Were we really on the road to success at last? At all events, Jack and I had the grace to admit that we had enjoyed fairly good luck after all, supposing that the letter was actually the passport to wealth which it purported to be. If the elder had destroyed it we should never have got any farther than Hogland in our researches! As for the picture, he might have done what he liked with that, we thought; though, since it seemed to be the desire of the testator that we should keep it, we piously determined to do so.
So that here we were with our object attained, or attained so far as it was possible to attain it, and with another week or so on our hands to be spent on this island before the steamer could be expected to return and fetch us away. What was to be done, and how should the time be spent?
There was fishing, and there was wandering about with our shot guns, in hopes of picking up a few grouse or other game which might be met with in the moorland and woods which covered the island. But the elder made a tempting suggestion which we caught at, though we did not anticipate much result from his idea.
There were three wolves on the island, he said, half-starved and rather savage. They lived here because they could not return to the mainland, whence they had come in the days of ice, last February or March. If we liked to pay for a sheep, he would kill one and lay it down as a decoy. On the third night, if we passed the hours of darkness in a tree over the spot, we should probably have an opportunity of shooting the brutes, and a good thing too; and it was in consideration of this fact that the elder would let us have a sheep for a merely nominal sum—fifteen roubles.
We agreed to pay this sum, so the sheep fell a victim, and was laid to rest not in but upon the earth beneath a tree.
Meanwhile the wounded Kuzmá was about to sail for the mainland in order to bring up his bandaged arm in testimony against James Strong, and the question arose whether Jack and I were not bound to accompany him in order to do what we could to ensure a fair trial to a fellow-countryman in distress.
He had done his best to murder us more than once, true. He had also foully done to death his own cousin, the younger Clutterbuck; and he had only failed to shoot down three innocent Russian peasants because one of the three had had the cleverness to knock him on the head before his purpose was half accomplished.
Yet, for all his crimes, we felt compunction about allowing him to pass, friendless and helpless, into the hands of those who are ever ready, as Englishmen (who know nothing about it) invariably believe, to draft their victims away to Siberia whether guilty or innocent. He deserved "Siberia," whatever that name may imply, as thoroughly as any rascal; but, somehow, though neither of us would have moved a finger to save his neck had it been in danger at the hands of an English hangman, yet we felt inexplicably averse to permitting Russians to have the twisting of it.
Why this was so I do not attempt to explain—it is a psychological problem which I leave to other heads to solve; all I know, is that it was only the sturdy good sense of Jack Henderson that prevented me from stepping on board his fishing-lugger with Kuzmá, and another peasant, and sailing away to Narva to make a quixotic fool of myself in defence of the indefensible James Strong.
CHAPTER XXXII