“I’ll fight. I’ll rush the man who strikes me, whether I’m bound or not.”
“That would be foolish. The punishment would only be redoubled. No; take my advice, and grin and bear it.”
“I don’t know but what you’re right,” said Jack after some consideration. “I’ll take your advice, then, in part. I’ll bear it, but I won’t promise to grin.”
“Now that’s the way I like to hear a man talk,” declared the Russian. “You are a man after my own heart. It will hurt, of course, but it won’t kill. Although,” he added as an afterthought, “I don’t know but it would be well to kill a man at once, rather than to kill him by inches as they do here in Siberia.”
“You talk as though you knew something about it,” said Jack.
“I do. I had a brother who was once imprisoned in Siberia, through a mistake. He was later released by the personal order of the Czar; but in the time he was here he endured much. He has told me many tales of the cruelties of the guards and their officers.”
“Well, all we can do is hope that we shall have a chance to escape,” said Jack.
“No chance of that—without outside help,” declared the Russian. “Besides, if you were able to get away, where would you go? You are miles from a railroad and you would perish of cold or of hunger before you got far.”
“The railroad can’t be so very far,” Jack protested. “It was only a few hours ago that we were in a freight car.”
“A few hours,” ejaculated the Russian. “It has been all of twenty-four.”