Abundant Profits—A Hut in Sakhalin—Sowinski and Another—Sympathy—Coincidence—Blood Money—Downhill
One brilliant April morning Jack set out towards Ninguta, accompanied by Gabriele and the servant, Hi Lo, and two trusty Chunchuses. They were all dressed in Chinese garb, and since Manchurian women do not deform their feet there was no difficulty for Gabriele on that score. But they carried Russian dresses and uniforms for use if necessary. They crossed the railway safely at night half-way between two of the block-houses; and, striking into the hills, followed a path that would take them a considerable distance south of Ninguta. Their great danger lay in the chance of meeting one of the Russian columns which had been engaged in rounding up Ah Lum; but the two bandits believed that they would hear of the proximity of any such troops in good time to avoid them.
Jack had discussed with Gabriele whether they should take Father Mayenobe's mission station in passing. On all grounds they decided that it would be best to leave the good priest undisturbed. No doubt he believed that Gabriele was well on the way to Europe; it would be a pity to renew his anxieties, and possibly involve him in trouble with the Russians.
While they were laboriously making their way over the hills, another member of Ah Lum's band, posing as a lumberman, travelled by the railway, newly restored and more strictly guarded than ever, to Vladivostok. He bore a letter from Gabriele to the man by whose aid she had communicated with her father in Sakhalin. The letter stated that the receiver might earn 500 roubles if he would accompany the bearer to Possiet Bay, and there meet the writer, who would then give him further instructions. Jack had little doubt that when they arrived they would find the man waiting. To an ex-convict of Sakhalin 500 roubles is a fortune.
The Chinese shipping interest at Possiet Bay was scandalized when it heard that Too Chin-seng was contemplating a voyage to Chifu at least three weeks before the usual season. The ice, it was true, was breaking in the harbour; but the weather was tempestuous outside; and large quantities of loose floe rendered navigation difficult and dangerous. There was much shaking of the head over the temerity of the ship-owner who was thus imperilling not only the lives of the crew but the safety of the vessel. He could easily get another crew; a vessel like the Yu-ye ("Abundant Profits") was more difficult to replace. She was a stout junk some sixty feet in length and fifteen in beam, built of thick wood to withstand the heavy seas of those northern latitudes, and from the Chinese point of view well found in all respects. That for the sake of a few weeks' gain in time a man should risk so valuable a craft seemed to the shipping world at Possiet Bay a wilful flying in the face of fortune, almost an insult to Ma Chu, the goddess who watched over good sailors.
Too Chin-seng went quietly about his preparations, not even swerving when his neighbours protested that by the time he returned from Chifu he would be too late for the early herring fishing off Sakhalin. One day the vessel, loaded with a cargo of rice, made her way with much creaking and groaning out of the harbour, her sides bumped and scratched by heavy ice floes. Before sailing she had undergone the usual inspection; the officials sniffed and pried, as though the dissatisfaction of the native community had infected them also; but everything was in order. The day was fine, the sea exceptionally smooth for the time of year; and when once free from the floating ice, the Yu-ye ran merrily before a light north-easter down the coast.
But towards evening, when off Cape Lesura, she hauled her wind and beat about as if in expectation of something. She had not long to wait. Half a dozen figures appeared on the shore; a sampan was launched from the edge of the ice and laboriously punted its way out to the junk. The passengers were got aboard with some difficulty, for the wind was rising and the sea beginning to be choppy. But, all being at length embarked, the junk clumsily beat out to sea, heading towards the coast of Yesso to the north-east.
"He can makee chop-chop sailo pidgin, lowdah?" asked Jack of Too Chin-seng at the tiller.
"My belongey numpa one junk, masta. Ping-ch'wahn no can catchee he, galaw!"
In a rough wooden hut on a hill-slope above a small lumber settlement on the south-east coast of Sakhalin two men were talking. It was nearly dark; a sputtering tallow candle threw a murky light over the room, showing up its bareness. A rickety table was the only article of furniture; a raised portion of the rugged wooden floor, covered with one or two frowsy blankets, served both for chairs and bed. On these blankets the two men were now seated.
One of them was a big, heavy-browed, uncouth fellow—a posselentsy; that is, one who having served his time in the convicts' prison, was now liberated, though not free. He could not leave the island, nor could he choose his place of residence; he was bound to live where the governor bade him live. On leaving the prison he had been furnished with implements and ordered to go and build himself a hut at the spot prescribed, and till the soil around it. For two years he had been provided with food enough to keep him from starving; after that he must keep himself by the labour of his hands—cutting wood, loading coal, mending bridges. His hut became the nucleus of a village, other convicts being sent to do as he had done. After fourteen years he might hope to be permitted to return to Siberia or Russia.
The posselentsy was sitting with his back against the log wall, taking frequent pulls at a bottle of vodka, which, though forbidden to the colonists except at the two great Russian festivals in October and January, is secretly manufactured in stills deep in the woods, and stealthily bought and sold. But this bottle was a present.
"Yes," he was saying in answer to a question; "he checks the logs loaded into store by the foremen of our artels."
"An easy job, no doubt," suggested the other man—the Pole Anton Sowinski.
"Easy! It's child's play. All he has to do is to count the logs and write the numbers in a book. Then the dirty Pole—I beg pardon; I forgot he was a countryman of yours—gives out the vouchers, and the work—work!—is done. I had the Englishman's job myself—until I made a mistake in the figures."
"A mistake!"
"Well, they said it was intended. At any rate they sent me back to the woods."
"And while this Englishman—this spy—and the other sit at their ease, you poor Russians have to do all the hard work. I suppose it is hard?"
"Hard! Try it, barin. Felling trees and splitting logs all day is not exactly a soft job. And to make matters worse, since this war has been going on they've set a lot of us fellows to deal with the fish—make the stinking fish manure that the Japanese used to make. The herring season is just beginning; that'll be my pleasant occupation next week."
"And that is the life you lead while the Englishman—the spy—and the other live like barins, eh? It is shameful."
The Russian took a long pull at the bottle. It was not often he got a chance of airing his grievances and drinking vodka from the continent—a great deal more to his taste than the crude poison of local manufacture.
"You are right; it is shameful."
"I wonder you don't do something."
"Do something! What can we do? We rob them when we get the chance, but that doesn't make things easier. Besides, they are not so bad after all—the Pole and the Englishman. The Englishman taught my boy to cast accounts; he's now a clerk in the superintendent's office. And the Pole taught my girl to speak French; she's now maid to the governor's lady. It didn't cost me a kopeck: no, they're not a bad sort."
"Still, think of the injustice."
"Yes, the injustice; that's what makes my blood boil. I was a robber; I tell you straight what I was; and I killed a gorodovoi who interfered with me: that's what brought me here. But what's that to being a spy, and plotting against the Little Father's life? No, and if I had my rights——"
The drink was beginning to take effect; the posselentsy was becoming noisy.
"Yes, yes," interrupted Sowinski; "and I suppose if the Englishman were out of the way you would stand a chance of getting your old job—his job—again?"
"Perhaps—if I could bribe the governor's secretary. But what chance is there of that? His price is too high for me. And besides, the Englishman is not out of the way, nor likely to be."
"And yet it might be managed too. A determined man like you, with say a couple of hundred roubles to back you, might go far."
The Russian was not so much fuddled that he failed to understand the drift of the other's words.
"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Speak plainly," he added, bringing his huge fist down upon the table with a bang that made the Pole wince. "What is your game?—that's what I put to you. You haven't come here—a barin like you—just to see me, and listen to my grumbles; I know that. No, nor yet for love of anybody else; I'm an old bird, I am, and I see what I see, I do. If you want anything out of me, I won't say I sha'n't meet you if you make it worth my while; but you'll have to speak out, man to man, you know; beating about the bush is no good with an old bird like me, not a bit of it."
"Quite so, my friend, quite so. Indeed, that is my way: a clear understanding—nothing kept back on either side."
"Well then, speak out, can't you? What is it? What do you want me to do, and what will you pay me for it?"
"That's what I like—plain speaking. Well, it seems that the matter stands thus: here are two men between your present hard life—an atrocious life, an unendurable life, a life worse than a dog's—and an easy life, a life with little to do and any amount of time to do it. It's a strange thing, but these very two men are hated by the government. The officials don't want to do anything openly: you know their way; but if the two men were suddenly to disappear——you understand?—well, the government at Alexandrovsk wouldn't take it amiss. Of course, there would be a kind of enquiry—a formal matter; and that would be all. But the officials must not appear in it. There are reasons. That is why, as I was coming here to see about a contract for railway sleepers, the matter was mentioned to me—by a high personage, you understand. I have with me——" he corrected himself hastily—"that is to say, not here, but at the superintendent's, two hundred roubles—fifty for an immediate present when an understanding is come to, another fifty when the disappearance takes place; the rest if the disappearance is so complete that no traces of the two are found—say within a month. But of course I must know what becomes of them."
"Ah! That's the game, is it? And what's to be the story for Petersburg, eh?"
"That's an easy matter. We'll say they bought false passports—there's a manufactory of those useful documents not a hundred miles from Nikolaievsk—and smuggled themselves away in a herring boat. That'll wash, don't you think?"
"If it goes down as easy as this vodka it'll go down uncommon easy," said the man with a chuckle.
"And there's plenty more where that came from. Well, what do you say?"
"I can't do it alone. I shall want some one to help. You—" he looked critically at the Pole—"you ain't the man for such a job. I'll have to get a pal. Ten roubles, now—I suppose you won't object to pay that, supposing you don't want to lend a hand yourself?"
"That shall not stand in the way. I shall have to pay the money out of my own pocket," he added as by an artistic inspiration.
The man flashed a shrewd glance at his visitor; but though he said nothing on the point, he was apparently making a note of something in his mind.
"Well, you leave it to me, barm," he said. "When I take a job in hand, my motto's 'thorough', it is. And mind you: when I see you next, another bottle of this vodka: that won't ruin a barin with two hundred roubles at the superintendent's office and ten in his own pocket, eh?"
A few minutes later Sowinski left the hut and stumbled out into the darkness—down the hill, dotted with rude huts dimly discernible in the gloom, towards the little bay where half a dozen junks engaged in the herring fishery lay at anchor. The road was broken by ruts and pitfalls; unconsciously the Pole groped his way over or past them, busy with his thoughts, which were blacker than the night, hurrying him to a deeper pitfall dug by himself for his own undoing.