Fifty exiles, who were in the congregation, rushed out, determined on vengeance on the local police-captain, who was a wanton tyrant. They were met by the policeman's ten-year-old daughter, who stood before her father and exclaimed, "Kill me first!" The child's action saved the captain's life.
II—STORY OF THE HUSSAR WHO ESCAPED FROM SIBERIA
This is the tale of a Hussar who had escaped twice from Russian prisons, faced murder, come half-round the world, and ran the British blockade. He was a reserve officer in the Austrian Army, a Hungarian captain in a famous regiment of Hussars. He was stationed in the fortress at Peremysl when the Russians advanced into the Karpathians and took the city. Taken prisoner, he was marched off to a detention camp near the front where the officers were separated from the soldiers. The men disappeared, but the officers were taken to a military prison near Odessa.
The prison fare was not particularly bad, but the monotony of the place was dreadful. Shut up as they were without anything to think of, they began to have all kinds of imaginary grievances—principally against one another. "If half the challenges to deadly combat are carried out there will be a duel a minute after the war," he says. It got to be positively ludicrous. Pompous and sensitive enough in all conscience in ordinary circumstances, the German and Austrian officers, under the nervous conditions of prison life, lived under a hair-trigger. If you accidentally bumped into a man on your morning walk, or if you forgot to bow in the usual manner, you promptly had a challenge to a duel—to be fought after the war, as there was nothing to fight with in prison.
Having been brought up along the Galician borders, this Hungarian spoke Russian like a native. This fact encouraged him to make an attempt to escape.
For some remarkable reason the Russians had allowed the captured officers to retain all their money. He himself had several thousand dollars in his pockets. When it became whispered around that he intended to make a getaway, other officers asked him to carry money back to their families. The result was that when he slipped away he had nearly $30,000 in cash on his person.
He didn't tell me exactly how he managed to get away, but I inferred that it was through the bribery of some of the prison guards. At any rate he slipped out of the prison one night and turned eastward. His general plan was to make his way down through the passes of the Caucasus Mountains through Armenia, and thence to Turkey, where he would be safe.
Hiding by day and walking by night, he managed to get to a half-civilized little hamlet on the edge of the great mountains.
The wilderness of the journey before him left him rather appalled. He had intended to buy a horse and try to make his own way through, but he saw that this would be impossible. It inevitably meant losing his way and starving—if he were not killed by wandering bandits!