Knight Without Armour

A.J. made some surprised and enquiring remark and Stephanov went on, pleased with his little sensation: “Ah, I guessed that would startle you! Well, you see, it all happened like this. Nikolai was doing sentry duty one night outside a railway train in which the Emperor was sleeping. The train was drawn up in a siding, and it was Easter Sunday morning—in the old clays, of course. You know the custom—you kiss the first person you meet and give the Easter greeting. Well, Nikolai was the first person the Emperor met that morning when he stepped out of the train, so the Emperor kissed him. Isn’t that remarkable? And you would hardly think it to look at him, would you?”

Many of the men had already fallen to dozing in the shade, but Stephanov’s conversation showed no signs of early abatement. A.J. was not wholly sorry, for the man’s garrulous chatter gave him much information that he guessed might be of value in the immediate future. At last, towards the late afternoon, an officer appeared on the edge of the scene and gave leisurely instruction to the half-sleeping men. They were to form themselves into detachments and march back to Saratursk. Evidently the search, for that day, at any rate, was being abandoned.

A.J.’s problem, of course, was to escape from the soldiers without attracting attention, and there were many ways in which he hoped to be able to do so. Having, however, been given such incredible good fortune so far, he was determined to take no unnecessary risks, and he saw no alternative to accompanying the men for some distance, at least, on their march back to the town. He and Stephanov walked together, or rather, Stephanov followed him with a species of dog-like attachment which threatened to be highly inconvenient in the circumstances. The retreat began about six o’clock and dusk fell as the stragglers were still threading their way amongst the pine-trees. From time to time as they descended, other parties of soldiers joined them—all tired and rather low-spirited. But for the too pertinacious Stephanov, it would have been a simple matter to slip away in the twilit confusion of one or other of these encounters. At last, however, when the last tint of daylight had almost left the sky, an opportunity did come. Stephanov halted to take off his boot and beat in a protruding nail; A.J. said he would go ahead and see how far they had still to go. He went ahead, but he did not return, and he hoped that Stephanov would realise that, in the darkness, nothing was more likely than that two companions, once separated, should be unable to find each other again.

A.J. waited till the last faint sounds of the retreating men had died away in the distance; some were singing and could be heard for a long time. Then he took deep breaths of the cool pine-laden air and tried to induce in himself a calm and resourceful confidence. He took careful note of his bearings; the stars and the rising moon and the slope of the ground were all helpful guides. His Siberian experiences had made him un-cannily expert at that sort of thing; with a night lasting for nine months it had been necessary to train the senses to work efficiently in the dark. Still, it was not going to be an easy task to locate the exact whereabouts of that valley wilderness. During the journey with Stephanov he had tried to memorise the ground passed over, and he had counted five successive ridges that they had crossed.