Farkas throws his revolver away. One of the Russians, knife in hand, hurls himself upon him. Farkas seizes the wrist of the Russian and breaks it, for he is a master of jiu jitsu; he instructs his men constantly in Japanese ring methods. Two Russians are killed. The one with his wrist broken confesses that the telephone cell is a signal station and that the little detachment is a signal patrol. He also delivers to Farkas a textbook containing the A B C of more than 300 light signals. Light signals are given with lamp groups, which consist of two, five or eight lamps. They can send almost any kind of news.
Farkas clambers up out of the well and makes good use of the book. With his hussars he goes every night on the hunt for light signals. Whenever at night the combination of two, five or eight lamps is in use signal patrols are killed or captured. It is plain that the Russians, before the war, must have instructed 30,000 to 40,000 people for this service. Many of these people worked in peasant clothes behind our lines in Russian territory. Farkas hunted down these signal devices in farm houses, windmills, in the midst of swamps and in the tops of trees. With ten to fifteen hussars he soon made 140 of them useless. In this region the Russians lost all interest in signal giving. Farkas had many times done his work on horseback; oftener he had crawled on his stomach. To his comrades he said that he had at last got some profit out of the many pictures of daring adventure which he had seen in the kino shows.
II—TALES OF FARKAS—THE HUSSAR
The Herr Rittmeister has taken a pledge; while the war lasts he will not drink, gamble or hunt. Of these three hunting is his only real passion. He would hate to be a bad shot. In the wall of the Nyiregyhazy barracks he shot his monogram with a pistol: thus, C. F. They made him pay for the damage to the wall. Rittmeister Farkas is therefore the only man in the country who has ever, out of his own pocket, built part of a barracks.
Once from a local train, which was running through the hunting preserve of a friend, he saw a deer. He pulled the emergency signal, shot the deer and then said: "Now go ahead!" For that he was put under arrest in the barracks for thirty days. Now, however, every one of his bullets belongs to the Fatherland, and his iron will, his daring, his mobile spirit, his technical skill, his great, romantic heart, encased in his small steeled body, belong, all, all to the Fatherland.
The Rittmeister wept when he heard that the Russians stood before the Bereczke Pass. He did everything in his power to get to that threatened point. So he became attached to the Group Hofmann, which in the fall of 1914 drove the Russians out of Berog and Marmaros.
About Christmas time in 1914 he is fighting in the Carpathians. On December 19 he climbs, with his hussars, the Vehikzi Brh Mountain, 1,600 metres high, and at night descends with them, in snow up to the arm-pits, to Firelopfalva, on the other side. He leads the march and kills the Russian outposts. The Russians are driven out of the village, losing 150. He cannot bring away the Russian weapons, so he collects them in a pile and burns them.
The Russians, who know him well, send three battalions of infantry and four companies of Cossacks against him. Three days long, until December 22, he stands off, with a few hundred cavalrymen, all their attacks. Then he sends his people back, remaining the last one on the spot. He keeps a uhlan sergeant with him to hold off the Russians until his troop has crossed the mountains. The two hide behind a rock. Farkas takes up his Mannlicher, with a telescopic sight. Suddenly the sergeant receives a bullet in his calf. Farkas would gladly retire, but he cannot carry the sergeant with him and will not leave him in the lurch.
About 10 a.m. the Russians begin to climb in skirmish line up toward him. At 10 o'clock Farkas, from behind his rock, shoots down his first Russian; at 4 o'clock in the afternoon his sixty-seventh. Up to the neck in snow, without a bite to eat, he keeps all assailants at bay. At 5 o'clock it is pitch dark. Farkas goes away, returns in a sled and carries off the wounded sergeant.