Lost Face: Large Print

It was the end. Subienkow had travelled a long trail of bitterness and horror, homing like adove for the capitals of Europe, and here, farther away than ever, in Russian America, thetrail ceased. He sat in the snow, arms tied behind him, waiting the torture. He staredcuriously before him at a huge Cossack, prone in the snow, moaning in his pain. The menhad finished handling the giant and turned him over to the women. That they exceeded thefiendishness of the men, the man's cries attested.Subienkow looked on, and shuddered. He was not afraid to die. He had carried his life toolong in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsaw to Nulato, to shudder at meredying. But he objected to the torture. It offended his soul. And this offence, in turn, wasnot due to the mere pain he must endure, but to the sorry spectacle the pain would make ofhim. He knew that he would pray, and beg, and entreat, even as Big Ivan and the othersthat had gone before. This would not be nice. To pass out bravely and cleanly, with a smileand a jest-ah! that would have been the way. But to lose control, to have his soul upset bythe pangs of the flesh, to screech and gibber like an ape, to become the veriest beast-ah, that was what was so terrible.There had been no chance to escape. From the beginning, when he dreamed the fierydream of Poland's independence, he had become a puppet in the hands of Fate. From thebeginning, at Warsaw, at St. Petersburg, in the Siberian mines, in Kamtchatka, on the crazyboats of the fur-thieves, Fate had been driving him to this end. Without doubt, in thefoundations of the world was graved this end for him-for him, who was so fine andsensitive, whose nerves scarcely sheltered under his skin, who was a dreamer, and a poet, and an artist. Before he was dreamed of, it had been determined that the quivering bundleof sensitiveness that constituted him should be doomed to live in raw and howlingsavagery, and to die in this far land of night, in this dark place beyond the last boundaries ofthe world.He sighed. So that thing before him was Big Ivan-Big Ivan the giant, the man withoutnerves, the man of iron, the Cossack turned freebooter of the seas, who was as phlegmaticas an ox, with a nervous system so low that what was pain to ordinary men was scarcely atickle to him. Well, well, trust these Nulato Indians to find Big Ivan's nerves and trace themto the roots of his quivering soul. They were certainly doing it. It was inconceivable that aman could suffer so much and yet live. Big Ivan was paying for his low order ofnerves. Already he had lasted twice as long as any of the other