Knight Without Armour Read Online Free PDF Page B

literature
to A.J. with much learning and considerable shrewdness.
    During that first week with the Cossacks nothing happened, though from
time to time there came sounds of gun-fire in the distance. Then one morning,
about five o’clock, a servant who had been detailed to attend on him
woke A.J. to announce that a battle was beginning about four miles away and
that if he climbed a hill near by he might perhaps see something of it. While
he was hastily dressing, Barellini, who had been similarly wakened, joined
him, and soon the two were trudging over the dusty plain in the fast-warming
sunlight.
    They climbed the low hill and lay down amongst the scrub. For several
hours nothing was to be seen; then suddenly, about nine o’clock, a
violent cannonade began over the next range of hills and little puffs of
white smoke a couple of miles away showed where shells were bursting. A staff
officer approached them and explained the position; the Russians were over
here, the Japanese over there, and so on. It was all very confusing and not
at all what A.J. had imagined. The sun rose higher and the cannonade grew in
intensity; Russian batteries were replying. Barellini talked, as usual, about
women; A.J. actually dozed a little until another staff officer ran to tell
them to move off, as the Russian line was beginning to retreat. They obeyed,
descending the hill and walking a mile or so to the rear. By this time they
were dog-tired and thirsty. A Chinese trader on the road offered them some
Shanghai beer at an extortionate figure; Barellini beat him down to half his
price and bought four bottles, which they drank there and then with great
relish.
    And that, by pure mischance, was all that A.J. saw of the actual Russo-
Japanese War, for the beer had been mixed with foul water, and that same
evening, after sending a long cable to the Comet , he fell violently
ill and had to be taken to the base hospital. There his case was at first
neglected, for it was hardly to be expected’ that the doctors, in the
after-battle rush of work, should pay much attention to a foreign war-
correspondent with no visible ailment. Later, however, when his temperature
was a hundred and four and he was in the most obvious agony, they changed
their attitude and gave him good nursing and careful attention. For a
fortnight his life was in danger; then he began to recover. The hospital was
clean and well- managed, though there was a shortage of drugs and bandages.
Barellini, on whom the bad beer had had no ill effects at all, visited him
from time to time, as also did some of the other correspondents. It was
universally agreed that he had met with the most atrocious luck. Afterwards,
however, he looked back upon his period in hospital as the time when he
really began to know Russia and the Russians. To begin with, he made great
progress with the language. None of the nurses or patients could speak any
English and after his third week in hospital he found himself beginning to
converse with them fairly easily. What struck him most was the general
eagerness to help him; he could not imagine a foreigner in a London hospital
being so treated. Both men next to him were badly wounded (one in the stomach
and the other with both legs amputated), yet both took a keen delight in
teaching him new words. They were middle-aged, with wives and families
thousands of miles west; they accepted their lot with a fatalism that was
bewildered rather than stoic. One of them always screamed when his wounds
were being dressed, and always apologised to A.J. afterwards for having
disturbed him. Neither could read or write, yet when A.J. read to them, very
haltingly and with very bad pronunciation, from a book by Gogol, they
listened enthralled. They were devoutly religious and also very
superstitious. They had not the slightest idea why their country was fighting
Japan, but they assumed it must be God’s will. The one with the
amputations