Chapter XII: The Wrecked Train

I found the usual polyglot crowd assembled at the Friedrichstrasse station, waiting to board the international express including a number of Russian officers, one of whom specially attracted my attention. He was a splendid looking young man, well over six feet in height, but so finely proportioned that one did not realize his great stature till one compared him with others--myself, for instance. I stand full six feet in my socks, but he towered above me. I encountered him first by cannoning right into him, as I turned from buying some cigarettes. He accepted my hasty apologies with an abstracted smile and a half salute, and passed on.

That in itself was sufficiently unusual. An ordinary Russian officer,--even one of high rank, as this man's uniform showed him to be,--would certainly have bad-worded me for my clumsiness, and probably have chosen to regard it as a deliberate insult. Your Russian as a rule wastes no courtesy on members of his own sex, while his vaunted politeness to women is of a nature that we Americans consider nothing less than rank impertinence; and is so superficial, that at the least thing it will give place to the sheer brutality that is characteristic of nearly every Russian in uniform. Have I not seen? But pah! I won't write of horrors, till I have to!

Before I boarded the sleeping car I looked back across the platform, and saw the tall man returning towards the train, making his way slowly through the crowd. A somewhat noisy group of officers saluted him as he passed, and he returned the salute mechanically, with a sort of preoccupied air.

They looked after him, and one of them shrugged his shoulders and said something that evoked a chorus of laughter from his companions. I heard it; though I doubt if the man who appeared to be the object of their mirth did. Anyhow, he made no sign. There was something curiously serene and aloof about him.

"Wonder who he is?" I thought, as I sought my berth, and turned in at once, for I was dead tired.

I slept soundly through the long hours while the train rushed onwards through the night; and did not wake till we were nearing the grim old city of Konigsberg. I dressed, and made my way to the buffet car, to find breakfast in full swing and every table occupied, until I reached the extreme end of the car, where there were two tables, each with both seats vacant.

I had scarcely settled myself in the nearest seat, when my shoulder was grabbed by an excited individual, who tried to haul me out of my place, vociferating a string of abuse, in a mixture of Russian and German.

I resisted, naturally, and indignantly demanded an explanation. I had to shout to make myself heard. He would not listen, or release his hold, while with his free hand he gesticulated wildly towards two soldiers, who, I now saw, were stationed at the further door of the car. In an instant they had covered me with their rifles, and they certainly looked as if they meant business. But what in thunder had I done?

At that same moment a man came through the guarded doorway,--the tall officer who had interested me so strongly last night.

He paused, and evidently took in the situation at a glance.

"Release that gentleman!" he commanded sternly.

My captor obeyed, so promptly that I nearly lost my balance, and only saved myself from an ignominious fall by tumbling back into the seat from which he had been trying to eject me. The soldiers presented arms to the new-comer, and my late assailant, all the spunk gone out of him, began to whine an abject apology and explanation, which the officer cut short with a gesture.

I was on my feet by this time, and, as he turned to me, I said in French: "I offer you my most sincere apologies, Monsieur. The other tables were full, and I had no idea that these were reserved--"

"They are not," he interrupted courteously. "At least they were reserved in defiance of my orders; and now I beg you to remain, Monsieur, and to give me the pleasure of your company."

I accepted the invitation, of course; partly because, although it was given so frankly and unceremoniously, it was with the air of one whose invitations were in the nature of "commands;" and also because he now interested me more strongly than ever. I knew that he must be an important personage, who was travelling incognito; though a man of such physique could not expect to pass unrecognized. Seen in daylight he appeared even more remarkable than he had done under the sizzling arc lights of the station. His face was as handsome as his figure; well-featured, though the chin was concealed by a short beard, bronze-colored like his hair, and cut to the fashion set by the present Tsar. His eyes were singularly blue, the clear, vivid Scandinavian blue eyes, keen and far-sighted as those of an eagle, seldom seen save in sailor men who have Norse blood in their veins.

I wonder now that I did not at once guess his identity, though he gave me no clue to it.

When he ascertained that I was an American, who had travelled considerably and was now bound for Russia, he plied me with shrewd questions, which showed that he had a pretty wide knowledge of social and political matters in most European countries, though he had never been in the States.

"This is your first visit to Russia?" he inquired, presently. "No?"

I explained that I had spent a winter in Petersburg some years back, and had preserved very pleasant memories of it.

"I trust your present visit may prove as pleasant," he said courteously. "Though you will probably perceive a great difference. Not that we are in the constant state of excitement described by some of the foreign papers," he added with a slight smile. "But Petersburg is no longer the gay city it was, 'Paris by the Neva' as we used to say. We--"

He checked himself and rose as the train pulled up for the few minutes' halt at Konigsberg; and with a slight salute turned and passed through the guarded doorway.

"Can you tell me that officer's name?" I asked the conductor, as I retreated to the rear car.

"You know him as well as I do," he answered ambiguously, pocketing the tip I produced.

"I don't know his name."

"Then neither do I," retorted the man surlily.

I saw no more of my new acquaintance till we reached the frontier, when, as with the other passengers I was hustled into the apartment where luggage and passports are examined, I caught a glimpse of him striding towards the great _grille_, that, with its armed guard, is the actual line of demarcation between the two countries. Beside him trotted a fat little man in the uniform of a staff officer, with whom he seemed to be conversing familiarly.

Evidently he was of a rank that entitled him to be spared the ordeal that awaited us lesser mortals.

The tedious business was over at last; and, once through the barrier, I joined the throng in the restaurant, and looked around to see if he was among them. He was not, and I guessed he had already gone on,--by a special train probably.

The long hot day dragged on without any incident to break the monotony. I turned in early, and must have been asleep for an hour or two when I was violently awakened by a terrific shock that hurled me clear out of my berth.

I sat up on the floor of the car, wondering what on earth could have happened. The other passengers were shrieking and cursing, panic-stricken, though I guess they were more frightened than hurt, for the car had at least kept the rails. I don't recollect how I managed to reach the door, but I found myself outside peering through the semi-darkness at an appalling sight.

The whole of the front part of the train was a wreck; the engine lay on its side, belching fire and smoke, and the cars immediately behind it were a heap of wreckage, from which horrible sounds came, screams of mortal fear and pain. Even as I stood, staring, dazed like a drunken man, a flame shot up amid the piled-up mass of splintered wood. The wreckage was already afire, and as I saw that, I dashed forward. Others were as ready as I, and in half a minute we were frantically hauling at the wreckage, and endeavoring to extricate the poor wretches who were writhing and shrieking under it, before the fire should reach them.

A big man worked silently beside me, and together we got out several of the victims, till the flames drove us back, and we stood together, a little away from the scene, breathing hard, and incapable for the moment of any fresh exertion.

I looked at him then for the first time, though I had known all along that he was my courtly friend of the previous morning. His stern face, seen in the sinister light of the blazing wreckage, was ghastly; it was smeared with the blood that oozed from a wound across his forehead, and his blue eyes were aflame with horror and indignation.

He was evidently quite unaware of my presence, and I heard him mutter: "It was meant for me! My God! it was meant for me! And I have survived, while these suffer."

I do not know what instinct prompted me to look behind at that moment, just in time to see that a man had stolen out from among the pines in our rear, and was in the act of springing on my companion.

"_Gardez!_" I cried warningly, as I saw the glint of an upraised knife, and flung myself on the fellow. As if my shout had been a signal, more men swarmed out of the forest and surrounded us.

What followed was confused and unreal as a nightmare. My antagonist was a wiry fellow, strong and active as a wild cat; also he had his knife, while I, of course, was unarmed. He got in a nasty slash with his weapon before I could seize and hold his wrist with my left hand. We wrestled in grim silence, till at last I had him down, with my knee on his chest. I shifted my hand from his wrist to his throat and choked the fight out of him, anyhow; then felt for the knife, but he must have flung it from him, and I had no time to search for it among the brushwood.

I sprang up and looked for my companion. He had his back to a tree and was hitting out right and left at the ruffians round him,--like hounds about a stag at bay.

"_A moi!_" I yelled to those by the train, who were still ignorant of what was happening so close at hand, and rushed to his assistance. I hurled aside one man, who staggered and fell; dashed my fist in the face of a second; he went down too, but at the same moment I reeled under a crashing blow, and fell down--down--into utter darkness.