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168 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 1999
An English twin-cylinder motor cycle, made by “Indian”, its wheels half buried in the earth, was roaring powerfully as it drove a small dynamo attached to it by a belt; the dynamo was mounted on two small logs and was shaking from the speed with which it was turning. A middle-aged man was sitting in the side car and smoking a cigarette. Close by was a tall post, and on top of it burned an electric bulb, lighting up the day.
The Tsar’s wish, in short, was that a continuous waterway be constructed between the Don and the Oka, linking Moscow and the Don region to the provinces of the Volga. This could be achieved only through the devising of great locks and canals, and it was to project these that Bertrand had been called from Britain.
Grass has grown again on the trodden-down dirt tracks of the civil war, because the war had stopped. With peace it had become quiet again in the provinces and there were fewer people: some had died in the fighting, many were being treated for their wounds and were resting with their families, forgetting the heavy work of the war in long sleep, while some of the demobilized men were still making their way home in their old greatcoats, carrying their kitbags and wearing soft helmets or sheepskin caps – walking over the thick unfamiliar grass which there had not been time to see before, or maybe it had just been trampled down by the campaigns and had not been growing then.