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84 we went away and left in peace this peripatetic factory of perfume and poison gas.

After this excursion my friends spent several days more with me, during the last of which the hunghutzes once again reminded us of their existence, when a Chinese, who had come from Harbin to pay the workers, was captured on his way to the barracks and disappeared forever, without leaving a single trace. At the same time a labourer's barracks out in one of the distant corners of the concession was attacked by a band that wounded the Cossack on guard and took all the savings of the Chinese workmen. Immediately following upon this about two hundred of the men asked to be released, and I was obliged to go to Harbin to find new workers and to ask again for an increase in our patrol.

On my arrival I noticed a great deal of nervous unrest in the official and civilian circles of the town. The previous hopeful attitude and the confidence in ultimate victory had undergone a marked change. The Russian colony at this great centre, having faith in the power of their State, had accepted quietly and calmly the blows dealt by the Japanese to the bottled fleet at Port Arthur and had retained their belief that the army would achieve success on the land. Even when the Japanese torpedoed and sank the cruiser Petropavlovsk right under the forts and thus took the life of the brave Admiral Makaroff, not only held in high esteem by his countrymen as a talented and bold seaman but also well known as an Arctic explorer, the patriotic public still remained calm. However, after the defeat of the Russian forces at Chiu Lien Ch'eng on the Yalu and the continuous northward retreat of both flanks of the long Russian line in southern Manchuria, the confidence of the public began to weaken. In Chinchou on the Liaotung Peninsula the Japanese