ACROSS THE FRONTIER

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.

A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway station, muffled in their large cloaks.  They were talking together in a low voice.  One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed.  He recognized the voice as that of a friend—­a young Cossack officer who had lunched with him two days earlier.

Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska.  He had found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory.  His father was probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire, meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now from a note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust.  Martin knew that Wanda had gone.  He also knew the address that would find her.  This was one of the hundred details to which the prince himself had attended.  He had been a skilled organizer in the days when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the Austrian frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning.  All Poland was seamed by channels through which information could be poured at any moment day or night, just as water is distributed over the land of an irrigated farm.