"Because I didn't my kin in Poland would have to pay for it."
"That's jolly hard, to have to risk your life, and maybe give it, for people you hate."
"There are many more like me. But what can we do? If we go against them they visit it on the innocent ones at home. If I could destroy the whole of Russia, Tsar and Grand Dukes and all, at one blow, I would strike it so"--and he dashed his fist into the palm of his other hand--"and then I would die with a glad heart. . . . But one does not talk of these things, you understand, except among one's friends."
He stopped at a house which stood about midway down the slope overlooking the harbour, and led Jim into a room on the ground floor. From the window he could see Fort Constantine, shining white in the sun on the other side of the water, and the bristling line of the masts of the sunken ships, and the harbour itself dotted all over with plying boats.
"One moment," said Greski, and left him there, but came back in an instant with a very beautiful white-haired old lady, whom he must have met in the passage. Her dark eyes were shining like stars at the joy of seeing her boy again.
"My mother," said Greski, and explained matters to her in a torrent of Polish.
She assented without any demur to all her son's proposals, and shook hands very heartily with Jim, giving him what was evidently warm welcome, in a tongue he did not understand.
Then the door opened again, and a girl rushed in and flung her arms round the lieutenant's neck, and kissed him, between broken ejaculations of joy, as one come back from the dead, while two long plaits of black hair gyrated wildly at her back.
When the tails had settled down, Greski laughingly swung her round facing Jim, and introduced her as his sister Tatia, and Tatia blushed charmingly, and said, in very passable English: "You must excuse us, sir. You see, when he goes out we are never quite certain that we shall ever see him again. And when he does return our hearts are joyful. Those terrible pointed shells you send us--ah, mon Dieu! one came through the side of the cathedral this morning when I was there praying for Louis, and we all ran and ran."
"They are not supposed to fire at the cathedral," said Jim.