Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/83

Rh find him at the outset, I offered a large reward to anyone who should discover him; but he seemed to have disappeared like a stone in the sea. Only after three days did we secure any likely trace, when a Chinese beggar came in and reported having seen the bloody body of a Russian soldier near a little stream falling into the Ho Lin. Without many words Sergeant Lisvienko put the beggar into a saddle, mounted himself and ordered the man to lead the way. With two Cossacks I followed him. For a long time our unusual guide with his unusual transport wandered about in the forest, until we made out the rocky summit of Kentei Alin, when he dismounted and began searching among the bushes. He trudged back and forth several times across a marshy place overgrown with bushes and high grass, returning each time to the stream bank and making back out over the open again, until finally he stopped and signalled us to come.

As we joined him, we saw a sad, heartrending picture; for there on the grass, which was all trampled and in some places uprooted, lay Rikoff with his grey military blouse torn to shreds and soaked in blood. The moment we saw that his skull was smashed and his whole face covered with deep wounds, made by animal claws, we realized at once that he was the victim of a tiger. The beast of prey had very evidently tortured the man, as all the joints of the feet and the hands were twisted and bitten through. Also, as we found neither his cap nor his carbine anywhere near him but only his hunting knife close to his mangled right hand, it was evident that the tiger had first attacked him away from this spot and that the awful fight had been carried on and finished here. Examining carefully every inch of the ground near the scene of the final struggle, we found his cap at a distance of some fifty yards and a little farther on the broken