At four o'clock Kropotkin was escorted to the yard. He waited a moment, wiped his brow as if it were hot, and took off his hat. From the little gray house a violin sounded. The tones fell sweetly on Kropotkin's ears. He moved toward the gate intending to run in a moment. Suddenly—the music ceased. His heart hurt. Something writhed. One painful minute passed ... Two ... Three ... Four ... Five ... Ten minutes ... No music ... A quarter of an hour.... Some heavily loaded carts entered the gate, and Kropotkin understood the cause of the interruption.
Immediately the violin trilled. Kropotkin listened with interest. The musician was talented, and performed with much feeling. You felt that if three of the strings broke, like Paganini he would still make ravishing music on the fourth. Moreover his technique was perfect. He was playing a mazurka from Kontsky—wild, eager, thrilling,—a mad mazurka. It attracted Kropotkin like a magnet. It pulled him to the end of the footpath. He trembled lest it should stop again, but the intoxicated sounds floated over the prison yard, louder and louder, with ever-increasing passion and freedom.
Kropotkin glanced at the sentry. This hero followed a line parallel to his, but five paces nearer the gate. He was supposed to walk directly behind the prisoner, but as Kropotkin always crawled feebly along at a snail's pace, the able-bodied sentry who was too vigorous to creep, hit upon the above device.
Five paces nearer the gate—that was bad. But the sentry was only a sentry, while Peter Kropotkin was a mathematician and a psychologist. He calculated that if he began to run, the soldier instead of heading directly for the gate to cut off his escape, would obey his natural instinct and endeavor to seize him as quickly as possible. He would thus describe two sides of a triangle, of which Kropotkin would describe the third alone.
Fortissimo—how loudly that violin played! Kropotkin ran!
No sooner had he taken a few steps than some peasants who were piling wood, shouted, "He runs! Stop him"! It was for the people that Kropotkin was in prison; it was for them that he descended from his high estate; it was for them that he was ready to die at any moment. But the blocks with the slanted brows did not understand. At night when they lay on their rotting straw, they thanked the good gods for sending them such good masters. Now they called out, "Stop him! Stop him!"[40]
When Kropotkin heard that cry, he fled with a speed equal to Commandant Masyukov's, when Madame Sigida struck him. Already the sentry—doing just what Kropotkin expected him to do—was at his heels. Three soldiers who were sitting on the doorstep, followed. The athletic sentinel was so confident he could outrun the invalid that he did not fire, but flung his rifle forward, trying to give the fleeing patient a bayonet-blow in the back. But it is never safe to take chances with even a sick runner, when he is sprinting for his life.
"Did you ever see what a big tail that louse has under the microscope?" asked the scientific comrade of the soldier at the gate.
"What, man! A tail? Why, man, you're crazy!"