Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/63

Rh He has sworn to himself that he will eventually be rich, learnèd and equal to the best around him. He considers a wife would be a hindrance in his plans and, therefore, he will not marry." As he spoke these last words, Samsonoff lowered his head and sighed. Here our conversation stopped.

A few hours later we arrived at the station of Udzimi and my car was detached from the train and run into a siding. Immediately a little, thin, Cossack sergeant, named Shum, presented himself to me and announced that he had received telegraphic orders from Harbin to provide me with a military escort in the territory we were to work, and added that Sergeant Lisvienko with eight Cossacks had already been despatched to Ho Lin to await my orders. I learned also from Sergeant Shum that my Chinese labourers had already arrived. Part of them were lodged with the villagers, while for the other they had already begun the erection of two sheds with heated k'angs. Soon we reached Ho Lin and took up quarters in the house of the headman of the village, who also arranged for the storage of our equipment near by.

At the village I was met by the elderly, red-haired Cossack, Lisvienko, wearing the Cross of St. George which he had received during the Boxer trouble in 1900, when a Russian detachment from the Amur army under the command of General Linievitch did such valiant service at Tientsin and joined in the march to Peking. The sergeant's eight Cossacks ranged themselves in front of my temporary quarters and presented arms.

That same evening I selected the sites for the charcoal ovens and parcelled out the work between Kazik and Samsonoff. The first was to prepare the place for the stoves and to construct them, while the second was to