And Raymond held up a foot on which the shoe was barely holding together.
“You see,” said Sidney in explanation, “we came down the Volga from Nizhni to Petrovsk, and then across from there. We started out with horses, but an army officer took them away from us the first day.”
“Yes, I expect so,” said the captain; “no man outside of the army can travel horseback in Russia now.”
“We haven’t heard a thing about the war,” said Sidney, “since we left the boat. How is it going?”
“Well, nobody knows yet. It’s a bad war.” And the captain looked very grave. “I’d be helping, but I’m too old. And it begins to look pretty nasty with Turkey; that’s why I’m clearing in the morning. But weren’t you with a party?”
“We went with our father to Nizhni to see the Fair,” replied Sidney, “and father was arrested as a German spy just because he speaks German. We were afraid if we waited we shouldn’t be able to leave Russia at all, so my brother and I came south, expecting to go through the Dariel Pass. But at Petrovsk we were told that troops were thick in the pass, and were advised not to go that way. So we came over by the trail, and it was a tough tramp.”
“Didn’t your father have a passport?”
“Yes, he had a passport from the Secretary of State at Washington.”
“I’m sure he got out all right, then,” said the captain. “Americans can go anywhere in the belligerent countries, if they can only prove they are Americans. But how did you young men get away without a passport?”
“The clerk of the hotel, who spoke English, took my father’s passport down and showed it to the purser of the boat. And the chief of police at Petrovsk gave us a sort of a passport, but it’s in Russian.” And Sidney took the paper from his pocket and handed it to the captain.