Thoroughly awakened, I got up, and we adjourned to the British officer’s quarters, where we drank to our better acquaintance in an iced whisky and soda; for the night was distressingly hot.
The hospitable Englishman was Lieutenant Kell, South Staffordshire Regiment. He was a good specimen of the linguists in our army who surprised our Continental allies. A passed Interpreter in Russian and Chinese, he spoke French, German, and Italian fluently; and, as I discovered afterwards, although he had never been to India, he was rapidly picking up Hindustani from the sepoys with whom he was brought in contact through his station duties. He had served on General Dorward’s staff during the hard fighting in Tientsin and had been mentioned in his despatches. His linguistic powers had caused him to be appointed as Railway Staff Officer at Shanhaikwan, where his ready tact and genial qualities endeared him to the Russians and contributed greatly to the harmonious working of affairs in that debatable garrison.
Before we parted for the night our Russian friend gave us both a cordial invitation to dine with him the following night and meet some of his comrades. And then I retired again to bed, feeling no longer a lost sheep and a homeless orphan.
In the morning I was awakened by Lieutenant Kell’s servant, who brought me my chota hazri, the matutinal tea and toast dear to the heart of the Anglo‐Indian. He had taken my luggage into his master’s quarters, where a bath and a dressing‐room awaited me. I found my host busily engaged in his railway work, interviewing soldiers of every nationality. As I was in the act of wishing him “Good morning” we suddenly observed a heavy transport waggon, drawn by two huge horses, being driven across the line and right on to the platform by a Cossack, who thus thought to save himself a détour to the level crossing at the far end of the station. It was done in flat defiance of well‐known orders. Kell spoke to him in his own language, and told him to go back. The soldier, muttering some impertinent remark, took no notice and drove on. At that moment a Russian colonel entered the station. Kell immediately reported the man’s disobedience to him. The officer flew at the culprit, abused him in loud and angry tones; and if the Cossack had not been out of reach where he sat perched up on the waggon, I am sure he would have received a sound thrashing. Crestfallen, he turned his horses round and drove away; while the colonel apologised profusely to Kell for the fault of his subordinate and promised that the man would receive a severe punishment for his disobedience and impertinence to an English officer.
After breakfast one of my companions, Captain Labertouche, 22nd Bombay Infantry, who, like me, had been unable to find quarters among the Gurkhas the night before, but who had been given shelter by the officers of the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, rode up to look for me. Sending away his horse, we set out on foot to hunt up the rest of our party in the Gurkha mess.
Our way lay first along the railway line. On the right‐hand side were the station yards, engine sheds, and machinery shops, all now in the hands of the Russians, who had removed the spare rolling stock and plant found there and sent them to Port Arthur. The Muscovite believes in war being self‐supporting. To the left, behind the station, lay the rookery of squalid Chinese houses, where I had hunted for a dinner the night before. Farther away lay Shanhaikwan. High battlements and lofty towers enclosed the city, the sides of which ran down to the Great Wall of China. For ahead of us, a mile away athwart the railway, lay a long line of grass‐grown earthworks, with here and there fragments of ruined masonry peering out among the herbage and bushes that clothed it. It was that wondrous fortification which stretches for more than a thousand miles along the ancient boundary of China, climbing mountains, plunging into valleys, and running through field and forest—a monumental and colossal work that has never served to roll back the tide of war from the land it was built to guard. Through a wide breach in it the railway passes on to the north, to Manchuria where the Russian Bear now menaces the integrity of the Celestial Kingdom. Before reaching the Wall our way turned off sharp to the right; so, leaving the railway, we followed a rough country road which led to the Chinese village that sheltered the Gurkhas. It was crossed by a broad stream two or three feet deep. As we were grumbling at the necessity of taking off boots and gaiters in order to wade it, a sturdy Chinaman strolled up and looked extremely amused at our distress. We promptly seized him, and made signs that we wanted him to carry us across. The Celestial smilingly assented, and kicked off his felt‐soled shoes. Hoisting my companion on his back, he waded with him to the other side, and then returned to fetch me. When we rewarded him with a small silver coin he seemed extremely surprised; and he made frantic signs, which we interpreted as meant to express his desire to remain on the spot in readiness to ferry us over on our return. Without further difficulty we reached the Gurkha mess, where we found our friends on the point of setting out to visit the Great Wall. So the whole party walked back along the road by which Labertouche and I had come, and at the stream found our ferryman awaiting us with a beaming smile. He eagerly proffered his services, and conveyed us all across in turn. Payment being duly made, he expressed his gratitude in voluble, if unintelligible, language.
Reaching the railway, we proceeded along it in the direction of the Wall. The country between it and us was flat and cultivated, though at its foot lay a strip of waste ground. To our left ran a rough road leading out, through the same gap as the line, towards some forts to the north. Along it, behind three sturdy little ponies harnessed abreast, sped a Russian troiscka, driven by a Cossack and containing two white‐coated officers.
Arrived at the inner face of the Wall, we climbed its sloping side and found ourselves on a broad and bush‐grown rampart. We were twenty or thirty feet above the ground. The outer face of this ancient fortification, which was begun in B.C. 241, was in a better state of preservation than the inner; though in places it bore little resemblance to a wall. From the ruins of an old bastion we had a splendid view of the surrounding country. Before us a level plain stretched away to the horizon, broken by the ugly outlines of forts or patched with cultivated fields and small woods. To the right the Great Wall ran to the cliffs above the sea, which sparkled in the distance under a brilliant sun. On its bosom lay the ponderous bulks of a number of Japanese warships; for their fleet had arrived unexpectedly at Shanhaikwan the night before. The Russian dinner‐party, which Lieutenant Kell had attended the previous evening, had been given in the open air, on the cliffs over the sea. The numerous guests, nearly all officers of the Czar, could look out over the blue water as they smoked the cigarettes with which every Russian meal is punctuated. While the feast was proceeding merrily trails of smoke, heralding the approach of a fleet, appeared on the horizon. The Russian officers gazed in surprise as the ships came into view, and wonder was expressed as to their nationality and the purpose of their coming. In those troublous times, when national jealousies were rife, no one knew that war might not suddenly break out among the so‐called Allies; and Slav, Teuton, Frank, and Briton might be called on without a day’s warning to range themselves in hostile camps. So something like consternation fell upon the dinner‐party when the approaching ships were seen to be the Japanese fleet. For the relations between Russia and Japan were very strained at the time; and all present at the table wondered if the unexpected arrival of this powerful squadron meant that the rupture had come. But no hostile signs were made by the ships; and, with the motto of the trooper all the world over—
“Why, soldiers, why
Should we be melancholy, boys,