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“Specially were we safe in that we had chosen to go to the north. Had we fled to the east, we should have been pursued by swift horses; to the west, the telegraph would have stopped us; to the south, the Altai and Himalaya, to say nothing of three thousand miles, barred our way. But no escape had ever been made to the north, and, so far as we knew, no attempt.

“One evening, while I was rowing, bending a back far too weary to be conscious of any additional fatigue, Leof, who happened to be resting, cried out suddenly, ‘The Arctic Ocean!’ And there, blue and clear, through the narrow entrance of a channel half-filled with drift-ice, lay the mysterious ocean of which we had thought so long. The wind had been due from the north, and therefore in our teeth, so that not till now had we had any chance of sailing. Now, however, we rigged a sail, and, passing over the bar, we felt for the first time the lift of the waves of the Polar Sea.

“Day by day we held on to the eastward, coasting along almost within hail of the lonely shore. Often the ice threatened to close in upon us. Sometimes the growling of the pack churned and crackled only a quarter of a mile out. One night as we lay asleep–it was my watch, but in that great silence I too had fallen asleep–Big Peter waked first, and in his strong emphatic fashion he rose to take the oars. But there before us were three boats’ crews within half a mile, all rowing toward us, while a mile out from shore, near the edge of the pack, lay a steamer, blowing off steam through her escape-valves, as though at the end of her day’s run.

“As we woke our first thought was, ‘Lost!’ For we had no expectation that any other vessel save a Russian cruiser could be in these waters. But out from the sternsheets of the leading cutter fluttered the blessed Stars and Stripes. My companions did not know all the happiness that was included in the sight of that ensign. Leof had reached for his case-knife to take his life, and I snatched it from him ere I told him that of all peoples the Americans would never give us up.

“We were taken on board the U.S. search-vessel Concord, commissioned to seek for the records of the lost American Polar expedition. There we were treated as princes, or as American citizens, which apparently means the same thing. That is all my yarn. The Czar’s arm is long, but it does not reach either London or New York.”

“And Leof and Big Peter?” I asked, as Constantine ceased speaking. As though with an effort, he recalled himself.

“Big Peter,” he said, “is at St. Louis. He is in the pork trade, is married, and has a large family.”

“And Leof?”

“Ah, Leof! he went back to Russia at the time of the former Czar’s death, and has not been heard of since.”

“And you, Constantine, you will never put your nose in the lion’s den again– you will never go back to Russia?”

Almost for the first time throughout the long story, Constantine looked me fixedly in the eyes. The strange light of another world, of the fatalist East, looked plainly out of his eyes. Every Russian carries a terrible possibility about with him like a torch of tragic flame, ready to be lighted at any moment.

“That is as may be,” he said very slowly; “it is possible that I may go back–at the time of other deaths, and–also–not–return–any–more.”