ner, indicating a return to normal conditions. A Social Revolutionary
representative of the town delivered a furious tirade, which I could get
my officer to translate only in part, but even that part showed me the
world-wide division of opinion amongst my Russian hosts.

The orchestra, composed of German and Austrian prisoners, discoursed
sweet music during the evening, alternately listening to the fiery
eloquence of Cossack and Tartar. A Cossack officer, who had drunk a
little vodka, rose and gave an order to the band, but the prisoners only
got out about three notes. What was in those notes, Heaven only knows!
Instantly the whole banqueting hall was a scene of indescribable
confusion. Tartar and Cossack shouted with glee; older Russian officers
ordered the band to stop, and vainly tried to silence the disorder. The
dark-visaged and apparently unemotional civilians threw off their
armour of unconcern, and hurled epithets and shook clenched fists and
defiance at their military fellow-countrymen. Then they all rushed out
of the building in a body, hissing and spluttering like a badly
constructed fuse in a powder trail. It was like the explosion of a small
magazine. I had no idea what had happened, but took in the full
significance of the scene I had witnessed when told that the notes which
had acted like a bomb formed the first bar of "God Save the Tsar." A few
miles farther on the Autocrat of All the Russias had already met an
ignominious death by being thrown down a disused pit near the line
dividing Asia and Europe. In death, as in life, he remained the divider
of his people.

The trains started off during the night, and on the evening of the next
day we arrived at Hachinsk, where a Russian guard did the usual military
honours, and a sad-faced, deep-eyed priest presented me with bread and
salt, as becomes a Tartar who welcomes a friend. It was lucky for me
that I had some little training in public speaking, and that "Polkovnika
Franka" could make such excellent translations, or we might not have
made such a good impression as I flatter myself we did on some
occasions.

At last we arrived at Omsk, the end of our journey, having passed in a
zigzag direction almost round the world. A few miles to the Urals and
Europe again--so near and yet so far!

CHAPTER IX

OMSK

As Omsk, unlike so many other towns of Siberia, did not care to pay the
usual toll demanded by the railway prospectors, it is situated several