I had been travelling in Manchuria, and had come down from Mukden only just in time to catch, by the skin of my teeth, the weekly steamer to Japan. The train was more than an hour late, and the drosky that I hired at the station—with my luggage piled in anyhow by the Chinese porters—had been driven by the dishevelled moujik in charge at a pace that laughed at speed limits and scorned such trifling obstacles as ruts and holes nearly a foot in depth.
As we tore up to the steamer’s berth at the great wharf, that was later to prove of such inestimable value to the Japanese, the driver shouting and lashing his three horses into foam, the gangway was on the point of being lowered, and I had horrible visions of having to spend a week in that most dead of dead-alive towns, in which I already seemed to know every house.
With commendable courtesy, however, the officials permitted me to get myself and effects on board, and a moment later we were steaming out into the fine harbour.
The steamer was the Mongolia, which had the misfortune six months later to be the first Russian vessel captured by the Japanese.
I was leaning over the rail, watching the hills receding from view, when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder, and on looking round was confronted by a rather sallow-faced, wiry-looking individual of medium height, with steel-grey eyes that seemed to pierce through mine clean into my brain.
“THE DRIVER SHOUTING AND LASHING HIS THREE HORSES INTO FOAM.”
“Say, d’you speak English?” he asked me.
I admitted that, being an Englishman, I had a moderate command of the language.
“Well, I ain’t English, I’m Amur’can,” he replied.