"Spring into my arms," he said, forgetting that she knew no tongue but Polish. But his outstretched arms spoke for him. The woman jumped clumsily; but Jack kept his feet, and, straining his muscles, he carried the burden, as rapidly as he could stagger, to his own train. Gabriele's hands were ready to help the woman; with an unceremonious heave Jack pushed her into the carriage. Then he ran to his engine, swung himself up, and pressed the lever just as the empty passenger train moved off in the other direction. Before he had run a hundred yards he heard a crash behind. Glancing back, he saw that the first carriage had jumped the points, ploughed up the permanent way, and overturned. One after another the other carriages followed; and in a brief minute there was a pile of wrecked trucks and coaches in inextricable confusion across the rails.
Jack had not time to give a second thought to Gabriele. He was again urging Alexander the Second along at full speed. He must run to within a few miles of the next station, and lift enough rails to delay for some hours any train despatched from the direction of Ninguta. Twenty minutes brought him to a likely spot—a high culvert over a brawling hill stream. Employing the whole strength of his detachment in the work, he lifted fifty yards of the track and flung the rails and sleepers into the stream's rocky bed.
"At last!" he exclaimed. The load of anxiety he had borne for over two hours was gone. From the place where he had wrecked the bridge nearly a hundred miles westward to the spot where he now stood, traffic on the Siberian railway was hopelessly blocked.
CHAPTER XXVI
A Double Quest
Gabriele's Story—A Hasty Word—Lex Talionis—Bribery and Corruption—Cause and Effect—The Natural Man—The Filial Obligation—The Choice of Routes—A Fair Pleader—In the Circumstances—Improving the Occasion
Jack's part was done. The way had been cleared for the passage of the Chunchuses across the railway, and knowing Ah Lum's rapidity of movement he felt tolerably sure that the crossing might easily be made. He could now afford to think of his own safety. He determined to run the train back as near as he dared to Pei-su-ho, then to leave it standing on the line and make off in a northerly or north-westerly direction, trusting to join hands with Ah Lum at some distance north of the line. The railway guards were amazed to see the train running swiftly backwards; but, whatever their suspicions, they were powerless. Jack came to a stop between two of the block-houses; in a few minutes his men alighted with Bekovitch and Sowinski, Gabriele, and her nurse; and then Jack abandoned the noble Alexander the Second that had served him so well, and started on his northward march. Some distance above the line he instinctively turned for a last look. There was the short train, motionless on the rails, a derelict in a vast solitude. But it represented activities that had disorganized the whole traffic of the line for a hundred miles, nullified a military scheme, and saved hundreds of lives. It was not without a certain grim amusement Jack remembered that the final card in that game had been played by the Russians themselves. "I only hope the station-master won't be cashiered," he thought, as he turned his back upon the scene.
Not till now had he an opportunity of learning what strange fate had entrusted Gabriele to his care. Some time after he had left the missionary's house the girl, unable to endure the separation from her father, again ventured into Vladivostok. Acting on the knowledge that Jack had bribed a Russian official, she succeeded in persuading a colonist about to re-embark for Sakhalin to carry a letter from her to Count Walewski. She told him of her intentions, assuring him that in spite of her failure to gain permission to enter the island, she still meant to persevere. Several weeks later she received a reply, brought by the same man, who had crossed the sea in probably the last boat before the ports became ice-bound. It was addressed in a strange handwriting, and as she tore it open she was oppressed by the fear that her father was dead. But the first line of the letter, written in French, dispelled her anxiety. The count was ill in hospital, unable to write; but he had availed himself of the ready help of a fellow-prisoner—a political prisoner who had recently arrived in the island. He thanked his daughter for her affectionate solicitude, but pled with her to abandon her purpose: Sakhalin was no place for a woman; she would only suffer without alleviating his lot. As for himself, until the arrival of his new friend he had despaired of ever regaining his liberty. But the surprising news that the Japanese were winning victory after victory had sown a seed of hope. The prisoners on the island had been fed with lies by the officials, who reported constant victories for Russia. But the new-comer had thrown a fresh light on the war; he could not foresee its end: the Russians had still enormous powers of resistance; it was possible that the great fleet on its way eastward might break through to Vladivostok and change the aspect of things. Yet, if it should be defeated, the Japanese might capture Sakhalin; possibly the political prisoners would then be released if they had not been previously removed to the mainland. It was only a possibility, but sufficient to give new courage to a sorely-tried man.
Jack read all this himself, for Gabriele, immediately after explaining how the letter came into her possession, handed it to him. The writing was his father's. At the first moment he felt unutterable relief in finding that his father was alive; then rage burned within him as he saw before him, marching at some distance apart, each manacled to a Chunchuse, the two men whose villainy had sent Mr. Brown to the bleak "island of the dead". Gabriele noticed his look.
"I understand," she said. "But if your anger is great, how much greater is mine! Your father's persecutor is a Russian, a foreigner; my father was betrayed by one of his own countrymen,—one of his own house. The traitor there recognized me as I entered the saloon carriage; bound as he was, he shrank from me as though expecting that I would kill him."