t
stake he will send the fleet into the Baltic, and neither your ships
nor your forts will prevent his orders to blow Cronstadt down about
your blooming ears being carried out. I know where your torpedoes and
mines are, and Disraeli has confidence in me showing them the road to
victory. The British Lion never draws back!"

The Russian deal-yard man, to whom this harangue was particularly
directed, went to the Governor on landing, and stated what the rough,
weather-beaten old sailor had been saying. The Governor communicated
with the authorities at St. Petersburg, and an order came to have the
old Englishman banished from Cronstadt and Russia for ever within
twenty-four hours. The poor creature had made a home for himself in
Cronstadt, his wife and four children being with him. The blow was so
sharp and unexpected, it stupefied him. His first thought was his
family, but there was little or no time for thought or preparation. He
had either to be got away or concealed. A liberal distribution of
roubles at the instigation of many sympathizers made it possible for
him to be put aboard an English steamer, and a week after his
banishment was supposed to have taken effect he sailed from Cronstadt,
a ruined and broken-hearted man. The old sailor's grief for the harm
his wayward conduct had done to his wife and family was quite
pathetic, and so far as kindness could appease the mental anguish he
was having to endure it was ungrudgingly extended to him, and when he
left Cronstadt he left behind him a host of sympathizers who regarded
the punishment as odious.

The fact of any public official listening to a miscreant who told the
story of a stevedores' row, to which he himself had been a party, and
seriously believing that the threats, however extravagant and
bellicose, of a verbose old sailor could be a national danger, is, on
the face of it, so ludicrous that the English reader may easily doubt
the accuracy of such an incident; and yet it is true.

* * * * *

In other days I used occasionally to meet members of the Russian
revolutionary party at my brother's home in London. They were all men
and women of education and refinement. The first time I met them the
late Robert Louis Stevenson (who generally used the window as a means
of exit instead of the door), William Henley, George Collins (editor
of the _Schoolmaster_), and, I think, Mr. Wright (author of _the
Journeyman Engineer_) were there. T