There seemed small hope of escape for the valiant Vaga men who remained after the fourth night of the attack, when an incendiary shell fell upon the village, sending hungry, devouring flames athwart the curtain of the Russian night, till naught was left of the moujik homes save the gray ashes of "friendly intervention"; but in the confusion of concentration, the assemblage of large numbers and numerous troop movements, the retreating company glided in darkness down the center of the frozen, white covered Vaga, through the very midst of unsuspecting, enemy hosts, and two nights later, reported at Headquarters tired and half starved, the Viking leader among the casualties with a serious wound. In Shenkurst, the beleaguered city, in point of numbers, the Slavic Battalion, nearly twelve hundred strong, was the mainstay of the garrison, but on trial in a previous attack for one of the two flanking villages, it had made a sorry showing, and in a last stand, was estimated as of uncertain, staying quality. Besides these Russians, there was one full company of American Infantry, the exhausted half company from Ust Padenga, one section of the Thirty-Eighth Canadian Field Artillery, four Two Point Nine mountain pieces, and three trench mortars. The Bolsheviks had surrounded Shenkurst in an immense, unnumbered multitude. They had mounted one nine inch gun, two six inch guns, four Four Point Sevens and a Battery of Field Artillery, and from three-quarters of the forest commenced to batter down the buildings. It could be only a brief time before the city would be in ruins, but even more serious was the question of provisions. They were already limited, and in case of siege, no new supply could be brought up until the breaking of the river in May. The Bolsheviks, confident that the garrison would try to escape from Shenkurst, waited in great masses on the main north road, eager for the coming slaughter; but a native had informed the Allied Command of a secret path through the deep, snow covered swamps, and at midnight, along this unknown route, evacuation was silently effected. Before the retreat, the Allied Russians were sent as a protective screen along a flanking trail, but scarce had the retiring movement begun, when what remained of them came rushing back in frantic haste, that was altogether unsoldierly, gasping an excited, incoherent story of how two entire companies had deserted to the enemy lines and the rest had fled in desperate fear for their lives.