After a brief parley, none of which I understood, the peasant got down from his high seat, hoisted my suitcase into the vehicle, and I followed it. I sat flat on the floor with my feet braced against the sides of the springless cart, and we started jolting and bumping down the rough road which ran parallel with the tracks. The peasant sat on a board laid across the front of the rick.
We had gone only a short way when the booming of guns came from both sides of us. My driver, however, seemed unconscious of it. We went on for another five versts. The guns grew louder and I saw shrapnel shells burst uncomfortably near. They came thicker and faster.
I remembered the peace of Riga some twenty-four hours before this. I wanted to tell the driver to turn around and go back, and then I remembered that we did not speak the same language, and certainly, judging from his impassive back, we were not thinking the same thoughts. There was an instant when I stopped thinking altogether, and when I knew that I could not have opened my mouth had I tried to speak. A shell burst some forty feet away and a piece of shrapnel about the size of a grape-fruit landed on the floor of the hay-rick between my outspread legs, broke two slats on the floor of the wagon and dropped harmlessly to the ground. Then at last the driver turned around, his face white as chalk. His panic, instead of communicating itself to me, had the very opposite effect and I suddenly lost all sense of danger. With a boldness, which surprises me whenever I think of it, I shouted to him:
“For Christ’s sake, go on!”
The driver obeyed reluctantly but soon turned around again.
“Go on!” I cried.
A few minutes later we approached a clump of trees under which stood a Lettish gun, surrounded by four or five officers. My driver stopped to talk to them, evidently inquiring whether it was safe to go on. One of the officers nodded, the others laughed, and one said in good English, “Everything is all right.”
At four o’clock we reached the headquarters at the front. I presented my pass to the commanding officer, a stocky young fellow with humorous wrinkles around his eyes.
“You are an American,” he said, observing me keenly.
“From New York,” I said. “I am going to Moscow on important business for my paper.” I told him more, giving most impressive details. I convinced him.