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Updated: May 20, 2025
Alexander Nevski is remembered as the hero of the Neva and of the North; yet even he was finally compelled to grovel at the feet of the barbarians. Novgorod alone had stood erect, had paid no tribute and offered no homage to the Khan. At last, when its destruction was at hand, thirty-six years after the invasion, Nevski had the heroism to submit to the inevitable. He advised a surrender.
But they must have processions.... Even the prostitutes had marched down the Nevski the other day demanding shorter hours. But of course I cannot remember all that he said. During the next few days I slowly pulled myself out of the misty dead world in which I had been lying. Pain came back to me, leaping upon me and then receding, finally, on the third day suddenly leaving me altogether.
I heard no cries nor calls only the ice seemed once and again to quiver as though some submerged creature was moving beneath it. That vast crowd on the Nevski seemed to be a dream. I was in a world that had fallen into decay and desolation, and I could smell rotting wood, and could fancy that frozen blades of grass were pressing up through the very pavement stones.
But the tough little bulldog of an Englishman was by no means dead, and when some three days later the ghost of what had been the Nevski steamed out of the bay of Tramoieu, he was already so far recovered from the terrible blow that had laid him low, but which had, nevertheless, failed to shatter his hard skull, as to be engaged in a confused but constant effort to remember.
It did not seem that his audience was greatly impressed. It was bewildered and dazed. But the fire leapt up behind him giving him a legendary splendour, and the whole picture was romantic and unreal like a gaudy painting on a coloured screen. We hurried through into the Nevski, and this we found nearly deserted.
The French windows, divided by columns of different coloured marble, terminated in perfect arches, studded with great lumps of uncut amethyst, turquoise matrix, and blocks of quartz in which dully gleamed the yellow of gold, reminding Jill somewhat of the outer decorations of a shop she had once seen in the Nevski Prospekt, the owner of which, dealing in objets d'arts, and precious bibelots of jade and sich, had quite successfully thought out the novel and expensive advertising method of plastering the front of his shop with chunks of the precious metal with which the bibelots were made.
I had expected to see him in uniform, like the thousand and one pictures which purport to represent him, instead of which I found a very ordinary-looking, bearded man, with deep-set eyes, a wan countenance, and rather lank hair. He was square-built, a trifle below the medium height, and a man whom, had you passed him in the Nevski, you might have taken for a Jew tailor or a small tradesman.
The excitement of the disturbances of the last two days provided an emotional background, not too thrilling to be painful, because, after all, these riots would, as usual, come to nothing, but it was pleasant to feel that the world was buzzing, and that without paying a penny one might see a real cinematograph show simply by walking down the Nevski.
She, apparently, had so far cleverly evaded them; if he could but lead them to her he would not mind so much his own apprehension. Her presence in the locality at the same time the Nevski had been in the harbor would fairly prove the correctness of his theory of Miss Dalrymple's whereabouts.
Maclean noted that already many of the Saigon's men carried swords and carbines. He watched the rest arm themselves with the Nevski sailors' discarded weapons as they marched their prisoners along the deck. His breast began to swell with pride. "Any casualties?" he demanded. "Two of ours have crossed over," replied Sievers, "and some of us are hurt a bit. But we can't grumble.
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