were already within a short distance of the monastery, when I noticed
several Mongol soldiers in the mouth of a ravine nearby, dragging back
and concealing in the ravine three dead bodies.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

The Cossacks only smiled without answering. Suddenly they straightened
up with a sharp salute. Out of the ravine came a small, stocky Mongolian
pony with a short man in the saddle. As he passed us, I noticed the
epaulets of a colonel and the green cap with a visor. He examined me
with cold, colorless eyes from under dense brows. As he went on ahead,
he took off his cap and wiped the perspiration from his bald head. My
eyes were struck by the strange undulating line of his skull. It was the
man "with the head like a saddle," against whom I had been warned by the
old fortune teller at the last ourton outside Van Kure!

"Who is this officer?" I inquired.

Although he was already quite a distance in front of us, the Cossacks
whispered: "Colonel Sepailoff, Commandant of Urga City."

Colonel Sepailoff, the darkest person on the canvas of Mongolian events!
Formerly a mechanician, afterwards a gendarme, he had gained quick
promotion under the Czar's regime. He was always nervously jerking and
wriggling his body and talking ceaselessly, making most unattractive
sounds in his throat and sputtering with saliva all over his lips, his
whole face often contracted with spasms. He was mad and Baron Ungern
twice appointed a commission of surgeons to examine him and ordered him
to rest in the hope he could rid the man of his evil genius. Undoubtedly
Sepailoff was a sadist. I heard afterwards that he himself executed
the condemned people, joking and singing as he did his work. Dark,
terrifying tales were current about him in Urga. He was a bloodhound,
fastening his victims with the jaws of death. All the glory of the
cruelty of Baron Ungern belonged to Sepailoff. Afterwards Baron Ungern
once told me in Urga that this Sepailoff annoyed him and that Sepailoff
could kill him just as well as others. Baron Ungern feared Sepailoff,
not as a man, but dominated by his own superstition, because Sepailoff
had found in Transbaikalia a witch doctor who predicted the death of the
Baron if he dismissed Sepailoff. Sepailoff knew no pardon for Bolshevik
nor for any one connected with the Bolsheviki in any way. The reason for
his vengeful spirit was that the Bolsheviki had tortured him in prison
and, after his escape, had killed all