The General of the Staff was quartered at Radzivilow Castle, and I explored the place while the Prince and Monsieur Goochkoff did their business.  The old, dark hall, with armour hanging on the walls and worm-eaten furniture covered with priceless tapestry, would have made a splendid picture.  A huge log fire burning on the open hearth lighted up the dark faces of the two Turkestan soldiers who were standing on guard at the door.  In one corner a young lieutenant was taking interminable messages from the field telephone, and under the window another Turkestan soldier stood sharpening his dagger.  The Prince asked him what he was doing, and his dark face lighted up.  “Every night at eight,” he said, still sharpening busily, “I go out and kill some Germans.”  The men of this Turkestan regiment are said to be extraordinarily brave men.  They do not care at all about a rifle, but prefer to be at closer quarters with the enemy with their two-edged dagger, and the Germans like them as little as they like our own Gurkhas and Sikhs.

The next day the wounded began to arrive in Skiernevice, and in two days’ time the temporary hospital was full.

The Tsar had a private theatre at Skiernevice with a little separate station of its own about 200 yards farther down the line than the ordinary station, and in many ways this made quite a suitable hospital except for the want of a proper water-supply.

The next thing we heard was that the Russian General had decided to fall back once more, and we must be prepared to move at any moment.

All that day we heard violent cannonading going on and all the next night, though the hospital was already full, the little country carts came in one after another filled with wounded.  They were to only stay one night, as in the morning ambulance trains were coming to take them all away, and we had orders to follow as soon as the last patient had gone.  Another operating- and dressing-room was quickly improvised, but even with the two going hard all night it was difficult to keep pace with the number brought in.

The scenery had never been taken down after the last dramatic performance played in the theatre, and wounded men lay everywhere between the wings and drop scenes.  The auditorium was packed so closely that you could hardly get between the men without treading on some one’s hands and feet as they lay on the floor.  The light had given out—­in the two dressing-rooms there were oil-lamps, but in the rest of the place we had to make do with candle-ends stuck into bottles.  The foyer had been made into a splendid kitchen, where hot tea and boiling soup could be got all night through.  This department was worked by the local Red Cross Society, and was a great credit to them.

About eight o’clock in the morning the first ambulance train came in, and was quickly filled with patients.  We heard that the Germans were now very near, and hoped we should manage to get away all the wounded before they arrived.