Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/80

68 large calibre, which my Cossacks recognized as a bullet used by the Chinese army. At first I could not fathom it at all and wondered whether the Chinese had declared war on Russia; but the explanation soon appeared. The leader of the hungkutzes, Chang Tso-lin, was in connivance with the Chinese Governors of the Provinces of Fengtien and Kirin and was being supplied by them with Government arms. When this fact was substantiated, the Chinese Viceroy of Manchuria was forced, as a result of Russian diplomatic representations, to resign and leave Moukden.

When the headman of Ho Lin heard of my night experience, he came to me and begged that I refrain from reporting it to the authorities, as he feared the hungkutzes might take vengeance on his villagers and also that they might try to do me harm, adding that they were already angry with me for having been instrumental in bringing the Cossacks to the place. I acquiesced in the request of the headman but, as a result of his warning and of some patent evidence of bad feeling on the part of certain natives around the works, I was always on guard and took the precaution never to go about without a revolver.

In the meantime the Army Staff demanded of me ever-increasing quantities of charcoal, which might not have been so bad if the railroad had not done the same, through their insistence that the various railway shops should all be supplied with charcoal. It pressed me hard to comply with these growing demands. Besides the Ural ovens three large brick ones were soon in full swing and a fourth was being constructed farther in the forest. In the area near the ovens the trees were already all cut off, so that our railway was kept very busy transporting the wood from the more distant parts of the concession. At the same time I ordered the construction of a new branch