heir appearance from the land of the inferno. One of Lieutenant
Ivanoff's soldiers, who was always praying and pale, called them all
"the servants of Satan."

Our trip from Tisingol to Uliassutai in the company of these criminals
was very unpleasant. My friend and I entirely lost our usual strength
of spirit and healthy frame of mind. Kanine persistently brooded and
thought while the impudent woman laughed, smoked and joked with the
soldiers and several of our companions. At last we crossed the Jagisstai
and in a few hours descried at first the fortress and then the low adobe
houses huddled on the plain, which we knew to be Uliassutai.

CHAPTER XXV

HARASSING DAYS

Once more we found ourselves in the whirl of events. During our
fortnight away a great deal had happened here. The Chinese Commissioner
Wang Tsao-tsun had sent eleven envoys to Urga but none had returned. The
situation in Mongolia remained far from clear. The Russian detachment
had been increased by the arrival of new colonists and secretly
continued its illegal existence, although the Chinese knew about it
through their omnipresent system of spies. In the town no Russian or
foreign citizens left their houses and all remained armed and ready to
act. At night armed sentinels stood guard in all their court-yards.
It was the Chinese who induced such precautions. By order of their
Commissioner all the Chinese merchants with stocks of rifles armed their
staffs and handed over any surplus guns to the officials, who with
these formed and equipped a force of two hundred coolies into a special
garrison of gamins. Then they took possession of the Mongolian arsenal
and distributed these additional guns among the Chinese vegetable
farmers in the nagan hushun, where there was always a floating
population of the lowest grade of transient Chinese laborers. This
trash of China now felt themselves strong, gathered together in
excited discussions and evidently were preparing for some outburst of
aggression. At night the coolies transported many boxes of cartridges
from the Chinese shops to the nagan hushun and the behaviour of the
Chinese mob became unbearably audacious. These coolies and gamins
impertinently stopped and searched people right on the streets and
sought to provoke fights that would allow them to take anything they
wanted. Through secret news we received from certain Chinese quarters
we learned that the Chinese were preparing a pogrom for all the Russians