I was started on my journey for New York, exactly on the other side of the world. I was content.
XXIII
CHITA TO VLADIVOSTOK
In about five days we reached Manchuria Station, also known as Mandchuli. At this station we had to change trains, for it was the end of the Baikal division of the railroad and trains for Vladivostok were made up there.
This line being the Chinese Eastern, all stations had our American officers on duty, these men being railroad men serving in the Russian Railway Service. Though we had come this far in the private car of the Russian colonel bound for Harbin, it was advisable to arrange for room in the Vladivostok train where the train was made up, for it would be next to impossible to get accommodations out of Harbin.
I had asked my telegraph operators at Chita to notify by wire the American officer on duty at Manchuria Station the time my train left Chita, and to have him hold for me a coupé, or sleeping compartment, in the proper Vladivostok train. But my operators gave the time I went aboard the private car as time of my departure, saying I had left on Number Four at nine in the evening of January thirty-first. But the Number Four which picked up our car did not leave till nine the following morning. And we made such slow progress, being five days in getting to Manchuria Station, that reservation had been made for me on the Vladivostok train departing the morning before I arrived.
As we pulled into Manchuria Station in the gray dawn of seven o’clock, I saw the frost-covered steel cars of the Vladivostok train lying alongside us. It was due to leave at nine o’clock.
We hastened out of our car with our numerous bags, boxes of food, and cooking utensils. Captain B—— stood guard over our property, Mrs. B—— went to the crowded station restaurant for hot tea, and I went to the telegraph office to find which compartment of the Vladivostok train had been reserved for me. I passed the train on the way to the station, and it was already packed full of people—in seats, aisles and on platforms.
Nobody in the telegraph office had ever heard of reserving anything for me. Neither had the sleepy men in the station-master’s office. I asked for the American officer to whom I had telegraphed—he had been sent to Harbin to hospital, ill. (He died there immediately.) Yes, there was another officer in his place—name unknown, whereabouts unknown. He generally appeared about nine o’clock.
Hastening back to Captain B—— with the bad news, we visited the Vladivostok train to see if we might secure some space. That is, we went near to it, and watched mobs fighting to get aboard every car. It was hopeless. The weather was fifty below zero. We saw the Vladivostok train pull out at nine, leaving us in a swarming station, high and dry on our baggage, to wait till nine o’clock the next morning.
The Chinese customs authorities demanded my lockers, and collected eighty-four rubles in customs duty. A long line of Russians and Chinese, which reached the entire length of the long and dark corridor in the station, waited before the closed ticket window—to buy tickets for the train leaving twenty-four hours later. Many of them had been camping there for days, having food brought to them from the restaurant, in order to buy tickets, which incidentally, gave them only the right to try and get aboard the train.