The Vultures

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Vultures


"Odd people women are," said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.

"I looked into Mangles's salon," he said to Wanda, when he was seated
beside her again. "He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool--that
Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing."

At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture
of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men.
He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.

"They know," he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the
Austrian railway carriage. "They all know. Look at their stupid,
perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have
decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah!
what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!"

"Or a grin," he added, after a long pause, "that passes for one."




XXXIV

FOR ANOTHER TIME

The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in;
the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn
would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature
more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.

There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the
south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there
are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and
autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are
under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in
winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.

Along the middle road--which is the worst and the least frequented--a
number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The
road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such
deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on
either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for
the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter
it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used
at all.

It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary
hay-carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more
frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The
carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.

Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in
his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare
limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet.
He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely
have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere
outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his
head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him.
The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the
carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.

At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into
the larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on
horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The
horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare
horse. He was in a rough peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth,
drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the
saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.

Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a
man's trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.

"You are punctual," he said. "I was nearly asleep in the saddle."

And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat
such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he
leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.

"You are not cold?" he asked.

"No; I feel as if I should never be cold again."

"That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
must take care of yourself."

"So must you," answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.

Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than
in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which
the French call _camaraderie_, which was not the outcome of a long
friendship. Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have
had a common ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight,
with royal blood in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of
the fair Bukatys, whose women had always been beautiful, and their men
always reckless.

Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound
of approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and
struck it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded
hollow, like a drum.

"I suppose you had little sleep last night," said Kosmaroff when Martin
yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.

"I had none."

"Nor I," said Kosmaroff. "We may get some--to-morrow."

The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
side.

"You know what to do," said Martin to these in turn. "Come to the
iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to
the military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in
line. You are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the
river on this side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line,
dropping your load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you
are stopped on the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking
what you have in your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them;
and while they are looking into your carts you must kill them quietly
with the knife."

The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and
that was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and
had perhaps waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of
promise in his curt hilarity.

Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking
to the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs
by the river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.

In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
rain, no one passed that way.

Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the
lower lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the
iron-foundry are on the right.

At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.

"What is it?" asked Martin.

"I thought I saw a glint under the wall," answered Kosmaroff.
"There--there it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the
gleam of those distant lights on a bayonet."

"Then let us go forward," said Martin, "and see who it is."

And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
out:

"Who goes there?"

"Who goes there?" echoed Martin. "But this is a high-road." And he moved
nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
gleamed again.

"No matter," he said; "you cannot pass this way."

"But, my friend--" began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he never
finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle on
the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.

The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment
his rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now
in the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which
was not Kosmaroff's cough.

After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.

"First blood," he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
hands upon its mane.

"Bah!" he exclaimed, "how he smelled of bad cigarettes!"

Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
mud.

"Oh, he is dead enough," said Kosmaroff. "I broke his neck. Did you not
hear it go?"

"Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?"

"That is yet to be found out," was the reply, in a sharp, strained
voice. "This is Cartoner's work."

"I doubt it," whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.

"What does it mean?" he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He
had always been lucky and successful.

"It means," answered the man who had never been either, "that the
place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have
failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait
for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and
make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they
have taken me."

As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working
clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.

"Wait a moment," he said. "I will get over the wall here. Bring your
horse against the wall."

Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched
across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.

"Stand in your stirrups," said Kosmaroff, "and hold one arm up rigid
against the wall."

He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing
on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.

"Are you ready? I am going to spring."

He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
could perceive him for a moment against the sky.

"All right," he whispered, and disappeared.

Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when
he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff,
breathless.

"Quick!" he whispered. "Quick!"

And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving.
He was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a
gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin
had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder
they splashed on in the darkness.

"I went right in," gasped Kosmaroff. "The arms are gone. The place is
full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an
ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!"

"We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men," said
Martin. "We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such
work."

Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.

"Ah!" he said. "You are full of hope--you."

"Yes--I am full of hope--still," answered Martin. He had more to lose
than his companion. But he had also less to gain.

They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from
the city.

Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.

"I am sure," he then said, "that I was seen as I climbed back over the
wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize
me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is
different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know
who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw
again."

"I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere," said Martin,
with a laugh.

"I do not know," went on Kosmaroff, "if they will have arrested your
father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace
now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night."

"Oh," answered Martin gayly, "it does not matter much about that. What I
am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?"

And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.

Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If
the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers;
for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to
be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized
carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown amid the straw.
They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while
the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and
the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were
appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so
wild as many that have succeeded.

The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
away.

"It is for another time--it is for another time!" said Kosmaroff and
Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
darkness.

In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
streets.

At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.

It was a miserable fiasco.




XXXV

ACROSS THE FRONTIER

Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and
the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great
length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the
alert night and day.

Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
The moon above the clouds was almost full.

"There is only one chance of escape," Kosmaroff had said--"the river.
Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.
I will get a boat. Have you money?"

"I have a few roubles--I never had many," answered Martin.

"Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat."

And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city.
He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the
soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the
street corners. And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.

A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched with
him two days earlier.

Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had
found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light
filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was
probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire,
meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now from a
note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust.
Martin knew that Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would
find her. This was one of the hundred details to which the prince
himself had attended. He had been a skilled organizer in the days
when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the Austrian
frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed
by channels through which information could be poured at any moment day
or night, just as water is distributed over the land of an irrigated
farm.

Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of
his coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.

Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers
here night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and
those whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get
their sleep when they can.

To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where
the steps are--river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge
which are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a
sleepless interest in the prospects of a flood.

Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he
also had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had
a fit of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and
at the most deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps,
coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the
land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.

"The water is running freely," he said, "through the middle arch. I have
a boat out there on the ice. Come!"

And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the
river that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying
on the ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at
the edge of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it
flowed towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark
that Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat
before he saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity
of build used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.

Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
and spoke without haste or hesitation.

"Help me," he said, "to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will
come out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before
dawn."

The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times;
for there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.

"We must lie down in the bottom of the boat," said Kosmaroff, "and take
our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel."

As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For
the castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been
partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these
lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in
trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and
were borne on the breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.

Kosmaroff sat up.

"Give me a piece of bread," he said. "I am famished."

But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.

The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills;
here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead
horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a
hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant
sea on muddy waters.

Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out, conscious
of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands of God.

When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above
the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here
and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big,
low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was
almost morning.

Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were
proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.

"Where are we?" he asked.

Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others
gray and muddy.

"I know where we are," he answered, after a pause. "We have passed
Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
my teeth wouldn't chatter."

"I have secured mine with a piece of bread," mumbled Martin.

Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.

"We cannot travel during the day," he said, after a long examination of
the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. "We shall
not be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I
am afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some
large islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must
wait with him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through
Thorn."

Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the
ice was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that
they could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which,
indeed, seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen
would attempt to cross the river now.

Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the
prince at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to
await them at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their
escape was being arranged, but they must await further instructions
before quitting their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these
further orders came by the same sure channel, which was independent of
the Russian post-offices.