Page:Ossendowski - Beasts, Men and Gods.djvu/270

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BEASTS, MEN AND GODS

Ungern. In a few minutes he appeared together with Sepailoff.

"What is this?" he asked Sepailoff in a severe, threatening voice; and, without waiting for an answer, struck him a blow with his tashur that sent him to the floor.

We went out and the General ordered my luggage produced. Then he brought me to his own yurta.

"Live here, now," he said. "I am very glad of this accident," he remarked with a smile, "for now I can say all that I want to."

This drew from me the question:

"May I describe all that I have heard and seen here?"

He thought a moment before replying : "Give me your notebook."

I handed him the album with my sketches of the trip and he wrote therein: "After my death, Baron Ungern."

"But I am older than you and I shall die before you," I remarked.

He shut his eyes, bowed his head and whispered:

"Oh, no! One hundred thirty days yet and it is finished; then … Nirvana! How wearied I am with sorrow, woe and hate I"

We were silent for a long time. I felt that I had now a mortal enemy in Colonel Sepailoff and that I should get out of Urga at the earliest possible moment. It was two o'clock at night. Suddenly Baron Ungern stood up.

"Let us go to the great, good Buddha," he said with a countenance held in deep thought and with eyes aflame, his whole face contracted by a mournful, bitter smile. He ordered the car brought.

Thus lived this camp of martyrs, refugees pursued by