The others listened, looking patiently at the river.  The spirit of some was broken.  There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit.  Others looked doubtful, for one reason or another.  These men resembled a board of directors—­some of them knew too little, others too much.  It seemed to be Kosmaroff’s mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.

“It is all very well for you,” said one, a little fat man with beady eyes.  Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity to danger of any sort—­“you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to lose!”

Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile.  He did not look towards the speaker.  He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that a man’s character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is a part of it running over.

“There are many who can be aristocrats some day—­with a little good-fortune,” he said, and the beady eyes brightened.

“I lost five at Praga,” muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued manner of the toiler.  “That is enough for me.”

“It is well to remember Praga,” returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone.  “It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word!  There is much to remember!”

And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners.  Kosmaroff glanced sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring sullenly across the river.

“I may be an aristocrat by descent,” he said, “but what does that come to?  I am a raftsman.  I work with my hands, like any other.  To be a Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give.  They have always done it.  They are ready to do it again.  Look at the Bukatys and a hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the sunshine.  I could do it myself.  But I am here.  The Bukatys are here.  They will finish by losing everything—­the little they have left—­or else they will win everything.  And I know which they will do.  They will win!  The prince is wise.  Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!”

“And when they have won will they remember?” asked one of the two smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.

“If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it.  You may rely on that.  They know what each gives—­whether freely or with a niggard hand—­and each shall be paid back in his own coin.  They give freely enough themselves.  It is always so with the aristocrats; but they expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!”

The men sat in a row facing the slow river.  They were toil-worn and stained; their clothing was in rags.  But beneath their sandy hair more than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger, with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar.  As they sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of each chord.  He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.