was graved this end for him--for him, who was so fine and
sensitive, 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 bundle of sensitiveness that
constituted him should be doomed to live in raw and howling savagery, and
to die in this far land of night, in this dark place beyond the last
boundaries of the world.

He sighed. So that thing before him was Big Ivan--Big Ivan the giant,
the man without nerves, the man of iron, the Cossack turned freebooter of
the seas, who was as phlegmatic as an ox, with a nervous system so low
that what was pain to ordinary men was scarcely a tickle to him. Well,
well, trust these Nulato Indians to find Big Ivan's nerves and trace them
to the roots of his quivering soul. They were certainly doing it. It
was inconceivable that a man could suffer so much and yet live. Big Ivan
was paying for his low order of nerves. Already he had lasted twice as
long as any of the others.

Subienkow felt that he could not stand the Cossack's sufferings much
longer. Why didn't Ivan die? He would go mad if that screaming did not
cease. But when it did cease, his turn would come. And there was Yakaga
awaiting him, too, grinning at him even now in anticipation--Yakaga, whom
only last week he had kicked out of the fort, and upon whose face he had
laid the lash of his dog-whip. Yakaga would attend to him. Doubtlessly
Yakaga was saving for him more refined tortures, more exquisite nerve-
racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivan screamed.
The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter and clapping of
hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous thing that had been perpetrated, and
began to laugh hysterically. The Indians looked at him in wonderment
that he should laugh. But Subienkow could not stop.

This would never do. He controlled himself, the spasmodic twitchings
slowly dying away. He strove to think of other things, and began reading
back in his own life. He remembered his mother and his father, and the
little spotted pony, and the French tutor who had taught him dancing and
sneaked him an old worn copy of Voltaire. Once more he saw Paris, and
dreary London, and gay Vienna, and Rome. And once more he saw that wild
group of youths who had dreamed, even as he, the dream of an independent
Poland with a king of Poland on the throne at Warsaw. Ah, there it wa