"No. But I can find out."
"Good. Mind, your seat will be kept till we start."
"When is that?"
"When the Grand Duke leaves. They say here he leaves to-night. But I don't believe it. And I'm not going to forget Poland. When I've got more stores I'm coming back again."
He watched them go off in a cloud of dust. They had luck with love, he reflected. They would get on very well together. He knew Healy was well off, and Minnie had a little fortune of her own. And they would spend it wisely, helping those poorer than themselves. He had no hope of marrying Vanda. Joseph was well and safe. He ought to have been glad of it, he knew. But he hated his cousin bitterly, all the more bitterly as ruin closed around him and years of exile filled his tired vision. Very likely he would get killed before his rival.
Ostap was very cheerful. After telling the prisoners what they were to expect if they tried any nonsense he shared his last cigarette with one of them. Ian seemed to hear his voice all the time. It broke into his sorrowful meditations and sometimes got mixed up with them, for the fever made him rather muddle-headed.
"We haven't ammunition," Ostap said. "But we use the knife instead. There were hundreds of you in that camp wounded with our bayonets. All ours are wounded with shells and shrapnel because you are afraid to come too close."
"We have enough ammunition to beat the world," put in a thick German voice; it belonged to one who had been a clerk in Moscow.
"Perhaps," agreed Ostap. "But we have more men and don't care if we die or not. That will beat the people who beat the world, in the end."
Thus the talk went on. Ian dozed on his perch, wondering at last who was beating the world and where the ammunition came from. And just before sunset they arrived at Sohaczev.