successor of the infamous Ivanoff who figures in the tale.

In the winter of 1900 there came to Sredni-Kolymsk one Serge
Kaleshnikoff, who, previous to his preliminary detention at the prison
of Kharkoff, had held a commission in the Russian Volunteer Fleet. For
alleged complicity with a revolutionary society known as the "Will of
the People"[43] Kaleshnikoff was sentenced to imprisonment for twelve
months in a European fortress, and subsequent banishment for eight years
to Siberia.

[Footnote 43: Russian: _Narodna-Volya_.]

Kaleshnikoff was a young man of about twenty-three years of age, whose
sympathetic nature and attractive manners soon rendered him a universal
favourite. Even the officials regarded him more as a friend than a
prisoner--with one exception. This was Ivanoff, the Chief of Police,
whose marked aversion to the young sailor was noticeable from the first
day the latter set foot in the settlement. But as Ivanoff was an
ignorant and surly boor, disliked even by his colleagues, Kaleshnikoff
endured his petty persecutions with comparative equanimity.

One day during the summer of 1901, while fishing from a canoe on the
Kolyma, Kaleshnikoff espied the barge of Ivanoff returning from
Nijni-Kolymsk, a settlement about three hundred miles down the river.
The exile, who was expecting a letter from a fellow "political"
domiciled at the latter place, paddled out into mid-stream and boarded
the barge, leaving his canoe to trail astern. Ivanoff, who met him at
the gangway, had been drinking heavily, as was his wont. His only answer
to Kaleshnikoff's polite inquiry was an oath, and a shameful epithet, to
which the other naturally replied with some warmth. An angry discussion
followed, with the result that the Chief of Police, now livid with rage,
summoned the guard. By Ivanoff's orders Kaleshnikoff was then bound hand
and foot, flogged with rope's ends into a state of insensibility, and
flung, bruised and bleeding, into his boat. The latter was then cast
adrift, and the police barge proceeded on her way up the river.

The incident occurred some miles below Sredni-Kolymsk. The next evening,
as Madame Boreisha and M. Ergin (both exiles, and the latter an intimate
friend of Kaleshnikoff) were strolling by the riverside, they met the
latter, who, weakened by exhaustion and loss of blood, had taken more
than twenty-four hours to return to the settlement. Ergin, shocked by
his friend's wild and blood-stained appearance,