CHAPTER XVII

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.