The Cable Game: The Adventures of an American Press-Boat in Turkish Waters During the Russian RevolutionWashburn, Stanley
History
The Cable Game: The Adventures of an American Press-Boat in Turkish Waters During the Russian Revolution
Washburn, Stanley
Black Sea -- Description and travel; Russia -- History -- Nicholas II, 1894-1917
When we reached the open country our old friend stopped his horse
and his interpreter spake his last words to us. “You have been with
us long,” he told us. “With us you have lived through a terrible
period. For many months our paths have lain side by side. We would
not, therefore, say farewell, for the Japanese never says adieu to his
friends.” He had paused with the sweetest, gentlest of smiles before he
uttered his last words, which the interpreter then translated to us. “I
will sit here upon my horse, with my staff gathered about me. When you
reach the bend in the road you will turn in your saddles and wave your
hand at me and I will wave my hand to you and that, my friends, shall
be our last good-by.”
Silently we wrung their hands, these hard-visaged friends on whom a
cruel war had left its scars in gray hairs and furrowed faces, and
rode on our way. Half a mile beyond the ancient Mongol highway turned
a bluff, and wound up toward the Pass in the Hills. When we reached
the bend we turned in our saddles. There below us on the outskirts
of the town we could see the general, motionless in the flooding
sunlight, with the little group of the staff crowded in the background.
As we turned in our saddles we could barely discern the flutter of a
handkerchief from the stern old figure on the black horse. Once again
the faint strains of martial music drifted to us on the still morning
air; we waved our hands and turned once more on our way. Who shall say
that we were oversentimental if there was a little mist in our eyes as
we looked our last upon the men and on the army, whose lives and ours
had been so closely linked?
Forty miles we rode that day over dusty highways that wound their way
through waving fields of the whispering kowliang (or millet) that bent
and swayed in the breeze. A few hours’ sleep at Tieling in a deserted
shell-torn Russian house, then a five hours’ pounding over rough rails
in a box car and we were back once more at the Grand Headquarters of
the army at Moukden.
Here we paid our final respects to the officers of the staff whom we
had known off and on for nearly two years. A few hours passed, and
again we were on the train. This time it is a ten hour stretch in a
third class car to Newchwang, the end of the neutral and uncensored
cable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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