My orderly was now out of hospital, and I arranged to leave for Vladivostok. The train would leave at one o’clock in the afternoon. At ten, I sent the orderly-interpreter to the station, to get two tickets and book accommodations for us. At eleven we were at the station, in order to assure ourselves of a seat, for the train came in a couple of hours before it departed, and seats belong to those who get them, regardless of seat-tickets or anything else, under that system of “equality” which the Siberian has acquired.
All my effects were dumped from an army wagon, in a blinding snow storm. The Cossack commandant assured us that our seats would be preserved for us. The train came in, and unloaded its passengers, and immediately there was a wild scramble on the part of peasants and Chinese, fighting their way into the cars. The commandant was with my interpreter, finding our places, so I waited an hour, having an abiding faith at that time in the polite assurances of Cossack officers.
The interpreter came back looking disconsolate. He said the Cossack had given up in disgust—there was no room in the train for us. And the engine tooting for an early start, with my baggage rapidly becoming a snow drift!
I went to the station and found the Cossack officer. I displayed my tickets, and cited the fact that I had taken every precaution for transportation, and had taken him at his word that he would be glad to reserve seats for us. I demanded that he make good his promises.
He displayed a most laudable energy, and going aboard a car, opened the door of a compartment despite the protests of four Russian men inside. He waxed eloquent over the fact that an American officer and soldier must travel on that train. They displayed pistols, but finally gave way, and the six of us sat down in the compartment. My baggage was checked, and away we rolled.
It developed later that the reluctance of the four men inside to admit anybody was due to the fact that they were carrying large sums of railroad money to Vladivostok. And they explained to the interpreter that they had showed the pistols for the benefit of the crowds in the passageway of the car, and were willing enough that we should share the compartment with them, for if we had not, they might have had trouble with the exasperated travelers outside, who were compelled to stand up all that day and most of the night, to get to Vladivostok. As it turned out, we lived in that compartment as if in a besieged fortress. At every station, new passengers demanded admittance, and fought for some time to be admitted, claiming that there was room to sit on the two upper berths.
But the Russians drove them away with pistols, and by asserting that the compartment belonged to “the Americanskys.” And Russian women with children, scowled at me through the narrow aperture of the chained door which ventilated the compartment, losing no opportunity by looks or remarks, to express their opinions of people who came to Siberia and prevented honest people from riding in comfort in their own trains.
We got into Vladivostok about four o’clock the next morning, and hiring three Chinese carriers, I got my baggage to headquarters, and set up my cot in the Intelligence Office.
During my absence, there had been a merry rumpus.