HOW PAUL FOUGHT THE TERROR AND MADE A FRIEND
As Kara slipped slowly out of its winter fetters, and the skies
brightened and the earth softened to the spring, typhus began at once
to make head again in the crowded prison.
With the very inadequate means at his disposal Pavlof fought it, day
and night and life by life; but in spite of his most strenuous
efforts the fever spread like a prairie fire. The conditions were
perfect. The harvest was ripe. Last year's sparks still smouldered
in the pallid forms of the grey-coated prisoners and needed little to
fan them into flame.
What one man could do almost single-handed, that Paul did. But he
was like a lone man on the prairie beating wildly at the flames with
his coat. He flung himself body and soul into the fight, without
thought of himself, without undue thought even of Hope, but not
without thought for her.
He insisted on Anna Roskova returning to his house to keep her
company while he was away, and he himself lived--not in the prison,
for that meant almost certain death--but as near to it as he could,
in the guard-house adjoining, where he could be at death's call at
any and every moment of the day and night.
The scourge grew with the heat. That year, when the cuckoo cried,
the desertions were on an unparalleled scale. The captives fled for
dear life as well as for dear freedom. And the guards almost winked
at their flight, for if they stopped it would only be to feed the
fever and to divert the attention of the doctor from sufferers of
more consequence.
Captain Sokolof, in charge of the political prisoners, had had a sore
wrestle with the fever the previous year. Pavlof had foretold
another certain outbreak in the spring, had advised him to apply for
leave and go home, had warned him urgently of the danger of stopping.
Sokolof accepted the advice, the warning, the danger, but he did not
go. Stopping might possibly mean risk to life. Going meant certain
loss of pay and position. As a soldier and a poor man he took the
risk for the sake of the position and the pay.
It was an essential part of the captain's duties to inspect the
prison kameras at regular intervals. The atmosphere of the kameras
was that of a newly-opened sewer. Nevertheless, since the
regulations called for inspection, Captain Sokolof inspected them and
met the fever again half way.
By midsummer half the Cossack guard was down, the rest went in mortal
fear, and Pavlof's star stood high. They looked to him as their only
possible saviour, and followed his instructions implicitly.
Harsh, hard, ignorant peasants most of them, with little feeling and
less intelligence, this insidious, creeping death struck panic into
them. It is doubtful what they would have stopped at doing if Paul
had so ordered. But he wisely restricted his measures so as to
offend as little as possible against their instincts of discipline,
and they never dreamt of obstructing or thwarting him.
In spite of all warnings, Captain Sokolof kept on his feet to the
very last moment, and was in and out of the kameras long after he
should have been lying quietly in a tent on the hillside.
But the most obstinate and determined of men must knock under when
typhus says the word, and there was no exemption for Sokolof.
The man's courage, which after all was perhaps quite as much dogged
obstinacy, appealed strongly to Paul, and he determined to save him
if salvation were in any way possible. He camped him out on the
hills unknown to himself, and set Hope Palma and Anna Roskova to
nurse him through the crisis.