On the hills above the city was a queer fringe of flat white piles, some of them sheeted with canvas. These were vast stores of things gathered to the port from all the world for the war against Germany—acres of goods and metals, all idle and wasting because the throne of the Romanoffs had toppled and the Czar himself was dead in a well. The transport moved up to a dock at the end of the bay, past the city. Gordon stood in his nook, watching Vladivostok pass in review before him, and listening to the comments of the other officers who crowded the upper deck for their first sight of this far port of a shattered dynasty. As the troopship warped in, Russians in belted blouses and great boots stood on the dock and stared up at the ship and its soldiers in khaki from a distant land. These Russians loafed and gossiped and ate sunflower seeds. Cossack soldiers in high woolly caps swaggered about with sabers jingling at their sides. German prisoners of war labored with heavy cases. These men were still clad in the dirty finery of gaudy uniforms, sorry-looking specimens of what had been once smart soldiers. Shaggy horses in rude wagons, driven by peasant girls with shawls over their heads and wearing men’s heavy boots, did the work of strong men with sacks and bales, loading the carts. The Russians could find nothing else to do but gossip. Gordon watched the people on the dock with interest. When the hawsers were fast to the pier, he left the deck and went to his cabin. There, alone, he loaded his automatic pistol. He filled extra magazines with the blunt-nosed bullets, and distributed the magazines through his pockets in such way that they would not be noticeable through the fabric of his garments. He looked at himself in the mirror on the bulkhead. His face had increased its grimness, and the blue of his eyes had taken on a steely sheen. He seemed to be angry about something. But he forced a smile at himself—a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction. “Speed is good for nothing but catching fleas,” he whispered to his image in the glass. Soon an orderly came to tell him that an automobile waited on the dock to take all officers who had to report direct to Headquarters to the building in the city where the Commanding General and his staff were housed. Gordon followed the orderly, and stepping from the end of the gangplank, saluted the land.