" as the Russians say?

[Illustration: Mauritius Augustus, Count Benyowsky.]

Benyowsky, the Pole, jumped to the bait like a trout to the fly. If
"powder and hatchets and the help of God"--_and an exile crew_--could
capture wealth in the fur trade of western America, why not a break for
freedom?

They didn't scruple as to means, these men. Why should they? They had
been penned in festering dungeons, where the dead lay, corrupting the
air till living and dead became a diseased mass. They had been knouted
for differences of political opinion. They {110} had been whisked off
at midnight from St. Petersburg--mile after mile, week after week,
month after month, across the snows, with never a word of explanation,
knowing only from the jingle of many bells that other prisoners were in
the long procession. Now their hopes took fire from Hoffman's tales of
Russian plans for fur trade. The path of the trackless sea seems
always to lead to a boundless freedom.

In a word, before they had left Hoffman, they had bound themselves by
oath to try to seize a fur-trading ship to escape across the Pacific.
Stephanow, the common convict, was the one danger. He might play spy
and obtain freedom by betraying all. To prevent this, each man was
required to sign his name to an avowal of the conspirators' aim.
Hoffman was to follow as soon as he could. Meanwhile he kept the
documents, which were written in German; and Benyowsky, the Pole, was
elected chief.

The Cossack guards came sulkily back from their gambling bout. The
exiles were placed in elk-team sleds, and the remaining thousand miles
to the Pacific resumed. But the spree had left the soldiers with sore
heads. At the first camping place they were gambling again. On the
sixth day out luck turned so heavily against one soldier that he lost
his entire belongings to the captain of the troops, flew in a towering
rage, and called his officer some blackguard name. The officer
nonchalantly took over the {111} gains, swallowed the insult, and
commanded the other Cossacks to tie the fellow up and give him a
hundred lashes.

For a moment consternation reigned. There are some unwritten laws even
among the Cossacks. To play the equal, when there was money to win,
then act the despot when offended, was not according to the laws of
good fellows among Cossacks. Before the officer knew where he was, he
had been seized, bundled out of the tent, stripped naked and flogged on
th