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.
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.