to mumble something to his neighbour in the ranks. He was no longer there. The subaltern who had answered him on the shore was also missing. Like scores of others he had wandered off the line of march, to fall and die unseen.
Ivan bent his head to a fierce blast, muttering "Courage, comrades!" No one replied to him as he staggered uncertainly onward. "Courage, comrades!" shouted Ivan again. His voice was lost in the ceaseless roar of the gale. Ivan peered out from under the mask of ice which had formed across his eyes, from his shaggy brows to his moustache. No one was near him. He was alone with the storm.
It seemed an easy thing to lie down in the snow and go to sleep. It would be a joy merely to drop the heavy musket. Nobody knew where he was; the lake would swallow him up, and who would be the wiser? Ivan halted a moment, pondering in his dull way. Suddenly he remembered. That would be disobedience of orders. His officer had said, "It is the Czar's command!" What madness, tothink of disobeying the Little Father at St. Petersburg! The peasant-soldier gripped his breast, where the ikon lay, and, taking his course as well as he could from the direction of the wind, staggered on.
Whether it was five minutes or an hour he could not tell; but now he saw dim figures around him, plodding silently onward. Whether they were comrades of his own regiment he neither knew nor cared. He was once more, after that moment of individuality, a part of the Russian army, and moved mechanically forward with it.
The men huddled together like sheep, as they marched. When one of their number staggered aside and disappeared they closed the gap; when one fell, they stepped stiffly over him.
"Halt!"
Each man stopped by stumbling abruptly against the one before him. They asked no questions. They remained standing, as they had moved, by sheer inertia, letting the butts of their muskets rest on the ice.
The column had halted by a rest-house, marking half-way across the lake. A few officials of highest rank, a newspaper man or two, half a dozen merchant travellers with special passes, refreshed themselves with soup and steaming tea. A steady stream of open sleighs passed slowly by the silent,immovable column. The troops were fed where they stood, without shelter from the fierce blast and whirling snow.
Soon the order came down the line, "Forward!"
Once more the fearful march across the ice was resumed. At long intervals there were more halts, when tea was served; but the cold increased. The men now began to suffer less. Some of them hoarsely roared out a snatch of song; these soon dropped or wandered away. When the winter storm of Siberia first assaults it is brutal in its blows, its piercing thrusts, its agonising rack-torment of cold. Gradually it becomes less rude and more dangerous. Its wild shriek of rage becomes a crooning cradle-song; it strokes away the anguish from the knotted joints of hand and foot and limb. It no longer repels, it invites.
When the long column of staggering, ice-covered forms reached the eastern shore of the lake its numbers had lessened by five hundred, who would never face the unknown enemies of the Far East. Ivan was among the survivors. His huge frame, his iron constitution, his allegiance to the Czar, had carried him through.
He found his company half a verst ahead, and as night fell he joined a group of grim figures around a blazing camp-fire. Tea was made and served out, with regular army rations. The men's drawn facesrelaxed. They warmed their half-frozen limbs. Rough jokes passed. The terrors of the lake-crossing were forgotten. "On to Harbin!" they roared out in chorus, as their colonel passed. "Long live the Czar!"
On the evening of February 8th a fleet of dark-hulled ships moved silently westward across the Yellow Sea. In the harbour of Port Arthur lay the pride of the Russian navy, most of the ships riding peacefully at anchor in the outer roads. They comprised the battle-shipsPetropavlovsk(flagship),Perseviet,Czarevitch,Retvizan, andSebastopol, and the cruisersNovik,Boyarin,Bayan,Diana,Pallada,Askold, andAurora. Of the officers, many were on shore, enjoying the hospitalities of the port and drinking the health of the Czar. The crews were below decks, or smoking idly and talking, in the low gutturals of their language, of home and friends far away. Secure in their sense of their mighty domain and the power that reached from the Baltic to the Pacific, they sang snatches of rude forecastle songs, or joked and laughed at the prospects of a war with the Japanese, "those little monkeys," who dared dispute even in mild diplomacy with the Great Empire. And as they laughed,and the smoke curled upward from their bearded lips, and the little waves of the peaceful harbour lapped softly against the huge floating forts, the black hulls from the east crept nearer, through the darkness.
Nine years had elapsed since the Japanese had invaded Korea and Manchuria. In 1895, victor over the Chinese, firmly established with his troops on the main land, with his fleet riding in the harbour of Port Arthur, which his army had taken by storm, the Mikado had been compelled by the powerful combination of Russia, France, and Germany to give up the material fruits of his victory, and Japan, too exhausted to fight for her rights, withdrew sullenly to her island Empire.
Three years later Russia obtained from China a twenty-five years' lease of Port Arthur, which she claimed she needed "for the due protection of her navy in the waters of North China." Her next move was to secure right to build the Manchurian Railway, connecting her two Pacific ports, Vladivostock and Port Arthur, with her western capital. She had at last reached the open sea. Vladivostock, at the south-eastern extremity of her own possessions in the north, was blocked by ice and shut off from the ocean every winter; Port Arthur offered a safe and open roadstead for her navy and mercantile marine throughout the year.
During the years that followed Russia strained every nerve to establish her customs, her power, and her people in Manchuria. Japan saw the danger to herself, but was powerless to prevent it. Recruiting from the expenditures of the Chinese war, she prepared for the greater struggle that was inevitable. She built up one of the most formidable navies the world had seen; she trained her officers and crews by the most modern methods; she reorganised her army and laboured to perfect it as a fighting machine. By wise laws and enlightened counsels she fostered her resources until her treasury was plethoric with gold. At last, early in 1903, she calmly reminded Russia that the stipulated term of her occupation of Manchuria, save at Port Arthur, had expired; that her excuse for remaining there no longer existed; that her pledges of removal must be kept.
Russia winced under the word "must"; the keyword of her own domestic polity, when applied by the nobles to the masses, it now had a strange and unwelcome sound. She redoubled her efforts to pour troops into the province, provisioned and fortified Port Arthur for a year's siege, established a "railroad guard" of sixty thousand men,—and blandly promised to retire in the following October.
Japan was no less alert. One by one the divisions of her great army were mobilised. They were drilledunceasingly, by competent officers from Western schools. They invented new and terrible explosives and engines of war, and prepared their battle-ships and torpedo-boats for active service. October passed, and the forces of Russia in Manchuria had been largely augmented instead of diminished. More diplomatic messages, couched in courteous terms, passed between the two capitals, and greater numbers of armed men flocked to the eastern and western shores of the Japan Sea.
Again and again St. Petersburg gained a modicum of time through silence or evasive answer; while the rails of the long railroad groaned under the heavy trains that day and night bore troops, supplies, and ammunition eastward. At last the limit was reached. On the 6th of February, at 4P.M., Kurino, the Japanese minister at St. Petersburg, presented himself at the Foreign Office at that city and informed Count Lamsdorff that his government, in view of the delays in connexion with the Russian answer to Japan's latest demand, and the futility of the negotiations up to that time, considered it useless to continue diplomatic relations and "would take such steps as it deemed properfor the protection of Japan's interests." In obedience to instructions, therefore, he asked, most gently and politely (after the fashion of his countrymen), for his passports.
On one of the Japanese torpedo-boats silentlyapproaching Port Arthur, just forty-eight hours after M. Kurino had made his farewell bow at the court of the Czar, was Oto Owari. No one who had seen him on theOsprey, meekly serving his commander with sliced cucumbers and broiled chicken, would have recognised the trim, alert little figure in the blue uniform, his visor drawn low over his sparkling eyes, his whole bearing erect, manly and marked with intense resolve as he conned his vessel through the channel toward the doomed fleet of the enemy.
When the American ship arrived at Shanghai, Oto had at once procured his own discharge and that of Oshima, which was an informal matter, they not being enlisted men but merely cabin servants. Rexdale was glad to let them go. The little Japs were too mysterious and secretive personages to render their presence welcome on a war-ship where the commander should know all that is going on, above-board and below. Dave more than half suspected that his stewards were of more importance in their own country than their menial office would indicate; and while he could not exactly regard them in the light of spies—Japan being friendly to the United States—he felt more comfortable when they had taken their little grips and marched ashore to mingle with the heterogeneous population of the Chinese port.