"He has no more strength than a cat," grumbled the Russian. "You can't take him on this train."
"Very well," retorted Ian, furious. "If you send him off the train we all go. I'll tramp to Warsaw, but I won't leave him."
"He's neither so old nor weak as he looks," put in Ostap. "I'll answer for him to do his work here."
"You won't answer for prisoners getting loose," retorted the subaltern. However, Martin was finally put with the engine-driver. He sat on the floor by the wood-chest and slept for ten hours, without feeling or hearing anything, though people came and went and he found somebody's dog fast asleep on his chest when he awoke.
It seemed as though they would never start. Several times the word was given, only to be rescinded. Many human odds and ends of a military camp arrived, apparently from nowhere, and demanded to be allowed standing-room amongst the prisoners. The weary subaltern protested and swore but all applicants seemed to find places. Before they left two empty trains came up from Warsaw to take wounded. Ian noticed they were roped like the Orsov train. In a remarkably short time they were packed, inside and out, with sick and wounded whom Nicolai Petrovitch Ketov was striving to get off before the Germans came. He was an amiable lawyer in private life, with a passion for music and a speculative mind. Ian had the satisfaction of hearing later on that he left neither man, woman nor child behind at the camp, that he saw everything was burnt that the troops could not carry away and that he even made the grain uneatable by pouring petrol over it.
The delay fretted Ian, for he was in a good deal of pain from his broken ribs and feverish as well, suffering agonies of thirst. He had a hasty visit from Minnie and Healy, who came up as near as they could to shout him good-bye.
"We're off," said she. "I wish you were looking more comfortable."
"Oh, I'm all right. I forgot to get some water, that's all."
Healy went off and brought a bottle full. And he insisted on Ian's taking a packet of cigarettes.
"I'll reach Warsaw before you," he urged. "So do take them all. I'll keep the car there as long as I dare. Look me up at the American Consulate. You know where it is?"