CHAPTER X.
SUSPENSE.
McKay must have slept for many hours. Daylight was fading, and the den he occupied was nearly dark, when he was aroused by the voices of his Russian fellow-lodgers coming off duty for the night.
They were rough, simple fellows most of them: boorish peasants torn from their village homes, and forced to fight in their Czar's quarrel, which he was pleased to call a holy war. Coarse, uncultivated, but not unkindly, and they gathered around McKay, staring curiously at him, and plying him with questions.
His command of their language soon established amicable relations, and presently, when supper was ready, a nauseous mess of kasha, or thick oatmeal porridge, boiled with salt pork, they hospitably invited him to partake. He was a prisoner, but an honoured guest, and they freely pressed their flasks of vodkhi upon him when with great difficulty he had swallowed a few spoonfulls of the black porridge.
They talked, too, incessantly, notwithstanding their fatigue, always on the same subject, this interminable siege.
"It's weary work," said one. "I long for home."
"They will never take the place; Father Todleben will see to that. Why do they not go, and leave us in peace?"