A Secret Service: Being Strange Tales of a Nihilist

by William Le Queux

“Tell us of your escape,” I said, after he had related the story of his arrest and imprisonment for carrying on propaganda among the soldiers of the Novgorod garrison.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, his face brightening. “It has been a terrible experience, but I was driven to desperation.” Turning to Pétroff he said: “You know the frightful horrors of Schlusselburg—the cold wet cells below the water?”

“I have, alas! much cause to remember them,” Paul answered, with a heavy sigh. “My wife, whom I loved so well, was imprisoned there at the same time as myself. The solitary confinement and the horrors of her cell drove her hopelessly insane. She is now an inmate of the criminal asylum at Krasnoje Selo.”

“Madness is the fate of the majority of prisoners there,” said Kassatkin. “In my case the many months of absolute silence and lack of exercise drove me into a state bordering on insanity. In order to check the imbecility that was slowly but surely taking possession of me, I used to pace my damp, dark cell and compose verses. For days, weeks, months, I had no other occupation than the composition of poems, which I afterwards committed to memory, having no writing materials. This was the only mental employment I had, and, although I grew strangely lightheaded, yet my self-imposed tasks prevented my mind becoming totally unhinged. An opportunity for escape presented itself in a most unexpected manner. A large batch of ‘common law’ prisoners had been sent from Petersburg, and the prison being already over-crowded, I was removed from my cell and confined in a room in the fire-tower. It thus happened that I was locked up in an ordinary room, with a window looking upon the bridge. It was rather high, but it was near the waterpipe running along the wall outside, and there was a slanting roof of the lower storey which could be utilised for the descent. I could not lose such an opportunity, and, in the dead of night, I opened the window and descended upon the bridge connecting the prison with the bank, congratulating myself upon a happy escape.”

“Were you discovered?” I asked.

“Yes, almost immediately. By ill-luck a sentry noticed me and gave the alarm. It was an exciting moment as I made a dash for the forest and disappeared among the trees. Half-a-dozen soldiers pursued me, but only for a short distance, and apparently considering that they had a poor chance of capturing a fugitive in a forest, they returned to the prison for assistance. I concealed myself and waited. Presently about twenty mounted soldiers galloped past along the forest road. When they were out of sight I left my hiding-place and walked on. My position was, however, critical, therefore I returned to the Neva, as I could not lose my way beside the river. I soon came to the water’s edge. By the opposite bank were some islands and something like a lake or arm of the river, near which I could see what in the fog appeared to be masts. Close beside me on the bank sat a group of fishermen, and a little way off an old man was doing something to a boat. Having two or three roubles in my pocket, I went up and asked the old man to ferry me across the river. He consented, but asked in a conversational way why I wanted to go across. Remembering the masts, I replied that I had to go on board a schooner that lay in the distance. The old man looked at me suspiciously.

“He asked who I was, and I told him that I was a working-man from Tichvin. The old man put on a very suspicious air and began a minute interrogation. I was at my wits’ end, and ready to make a dash for it; but that was out of the question: the fishermen were close by and would have caught me in five minutes. I resolved to take the bull by the horns, so I told the man that I had simply made up the former story, and that, in reality, I was an escaped political prisoner seeking a hiding-place. When the old man had asked me numerous other questions, he said: ‘Well, I won’t ferry you across myself, but I’ll tell my boy to. He’ll land you on the island, and you can stop there until to-morrow night. You’re all right so far. Only, look here, don’t you go telling anybody that you have to go to your schooner. In my young days there used to be plenty of schooners there, but for thirty years past there hasn’t been one near the place.’

“The old man then called a young fisherman, and told him to row me across to the island. On parting from the man who ferried me, I started to explore the place, which I found to be very marshy. The morning broke wet and cheerless, and I spent the day in a disused hut. When evening set in, it became too cold for me to spend the night shelterless, and as I was suffering severely from hunger, I wandered up and down the swampy forest looking for a village. By the time I succeeded in finding one it was quite dark. I knocked at a cottage door, but the people would not let me in. I went to a second and third cottage, but with no success. Finally I lost my temper, and addressing an obdurate householder, asked him where the starosta lived.

“The peasant directed me to the starosta’s cottage, and then slammed his door. I tapped at the door of the residence indicated, and it was opened by a woman. When I asked for the official I was in search of, she replied, ‘I am the starosta. What do you want?’ It appeared that she really was the starosta. The office was filled by all the peasants in the village in turn; and she, being an independent householder, took her turn like the men. I rattled off a wild story, how I had come for a holiday from Petersburg with some friends; how they had become intoxicated, and, for a practical joke, had returned home, leaving me alone on the island. The female starosta evinced the warmest sympathy with my misfortune, gave me supper, and allowed me to pass the night in her cottage.