Troops swarmed on the platform; new recruits going out to fill the gaps in the line, officers rejoining their regiments. The train for Königsberg glided into the arc lighted shed; we managed to get a first class compartment.
"I tried to get sleeping accommodation," apologized Baron von Stietencron, who spoke good American, "but we were too late."
To the waving and calling of good-bys, the train glided past the pallid faces of soldiers' loved ones, and clanking over the switches, turned its headlight towards the Eastern night. It was near three before any of us thought of sleeping. In that short space of time we came to know Baron von Stietencron amazingly well. And I heard some things of war that made my blood run cold.
"The Russians are in retreat now at this point," explained the Baron, tracing his finger over one of those marvelously minute staff maps. "We arrive at Königsberg in the morning and from there we shall go south to Lyck. It was at Lyck that the first big engagement of the battle took place."
Lyck from which only a few days ago the Russians had been sent flying! There was no bed that night; we slept sitting but the drowsy rumble of the car wheels seemed to be the clatter of the Russian retreat and when the big light glared through the window into my eyes, I had to awake fully before realizing that it was not a searchlight seeking out the retreating soldiers of the Czar, but only the station lamp at Dirschau.
[Illustration: Burying Russians on the East Prussian frontier.]
[Illustration: Reinforcements following our motor into Russia.]
Morning found us in the beery dining-room of the old station at Königsberg, breakfasting on coffee and wurst, and watching through the window a bivouac of young soldiers who had spent the night outside. We were walking down the platform to take the train for Korschen, when we saw a little boy tug at his mother's arm and stare with mouth agape into the sky. There to the south what seemed to be a stub of black pencil was slowly dissolving into the snow gray clouds. "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" In a clamor the waiting rooms emptied but already the great bag was a thing of the mists, vanishing, with its cargo of death, towards Warsaw.
Half an hour and we were on the train for Korschen.