Part 2

“All right. Proceed to sea,” was the answer, and once more the propellers threshed and passed astern, seeking out the _Logan_. We now knew the boat to be a harbor patrol, guarding the entrance to the bay. We appreciated its protection, and extreme care for two transports trying to get away from San Francisco filled with troops. We wondered if that happened to be the way the Germans sneaked out of their ports.

Presently we heard the _Logan_ challenged, as we had been, and the reply from her bridge.

There were still more thrilling things in store for us. We saw the beam of a searchlight from Fort Scott playing across the Golden Gate. We expected that when we came within its range, it would lift and let us pass. Instead, its beam was turned full upon us, and stayed on us, lighting up the whole vessel till it looked like a floating hotel drifting out to sea. It must have been a wonderful sight from the hills of San Francisco. We went into the smoking-room, where the steward had hung bath towels over the ports to conceal all lights, and lit cigarettes with due precautions against showing the flash of the match. We had to go somewhere to get out of the glare of that searchlight.

Soon we felt the heave of the Pacific under us, the engines settled down to their work to twist behind the miles between us and Vladivostok, and we were off to the war, feeling as if we had stolen somebody’s chickens. We had gotten away about as secretly as a three-ring circus.

III

JAPAN TO VLADIVOSTOK

Our transports put in at Hakodate for coal. From San Francisco, something had been wrong with the _Logan’s_ engines. What it was, she would neither tell by wireless, nor signal by wig-wag. We heard everything from a story that German spies had tangled fish-nets in her propeller, to a yarn that bearings for her engines had been forgotten on the dock. But the result was, that the _Logan_, which had been armed especially to protect us, lolled behind, at times dropping below the horizon, and we slopped around in the Pacific with steerage way, waiting for her to catch up. This continued day after day, and we burned deeply into our coal supply.

For some reason, we could not get enough coal in Hakodate, and after a couple of days, pulled out for Otaru, Japan, where we stopped another two days, and went ashore again. When we had exhausted the sights of the small city, some of us went on to Sapporo by train, and saw that provincial capital.

While we were ashore, a typhoon came up, and the _Logan_ dragged her anchors, and came near to piling up on the breakwater. Several Japanese coaling the transports from barges, were drowned.

On our return from Sapporo we found the roofs of Otaru rather dislocated, a high wind still blowing, and no chance to get back to ship that night. So some of us slept in the native hotel of the town, and enjoyed the novelty of sitting on the floor for a Japanese breakfast, while cross crows in a garden cawed at us and the gold fish swam in the pretty pool of the court. The rickshawmen gleaned fortunes from nearly a thousand soldiers on holiday with plenty of money to spend.

That morning was rainy, and the streets were deep with mud. Coming down to pay my hotel bill, I found a tall, lanky Kentuckian in an argument with the proprietor, who, of course, spoke no English. The lieutenant in command of the military police, a man who spoke several languages, was doing his best to straighten out the difficulty, while the Kentuckian, in his gray woolen socks, held up a pair of muddy shoes which he regarded with contempt, the while displaying a marvellously wicked vocabulary.

I lingered to see what it was all about. The Kentuckian modified his language in my presence, which I rather deplored, for it was chilly in that entrance and his remarks raised the temperature. On entering a Japanese house or hotel, one must remove shoes and put on slippers. Some fifteen or twenty shore-bound soldiers had remained at the hotel. When they came down in the morning, they found their heavy marching shoes stiff from the mud of the previous day, and shrunken. The result was that the first applicants for shoes in the morning preferred the larger sizes, and took such as fit them, regardless of who happened to own them.

The Kentuckian appeared to be the last one down, and all that was left for him in the way of footwear was one pair of wet shoes, size six. When I came to look at his feet, I understood his predicament--he wore at least size eleven. I got into a corner and had a discreet laugh. For years before I had been in Japan with troops when I was not a captain, and had some appreciation of the pranks of the enlisted men.

“What you ought to do,” I said, keeping as straight a face as possible, “is to get a pair of Japanese _geta_, and walk to the ship in them--they will keep you out of the mud.”

He looked at the wooden footwear I pointed out, with cleats under the soles four inches high, and snorted, feeling that he could take liberties with an officer who seemed so neighborly.

“I ain’t hankerin’ none to walk on them damned stilts, capting,” he said, and I gave up all ideas of having any amusement from seeing him navigate through the mud with his big toes thrust through the straps of the wooden sandals. Secretly, I hoped he would attempt it, and lose the sandals in the mud.

“Then take a rickshaw,” I suggested. “If you’re out of money, I’ll pay for it.”

“Couldn’t git me to ride in none of them baby carriages,” he said, and holding out the pair of infantile shoes to the Japanese proprietor, demanded wrathfully that his own shoes be produced.

“No got, no got,” wailed a clerk, distractedly. The lieutenant of military police once more plunged into a discourse that sounded as if it might be Japanese. The audience listened respectfully, but disclaimed all responsibility for what the soldiers had done. They had not been able to prevent the other soldiers from taking the shoes that had been selected from the collection that morning.

The Kentuckian disgustedly threw the shoes into a corner and started out. I hailed him and suggested that he take the shoes with him and exchange them aboard the transport. He assented doubtfully, and to the amusement of the Japanese population, they saw a tall American soldier walking down the muddy streets in his stockinged feet, carrying his shoes in his hands, and making an oration. They were sure the American was mad--Americans have such queer ways!

From Otaru we sailed for Vladivostok, crossing the Sea of Japan. It was foggy weather, and we proceeded leisurely. The _Brooklyn_, lying in Vladivostok harbor, got us by wireless, and the military staff demanded information as to why we were so slow. They seemed in great pother and we felt that we must be desperately needed.

This call for speed puzzled us, for the wireless flashed news to us that the Bolshevist front had been pushed back, and was now five thousand miles from the coast--at the Volga River. This news was disappointing for an expedition which was properly keyed up for immediate action, and was dreaming of landing under shell-fire or some other dramatic phase of real war. And the medal-hounds cursed their luck!

Our first sight of Vladivostok as we sailed up through the Golden Horn, was of a peaceful city nestling among craggy hills, but bloated beyond its natural size by acres of sheeted piles of war-stores. This great fringe of covered stores resembled mushrooms which had come up in the night around the city.

Bluejackets aboard the _Brooklyn_ hailed us with loving derision as the _Sheridan_ felt her way to the dock; they joked us about our machine-guns lashed to our after-bridge, and suggested that we check our shooting-irons “at the door” in order to avoid trouble.

Our impressions of the people we saw on the docks were favorable. Friendly-looking Russians in boots and whiskers, right out of our old school geographies, and wearing the same belted blouses we had seen in melodramas about exiles to Siberia, gathered to watch us disembark. And Cossacks in sheepskin caps as big as garbage cans, smiled at us good-naturedly.

Immediately the gang-plank was down, one of the commanding general’s aides hustled aboard, and we were sure that now the fateful news was to be told us--we must prepare for action immediately, probably get ready to go those five thousand versts to the Volga River to which the “front” had backed up. He proved to be a merry chap, with a Harvard accent, a fine sense of humor, and a swagger stick.

“Where have you been all this time?” he demanded, as he shook hands with Major Samuel I. Johnson, of Hawaii, born in Russia, the officer commanding troops aboard the transports. We crowded around, expecting to hear a history-making remark, once our delay was explained.

Major Johnson suggested that perhaps the delay might be better explained when the _Logan_ docked. “What’s up?” he asked, keen for the reason of the fretting of headquarters.

“Nothing’s up,” laughed the aide. “But we’re all gasping for our mail. We thought you’d never get here.”

“Any fighting?” asked a particularly war-like officer.

The aide laughed merrily and then informed us of the Intelligence Division that the busiest time we would have each day would be when we made our morning toilet. Smith, self-appointed assistant to the General Staff, almost collapsed at this news.

“What’s the price of ham and eggs?” shouted a practical-minded doughboy from a porthole to a soldier on the dock.

“How long will it take us to get into the fighting?” persisted one of our belligerent officers.

“What’s the words for ‘How much’ in this Rooshan language?” called a serious-minded machine-gun corporal to a sergeant ashore.

“‘Skulky stoy,’” replied the sergeant, and then betraying his disgust and disillusionment, added: “Aw, you won’t see no war here--only thing you’ll fight is the grub. Them skirmishes up at Nikolsk is all over. The Bolsheviki are clear to the Ekaterinburg front, and still runnin’. And the only kind of fool money they got here is postage stamps with pictures on ’em of the Rooshan Cee-zar.”

“I thought the Rooshans was off that feller for life,” said the corporal.

“Don’t you think that because they put the crusher on him, they don’t want him. They don’t know their elbers from breakfast without a boss. How you expect anybody who says ‘da-da-da’ for ‘yes’ to have any sense?”

Who says an army is not supposed to think? Our army does--our doughboys in Siberia could have given pointers to statesmen at home. It is a good thing to bear in mind.

Somebody asked where we were to be quartered, and we learned that we had better remain aboard the transport till quarters could be arranged. Of course, the officers with troops went to the nearby stations with their commands, some being sent to the Suchan Mines, some to Khabarovsk, where were the headquarters of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, and others distributed to units stationed along the railroad. But fifteen officers and fifteen field clerks of the Intelligence Division had no more homes than so many jack-rabbits.

The Chief Intelligence Officer came down to the transport and interviewed us, and gave us a chance to size him up. He had been in the country several months, had seen much of the fighting of the Cossack chiefs against the Bolshevists up the line of the railroad, and had a good grasp of the situation. But under our policy of “non-interference,” there was little use for grasping anything--the chief job was to keep hands off all Siberian affairs.

That afternoon I rode up to headquarters, passing through the muddy streets swarming with pigs, till the Svetlanskaya, Vladivostok’s main street, was reached. Then our automobile whizzed up hill and down dale over this Broadway of Asia, passing soldiers of many nations en route--French, Czechs, Russians, little black Annammites from the French possessions, Italians, Canadians, British, Japanese, Cossacks from the Don, the Urals, the Ussuri, the trans-Baikal, and bluejackets from Japanese, French, British and American warships in the bay.

The city of Vladivostok itself presented a spectacle that would have brought joy to anybody who yearned for a job as a professional philanthropist. For “The Mistress of the East” had jumped her population from the normal, which was forty thousand, to about one hundred and eighty thousand. Refugee barracks on the edge of the city were filled with people from the interior. Trains came jammed to the last shelf against the ceiling, and poured battalions of travellers into the Trans-Siberian station, where they settled down to sleep in the corridors regardless of the throngs marching over them. They looked like rag-bags come to life--these hungry, dirty, tattered people from the hinterland, a human caravan in a panic. They smelled like a circus menagerie.

Among them were many typhus victims. Beside these sick camped the well--with little complaint--and set up housekeeping on any available floor space. Some who had perhaps an aristocratic taste for privacy, or who found the air of the waiting-room a trifle spicy, filtered out to other habitations. There were, of course, no vacant rooms at the hotels or elsewhere.

Money could not always buy shelter and rarely seclusion, since the average sleeping chamber accommodated all the way from five to a dozen persons. Even billiard tables commanded a good price as places of repose. And shows lasted till dawn, so that people who slept in the daytime could be amused while sitting up all night. Thus, when one-half of the population got up in the morning, it met the other half going to bed.

Judging by conditions in Vladivostok, it was obvious that a terrible state of affairs existed in the hinterland. The refugees, clamoring for food, said so. Statistics of food-prices, gleaned from the refugees as well as from the inland press, proved a state of famine.

The Svetlanskaya is along a bench of the hills over the city, and affords a fine view of the harbor. Our headquarters were in a store-building close to the bay, across from the department store of Kunst and Albers, the chief mercantile organization of Siberia, with chain stores in the principal cities. The building our _stab_, or staff, occupied, was a brick structure of two stories and basement, and resembled a library building. It had been used as offices and store-rooms by Kunst and Albers.

When I reported, I was told that I could register at the base, from which I had come. Back at the base they told me to register at headquarters, so I never did register, but went back aboard the transport.

That night I received orders to proceed to all stations, under verbal orders of the commanding general, and in connection with certain intelligence work, to call the attention of the troops to the Third Liberty Loan. A Russian-speaking orderly from our own army, with an unpronounceable name, was assigned to me. I called him Brown. I was told that I must have my baggage aboard a troop-train leaving the base at eight o’clock that night for Khabarovsk, but that I could board the train at ten o’clock at the city station of the trans-Siberian.

Having no quarters, I put all my possessions, consisting of bedding-roll and two lockers, into a box-car of the train with the aid of field clerks and German war-prisoners. We got it out of the transport and aboard the train at the last minute--or what I thought was the last minute. I was later to learn that there is no necessity for hurry in Siberia.

But the train did not come out of the yards to the depot. Not that anything was wrong; it was simply that the engine failed to appear. All through the frozen night, a couple of locomotives wheezed up and down and whistled signals. Russian railroad men blew horns interminably, and there was every evidence of laudable activity. The American major who was to have charge of the train delivered a line of profanity with all the fervor and efficiency of the old regular army. But the Russian station officials--lay down on benches and went to sleep!

It was five o’clock in the morning before that troop-train of box-cars rattled up to the station, and another hour of horn-blowing and whistling before we were finally under way. Then we blew out the guttering candles and lay down on a shelf in a dirty car.

IV

TOWARD KHABAROVSK

When morning dawned, we found ourselves rolling along at about ten miles an hour over a plain, with wooded hills in the distance. The fields were brown and sere, for it was then the first week in October, and the air was feeling the first chill of winter.

About nine o’clock we reached Nikolsk-Ussuri, where the railroad splits, one track, the Chinese Eastern, going across Manchuria to the Siberian border, and the other, the one we were to follow, proceeding to the north through the Maritime Provinces as far as Khabarovsk, where it crosses the Amur River north of that city, and then runs to the northwest well inside the Siberian border, with a branch line running down to Blagoveschench. The main line then goes to Kerak, and crossing the Shilka River, joins up with the Chinese Eastern over Manchuria, at Karimska, a few versts to the southeast of Chita, capital of the province of Trans-Baikal.

At Nikolsk, as it is commonly called, I had my first experience with a station restaurant. There was a Japanese troop-train in the yards, also a train with Chinese troops. Our six hundred odd soldiers had their own kitchen-cars and messed while the train stopped. After their night on shelves built into the box-cars, they were glad for a chance to stretch their legs and exchange pleasantries with their friends in other cars.

The station restaurant was thronged. My orderly went with me, and we pushed our way through crowds of refugees, Cossacks, Japanese officers and all the motley crew assembled there and clamoring for food. We managed to get some cabbage soup, which we had to defend against the flies, for no one ever kills or traps a fly in Siberia.

The city itself is a couple of versts from the station, for when the railroad was built it appears that the engineers took every precaution against getting too close to cities; they simply laid out their lines for the right of way, and if the city happened to be near, well and good; if not, the city would have to come to the railroad.

It was here that I realized for the first time how vague and unlimited is the Russian word _Sichass_, which means anything from presently to some time in the dim future. I desired to visit the city, to look over the German war-prisoner camp, to investigate the train full of Bolshevist prisoners, including men, women and children. But our Russian conductor, drinking tea in the station, warned us that our train would move “_Sichass_”, so I went back to my car and waited, not daring to get far away.

We were there for several hours. Russians came and looked at us, and we looked at them. They regarded us with friendly eye, but scowled and muttered when they encountered a Japanese soldier. It was apparent that the wounds of the Russo-Japanese war are not fully healed, and in the face of the hatred which meets the Japanese at every turn in Siberia, the little soldiers from Nippon display a splendid discipline. We heard that this discipline is limited to places where their conduct is under observation.

Every minute, during the time our train lay in the yards, it appeared that departure was imminent. A bell at the station tolled once, and the conductor and engineer blew horns at each other. Presently the engine whistled.

In half an hour or so, two bells tolled from the station, which caused the conductor and engineer to break out their tooting again. This done, they finally decided to load the engine tender with wood, and leaving the job to a pair of Chinese coolies, went away to the station to have another round of tea. In another half hour, they were back, three bells toll, the conductor unfolds carefully a green flag and waves it, rolls it up, and pulls a big bottle of snuff from his boot-leg. Having regaled himself, and sneezed solemnly, he blows his horn again, the engine toots, and after a while, the train moves reluctantly.

Our train stopped on the plains to have ashes drawn from the fire-box. The train crew made tea and lunched. When there was no more tea to drink, and no more gossip to talk, we moved along again.

We stopped eight hours at one station. After two hours waiting, we attempted to ascertain the cause of the delay. It appeared that the engineer had some friends in that town, and had gone away to drink tea. How soon might we be expected to proceed? “Sichass.”

At first this sort of thing is a joke to the stranger in Siberia, in time it becomes an exasperation, but finally you learn to submit and become a Russian, and take no count of the passage of time. Their utter abhorrence for anything approaching a definite statement is most puzzling.

For instance, if they know the exact time a train is supposed to arrive or depart, they refrain from telling the traveler. Some say this is a natural characteristic of the people. I ascribe it to fear of being blamed if there is a delay caused by circumstances over which they have no control.

Under the old régime, if a station-master or a conductor, stated that something was going to happen at a certain time, and it did not happen, they might be whipped or otherwise mistreated by superiors for telling a lie. So they transfer the worry of delay to the traveler, and keep their own skirts clear of trouble.

There is another fact which must be considered, and that is, that to men in prison, time means little. Next week, or next month or next year, will do as well to perform some duty. Siberia was a great prison, and this disregard of time must be in the blood. Ordinarily the Russian is most affable and hospitable, once he knows you for a friend, but to a stranger, his attitude is most impersonal and careless.

As the train stopped from one to fifteen hours at every station, I was able to spend considerable time in the various depots. Their restaurants were thronged with “famine-stricken” peasants, weighing some three hundred pounds gross each, enthusiastically discussing freedom--the while they sprayed themselves with cabbage soup. Hunger! I never want to look upon such hunger again! More: Never again do I want to hear it. (Who would guess that goulash is a high explosive?)

Eat! I will back the Russians as eaters against any other race of eaters in the world. The way an average Siberian can mistreat roasted partridges, hunks of defenseless beef, and loaves of pneumatic rye bread is painful to recall. Their cruelty lies chiefly in the fact that they insist upon talking while they eat. The Siberian is the champion three-ring talker of the universe. He talks politics so well that he can prove himself a liar--then start all over again, which explains why he has to call for outside help in order to settle anything. And if the outsider asks him to stop talking and do something, it makes him mad.

Why work when one can talk? Work is for slaves. Only the Chinese and the women work, (Apparently these are not free). Talk is the chief product of Russian activity along the trans-Siberian. When combined with gastronomics it is thrilling.

The Allied officers in Siberia were misled as to the character of Siberians who appeared to be mere louts, dressed out of the rag-bag. In particular, the Americans in Siberia were inclined to judge the people with whom they came in contact by the standards of dress in the United States. But the Siberian who looks like an animated scare-crow may be playing international poker. And he is willing to let us laugh at him if he can fool us.