Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/73

Rh cartridge with Japanese characters on it and an empty conserve tin with a Japanese label. What could it mean? Who was prowling here so near to our undertakings and whither was he bound? For a time these questions remained unanswered.

During a subsequent hunting expedition on the slopes of Kentei Alin, Rikoff and I stumbled upon a large herd of wild boar, numbering some fifteen head and plunging southward through the thicket at a tremendous pace. In answer to our leaden command to their front rank one of the animals went prone. As we were busy cutting hams from it, the Cossack suddenly raised his head and asked in a startled voice:

"Did you hear that? It was a bullet and not far away."

We stopped to listen and soon caught the sound of a far-away volley and the well-known whistle of bullets through the branches. One took a big splinter from the trunk of a broken tree hard by.

"They are aiming at us!" exclaimed Rikoff. "They must be the fellows with the iron-shod horses, but they certainly are not hunghutzes, for the hungkutzes never shoe their horses. Could it be, perhaps, one of our patrols?"

In the evening, when I told Kazik and Samsonoff of our experience, they were both strongly of the opinion that bands of hungkutzes were roaming about in the neighbouring forests. I decided to make a report to the General Staff and dismissed the matter for the moment from my mind.

Afterwards, that same evening, I went out to make a round of the nearest ovens and, on my return from this, passed back near the barracks of the labourers at Ho Lin and close to the quarters of my assistants. Behind these