Knight Without Armour

In a few moments the train ground down to an impotent standstill at a small, crowded platform of a station. It looked an odd place to have to change; there was no sign of any rail junction, or of any other train, and Tarzov, seen through the gathering dusk, had the air of a very second-rate village indeed. There was the usual throng of waiting refugees, with their usual attitude of having come nowhence and being bound no-whither; and there was the usual shouting and bell-jangling and scrambling for places. Poushkoff led them through the crowd to the refreshment buffet, which, by no means to A.J.’s surprise, was found to be closed. The boy, however, seemed not only surprised but depressed and disappointed to a quite fantastic degree—he had so wished, he said, to drink tea with them once, before they separated. “You see,” he said, “the next station is Samara, only thirty versts away, and of course the authorities there have been notified about you by telephone, and there will be an escort waiting, and oh well, it is all going to be very difficult and complicated. Whereas here we can still be friends.” He led them some distance along the platform, away from the crowd, to a point whence there was a view of the village—a poor view, however, owing to the misty twilight.

He seemed anxious to talk to them about something—perhaps about anything. “Tarzov,” he said, “is only a small place—it is on the Volga. If you go down that street over there you come to the river in about ten minutes. There is a little quay and there are timber-barges usually, at this time of the year. They take the rafts downstream during the daytime, and tie up at the bank for the nights. Of course the passenger-boats have been stopped since the civil war, but I believe the timber- barges sometimes take a passenger or two, if people have the money and make their own arrangements with the bargemen. Some of the bargemen are Tartars—fine old fellows from the Kirghiz country.” He added, almost apologetically: “This is really a most interesting part of the world, though, of course, you don’t see it at its best at this time of the year.”

Suddenly, as if remembering something, he exclaimed: “Excuse me, I must go back to the train a moment—I shan’t be long.” He dashed away into the midst of the still scurrying crowd before they could answer, and in the twilight they soon lost sight of him.

“He looked ill,” Daly said.

A.J. answered: “He drank nearly all that brandy.”

“Did he? Poor boy! Do you like him?”

“Yes.”

“So do I—tremendously. And he’s only a boy.”

It was very cold, waiting there with the wind blowing little gusts of snow into their faces.

A.J. said: “It’s rather curious, having to change trains at a place like this. There doesn’t seem to be any junction, and if it’s only thirty versts to Samara, where else can the train be going on to?”

“Perhaps it isn’t going on anywhere.”

“Then why is everybody crowding to get into it?”

She clutched his arm with a sharp gesture. “Do you realise—that we could escape—now? It’s almost dark—there’s a mist—we should have a chance.”