Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/91

Rh "Whom will you take with you?"

"Nobody, for I am afraid the young soldiers will babble before the Chinese and thus spoil the game. I shall go alone, as though I were hunting."

I thought a moment and told him that I would go with him, which evidently pleased him very much.

"It will be much more agreeable for me. I thank you humbly, sir."

Soon we crossed the river together and entered the woods. After going some distance we found the hoofprints of a single horse on a marshy road that wound among the bushes.

"If I could only meet him!" Lisvienko mumbled, as he followed the tracks. "He would not escape me, as he did at first, when I was afraid to shoot for fear of frightening the bird. When he gets tame, I shall certainly bag him."

We rode single file, peering into the forest all around and occasionally stopping to listen. Nothing indicated the presence of any human being. Somewhere a thrush sang and from the depths of the forest came the tapping of a woodpecker; a stream gurgled along over its stony path.

After wandering for a long time through the woods we came upon two Chinese houses surrounded with poppy fields, in which two Chinese with their sunflower-like straw hats worked among the ripening seed pods. As we came up to them, Lisvienko asked whether any people had recently passed the settlement. The information he received was evidently very important, for his eyes flashed and he led right off to the other side of the clearing, where we again entered the thick wood before he stopped to translate for me what the Chinese had told him. As we almost at once emerged again into a more