It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their uninteresting meal. The sandbank offered a comfortable seat. Their position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of the bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach within half a mile unperceived.
“Yes,” one of the workmen was saying, “those who know say that there will inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Someday. And if someday, why not now? Why not this time?”
His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built, oval-faced men—real Poles; others had the narrower look of the Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills; others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
“The third time, they say, is lucky,” answered a white-haired man, at length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees. Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must have seen fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot down in the streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had the dull look which nearly always betokens some grim vision never forgotten. He seemed a placid old man, and was known as an excellent worker, though cruel to his horses.
He who had first spoken—a boatman known as Kosmaroff—was a spare man, with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat beard. He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no outward appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was quick and vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his mouth gave an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the eye. His smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very rarely, a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been a raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the old man as if hoping that more was coming.
“Yes, it will be the third time,” he said, when the other had lapsed into a musing silence, “though few of us have seen it with our own eyes. But we have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of our forefathers to guide us—though we cannot say that our forefathers have told us—”
He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
“We shall time it better,” he said, “than last time. We have men watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as an old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the dogs should quarrel among themselves—the three dogs that have torn Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That showed what they thought of us!”
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 someday—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
