Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/21

Rh rakish to fit into the lines of a native craft and looked as though they were certainly stayed with cables.

"A disguised torpedo-boat?" I queried to myself, and sat me down for a careful observation of the strange craft. She was making very slow headway with two small sails clumsily rigged to her masts in a way that no real sailor would ever have set them in the open sea.

My growing suspicions were suddenly confirmed, when a light flared, went out and flared again from between the bales of hay. I had no doubt that it was regular signalling that was going on, but found it to be of a rather unusual nature, as it looked as though it were done by means of a small electric flashlight. I began to scan the shore very carefully and soon made out answering signals at about a thousand paces from me. While I watched, the sun had disappeared altogether, dusk was falling and a fog came slowly rolling in from the sea. Then, peering through the gathering darkness, I saw the bales of hay and the bundles of kaoliang stalks go overboard into the water, and gradually made out the lines of the funnels, the bridge and the guns as the lights, to my surprise, began showing through the port-holes. By this time I was naturally glued to my observation post and gradually saw the smoke from the reviving fires pouring out of the funnels in a red glare. I had already been there some hours when I heard the dull, slow churning of the screw, followed by the splash of the oars of a small boat that put into shore not far from the steep bank where I crouched among the bushes. I caught some broken words of command, uttered in the Japanese tongue.

"War!" I thought. "The war is already upon Russia!"

Afterwards more than once, in wild and isolated