The Samovar Girl

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

So no one thought it strange that Lieutenant Gordon preferred to stand by himself at the head of the upper deck as the transport was nosing into the harbor of Vladivostok. He scanned the islands sliding past, and he watched the boat which came out flying the white and blue flag of the Czar’s navy—the old Cross of St. Andrew. He watched the shattered hulks of the navy of the Second Nicholas, lying in on the beach like the bones of dead sea birds. And he saw the warships of Britain, of France, of Japan, of the United States, all spick and span at anchor below the city.

Many strange flags flew from the tops of buildings on the terraced streets over the bay. The green spires of churches glistened in the afternoon sun. Soon the gashes running down to the water were seen to be streets with people moving in them—carriages, motor cars, and hurrying throngs of civilians and soldiers.

On the hills above the city was a queer fringe of flat white piles, some of them sheeted with canvas. These were vast stores of things gathered to the port from all the world for the war against Germany—acres of goods and metals, all idle and wasting because the throne of the Romanoffs had toppled and the Czar himself was dead in a well.

The transport moved up to a dock at the end of the bay, past the city. Gordon stood in his nook, watching Vladivostok pass in review before him, and listening to the comments of the other officers who crowded the upper deck for their first sight of this far port of a shattered dynasty.

As the troopship warped in, Russians in belted blouses and great boots stood on the dock and stared up at the ship and its soldiers in khaki from a distant land. These Russians loafed and gossiped and ate sunflower seeds. Cossack soldiers in high woolly caps swaggered about with sabers jingling at their sides. German prisoners of war labored with heavy cases. These men were still clad in the dirty finery of gaudy uniforms, sorry-looking specimens of what had been once smart soldiers. Shaggy horses in rude wagons, driven by peasant girls with shawls over their heads and wearing men’s heavy boots, did the work of strong men with sacks and bales, loading the carts. The Russians could find nothing else to do but gossip.

Gordon watched the people on the dock with interest. When the hawsers were fast to the pier, he left the deck and went to his cabin. There, alone, he loaded his automatic pistol. He filled extra magazines with the blunt-nosed bullets, and distributed the magazines through his pockets in such way that they would not be noticeable through the fabric of his garments.

He looked at himself in the mirror on the bulkhead. His face had increased its grimness, and the blue of his eyes had taken on a steely sheen. He seemed to be angry about something. But he forced a smile at himself—a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction.

“Speed is good for nothing but catching fleas,” he whispered to his image in the glass.

Soon an orderly came to tell him that an automobile waited on the dock to take all officers who had to report direct to Headquarters to the building in the city where the Commanding General and his staff were housed. Gordon followed the orderly, and stepping from the end of the gangplank, saluted the land.

The car bumped away up the street with a group of officers. Gordon was silent, while the others chattered. The water-front streets were muddy and unpaved. Squalid buildings with crude signs in Russian announced that within many of the buildings might be had tea and food and liquors. Pigs were loose in the streets, scratching themselves amiably on house-corners. Old Russian songs were being bawled from lusty throats of roisterers inside the kabaks. Russians wandered about aimlessly, staring at all the strange things which had come to Siberia—the American army mules, the motor cycles whizzing about among the pigs and wagons, and the honking car with the party of American officers.