That evening at dinner at the Club Anglais[48] I chanced to sit next to a general officer with whom I was acquainted, and I asked him what was the reason of this difference in the equipment of the various batteries. His answer was that the great authorities on artillery had not yet come to a conclusion as to what was the best service gun, so Russia was biding her time and allowing the other armies to make experiments for her benefit. It so happened, however, that I knew of six or more agents for different gun factories in England, France, and Germany, who were staying in St. Petersburg with well-filled pouches touting for their several firms; and this had been going on for months; so the Russian gunners had to deal with weapons of many patterns, the efficiency of the army being made of no account so long as those pouches continued to empty themselves and bulge once more. This was a point upon which the Embassies were better informed than the ministers of the Emperor. CHAPTER XIII 1864 MOSCOW May 18. “Is there anybody here who can speak English? Oh! IS there anybody here who can speak English?” A piteous cry from a brother Briton in distress must be attended to. It came from a first-class carriage in the train for Moscow standing in the station at St. Petersburg. I found a young man trying in vain to come to some understanding with the guard; he knew neither French nor German nor Russian; indeed, his English was none of the best, his aspirates being indiscriminately used or omitted. When I had solved his difficulties for him he told me that he was travelling for pleasure to see the world. He had been staying at the boarding house chiefly used by “drummers”—travellers of English commercial houses. Of the country, its institutions and customs he knew absolutely nothing; but the drummers had stored his mind with all manner of gruesome tales of the dangers and terrors threatening the unwary traveller. Murray’s guide to him was all-sufficient, unless he found himself in some position of alarming difficulty, when he would dismally howl his “cuckoo-cry”—“Is there anybody,” etc. One night he had nearly collapsed with fear. He had been to some place of entertainment and was being driven home when, finding himself in a rather narrow, dark street, he took into his head that his coachman was decoying him to some thieves’ den (Oh! those drummers!) where he would be robbed and murdered. He stopped the astonished coachman, who must have thought him mad, and began yelling for help. His shouts soon brought a good-natured polyglot Russian, who assured him that all was well, and that he was simply being taken to his destination by the nearest way. Two or three days later I met him in Moscow in one of the churches, listening with rapt attention to a very dirty monk extolling in Russian the miraculous powers of certain relics. His journal, if he kept one, would have been interesting.