United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They left their unfinished dinner and hurried out in search of help. The first soldier the Staff-Captain questioned reassured him. "Aw, that's dead easy! Go over the hill into the woods and cut some branches, enough to cover your tents; or easier yet, get some green and yellow paint and splash over them. The worse they look the better they are!"
Travellers always stop there in bad weather, sir. They say," he added, pointing to the Ossetes, "that they will lead us there if you will give them a tip." "I know that, my friend, I know that without your telling me," said the staff-captain. "Oh, these beasts! "You must confess, however," I said, "that we should be worse off without them." "Just so, just so," he growled to himself.
The Staff-Captain informed me that on one night during the previous November he counted no less than 120 men, women, and children sleeping in the wet on or in the neighbourhood of the Embankment. Think of it in this one place! Think of it, you whose women and children, to say nothing of yourselves, do not sleep on the Embankment in the wet in November.
The staff-captain answered not a word, but pointed with his finger to a lofty mountain which rose directly opposite us. "What is it?" I asked. "Mount Gut." "Well, what then?" "Don't you see how it is smoking?" True enough, smoke was rising from Mount Gut.
The Staff-Captain hesitated about bringing them there, but the Mess-Sergeant offered to clean up a corner for them and give them a comfortable table. "I don't know about bringing my girls in here with the men," said the Staff-Captain still hesitating. "You know the men are pretty rough in their talk, and they're always cussing!" "Leave that to me!" said the Mess-Sergeant. "It'll be all right!"
Seated by the fire were two old women, a number of children and a lank Georgian all of them in tatters. There was no help for it! We took refuge by the fire and lighted our pipes; and soon the teapot was singing invitingly. "Wretched people, these!" I said to the staff-captain, indicating our dirty hosts, who were silently gazing at us in a kind of torpor.
"I'll tell you when we're a bit more to ourselves," replied Castellan; and when they had got into his sitting-room, and the waiter had brought the wine, he locked the door, and said: "That is Staff-Captain Count Karl von Eckstein, of the German Imperial Navy, and also of His Majesty, the Kaiser's, Secret Service.
The Staff-Captain in charge here told me his history, which is so typical and interesting that I will repeat it briefly. Then a terrible misfortune overwhelmed him. Suddenly his wife and child died, and, as a result of the shock, he took to drink. Subsequently he drifted on to the streets, where he spent eight years.
There was an old dirty French wagon in the barnyard where they kept the bread. It was not an inviting prospect and the Staff-Captain looked about him dubiously and went away with many misgivings, but there seemed to be nothing else to be done. The boys did their best to fix things up nicely.
About midnight the Staff-Captain and his officer arrived and after some difficulty found the old barn that the Colonel had told them was to be their hut, but to their dismay there were half a dozen cars parked inside, including the Commanding General's, and it looked as if it were being used for the Staff Garage.
Word Of The Day