We recommenced our exhausting journey through the marshes, covered with thick scrub. We had no food. Despair took the place of hope in our hearts. Time after time we fell down from exhaustion and weariness. My frost-bitten feet caused me fearful torment.
We continued to follow the river Kem almost due south, then turned west. Thus, falling and getting up, and falling into the water again, we covered twenty-five miles. We came to a big lake, with fishermen's huts on the shore. The men were not at home. We took a quantity of food and left a tchervonets on a stone with a note which ran:
"We are sorry, but necessity compels us to steal. We leave you a tchervonets."
For a long time we did not know how to get across the lake. We tried to go round, and walked ten miles — still we were confronted by water. Then Sazonoff, who had grown up in the neighbourhood of water, made some odd little rafts, fastening planks together with everything we had — rifle slings, belts, shirts — and brought us over to the other side. This voyage across the lake, I remember, used up what little energy we still had. Indeed, when I now recall all that we went through in those dreadful days, I cannot understand how we endured such a strain, both physical and mental, and how it was that we did not fall down dead somewhere in the Karelian mosses. But evidently God thought fit to save us, to bring us out of the dense, marshy jungle, that we might bear witness to the whole world of the place of torment into which a loathsome government has turned the once holy Solovetsky Monastery.
After crossing the lake, we decided to march due west. More marshes in endless succession, no paths, not a scrap of bread. We usually endured the pangs of hunger for three days, and on the fourth day went in search of bread, at the risk of falling into a trap. While in search of provisions, we came upon a wooden road through the marshes, evidently laid down by the British. We could see no tracks on it. We held a council of war, and decided to turn off northward in the hope of coming to a habitation. We covered twenty miles: not a soul.
Then we came to another lake, and there, on the other side, was a large village. We could hear voices and the barking of dogs. We dragged ourselves to the bank. Bezsonoff and Sazonoff stood by the water's edge for a long time, and shouted:
"Hallo! Hallo!"
At last we made ourselves heard. A boat came over, rowed by a Karelian.
"Can we get any bread? We'll pay for it."
"Yes, you can get bread, you can get anything you like," the honest fisherman replied. "But there are Tchekists from the Solovky in the village, searching for you."