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Updated: May 4, 2025
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.
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.
"I will give you your life," Makamuk made answer through the interpreter. Subienkow laughed scornfully. "And you shall be a slave in my house until you die." The Pole laughed more scornfully. "Untie my hands and feet and let us talk," he said. The chief made the sign; and when he was loosed Subienkow rolled a cigarette and lighted it. "This is foolish talk," said Makamuk.
Subienkow looked about him at the circle of savage faces that somehow seemed to symbolize the wall of savagery that had hemmed him about ever since the Czar's police had first arrested him in Warsaw. "Take your axe, Makamuk, and stand so. I shall lie down. When I raise my hand, strike, and strike with all your might. And be careful that no one stands behind you.
It was the end. Subienkow had travelled a long trail of bitterness and horror, homing like a dove for the capitals of Europe, and here, farther away than ever, in Russian America, the trail ceased. He sat in the snow, arms tied behind him, waiting the torture. He stared curiously before him at a huge Cossack, prone in the snow, moaning in his pain.
Subienkow glanced over her critically. "She will make a good wife, and it is an honour worthy of my medicine to be married to your blood." Again he remembered the singer and dancer and hummed aloud a song she had taught him. He lived the old life over, but in a detached, impersonal sort of way, looking at the memory-pictures of his own life as if they were pictures in a book of anybody's life.
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