The Vaga is noticeably smaller than the Dvina, and seldom exceeds a breadth of a half mile, more often it is five hundred yards, even less, and the soil through which it plows a tumid trail is soft, sandy loam, so that high, commanding bluffs have been eroded by its waters, where the villages group in almost neighborly proximity. On one of these bluff heights, stood effete Shenkurst, a generation removed from moujik poverty and enchaining ignorance, and consciously superior to the humble log huts that below north and south trailed the river. The dominating buildings, a monastery, a barracks of the Tsar, and five conspicuous churches were white as Russia's snows, and in the fall, made Shenkurst flaringly garish in its frame of tenebrious, surrounding forest. Nearly a week of tranquillity passed with the Americans at Shenkurst, when the Staff, chafing at this prolonged unbelligerency, issued orders "to stir up the enemy," and some one hundred Americans, with fifty Allied Russian soldiers, embarked to reconnoitre the upper river. All was uneventful, until ten miles out from Shenkurst, when suddenly an unseen fire poured from both high river embankments on the steamer bearing the unsuspecting, scouting party; there was no method of gauging the ambuscade, which judged by the volume of fire, most of which screeched harmlessly high, was far stronger than the Americans; but on the instant, the officer beached his craft on the nearest ground, the eager men scrambled over the side into the water waist deep, and engaged the enemy, who was so taken back by this unexpected action that he wilted into the forest; then, entirely undaunted, the little party moved on down the forest road, which wound south with the river, and into the sinister shadows of an unexplored, uncharted, alien country, where many signs pointed to certain, overpowering resistance, and the law of probabilities pointed to extinction. The American in command, Captain Odjard, was more an antique Viking than a city-bred modern, and as the intrepid march continued, he never wavered in his purpose to penetrate the heart of the Bolshevik stronghold; for twenty days he kept on, despite distressing hardship, and short, iron rations, and most grievous of all, the utter absence of comforting tobacco. Reports came constantly that the enemy was intent upon the capture or destruction of the little band, Bolsheviks thronged the forward way through the forest, and every day information reached Captain Odjard that the villages in his rear were heavily garrisoned with enemy forces; most serious of all, the fast vanishing ration supplies would soon be all gone. Situations such as this search the innermost fiber of the stuff that makes for leadership. There are no precedents. A man of courage and valiant will would face about and fight his way back and perhaps die fighting. A coward would vacillate and falter in a mortal terror of indecision, and thus perish.