A FEW moments after the train left Irkutsk I began to feel sick. I lay helpless on my cot, and melancholy thoughts passed through my mind. “O God! O God! when will all this come to end?” I asked aloud. When I heard my own voice it seemed to me that I was going mad. The pain I felt was so severe that I bit my lips in order not to cry aloud.

Suddenly my eyes fell on my traveling bag. I remembered that it contained drugs and other things which I, as a “Sister,” had to carry with me. With unsteady hands I opened the bag, and found a bottle of opium. I took several drops and lay down again. I must have fallen asleep soon after. When I opened my eyes the train guard was standing near my cot.

“Miss,” he said, “there is something the matter with a woman in the next car. Won’t you be so kind and take a look at her?”

Day was beginning to dawn, and sky and earth were shrouded in a bluish mist. At first I did not know where I was, but gradually my thoughts cleared. I felt my head, my hands, as I did not believe that I, the being who was to be immured in a remote Siberian prison for life, was now actually riding in this train, and absolutely free.

Springing up from my cot, I put my burning forehead to the wet window-pane. The thought came to me: I can open the window! And I repeated aloud: “I can open the window!” Rejoicing like a child, I hastily pulled up the window and thrust out my head. The cool morning air blew in my face.

The train was moving at great speed, and the very wheels seemed to grind out the words: “You-are-free! You-are-free!”

Peering into the bluish mist I saw a wide field covered with drops of golden dew. From afar came the singing of peasant women on their way to work in the field. All at once I recalled the words of the train guard. What about the woman? Picking up several drugs, such as peppermint drops and bromide, I went into the next car, which was of the third class.

The sight that greeted my eye there made me forget all the wonderful beauties of nature. Amid a multitude of dirty bundles of all sizes and descriptions, there sat and lay Russian peasants, men and women together. They had emigrated from European Russia and were going to their new homes, somewhere near Vladivostok. Most of them were fast asleep. In a corner a woman sat. She was swaying to and fro and moaning in a subdued voice.

“What is the matter with you, my dear?” I asked.

The woman stared at me with a far-away look and said nothing. Her expression frightened me.

“What _is_ the matter with you?” I repeated. But she was silent, and only looked at me with dull eyes. Then, upon observing her figure closely, I understood, and everything grew cold within me. Cold drops of perspiration stood out on my forehead. What shall I do? I asked myself. I went back into my car and examined the time-table. It was still about six hours to the nearest town. There was nothing for me to do but to take the woman to my compartment. I hastened back to her.

“Can you come with me?” I asked her.

She got up and leaned heavily on my arm. Then we slowly moved into my car. Before I left the Irkutsk prison, I had learned to assist women in child-birth. The prison nurse lived far away in the city and as the women-prisoners in most cases gave birth to their children at night, the child was generally born before the nurse could be summoned. Willy-nilly, we had to become practical midwives. There I was not alone; there were other women there who knew far more about it than I did, but here all the responsibility for the life of the unfortunate woman and her unborn child rested on me.

The groans of the woman made my heart bleed, and I felt as if I were committing some heinous crime. I tried my utmost to remain outwardly calm, to encourage the patient. I undressed her and, in the absence of warm water, washed her with alcohol and put her on the cot.

“Have you had any children?” I asked her, when the paroxysm of pain subsided.

“Four,” she replied. I felt relieved, as I knew it would then be easier for her.

“And who attended you in all those cases?”

She smiled feebly and answered:

“Dear Miss, it is very simple with us peasants. We give birth whichever way it pleases God.”

In my bag I found cotton, gauze, obstetric scissors and thread. I knew theoretically all that had to be done in such cases, but would I be able to apply my knowledge satisfactorily? And what if everything might not go well? These questions greatly worried me. I kissed the woman and patted her, but she shrieked more and more frequently. Suddenly she uttered a terrible cry. If I could only pray, I thought. If I had only believed, as in my childhood, that God would hear me, I would have fallen on my knees and implored Him to help me now.

The cries of the woman continued to grow louder and louder, and her voice did not seem human. And then something happened. I don’t know how it came about. My brain began to think clearly only when I heard the feeble squeak of the infant. The mother quieted down, and began to cross herself.

Soon we arrived at the station, and summoned a cab. I held the newly-born baby, wrapped in my underclothing. It was suddenly hard for me to part with that child. An unfamiliar feeling had awakened in my heart. Never before had I thought of a mother’s feelings. I hardly slept the following night, and whenever I dozed off, I heard the cries of the woman and the whole picture of the birth passed through my memory. It made me forget my position for awhile.

On the next day at four o’clock we arrived at the station Manchuria, on the Manchurian frontier. I went to the appointed place and met there my friend, a young woman. She had come earlier and was waiting for me. I returned to her the passport, which she was to deliver to its owner, and narrated all that had happened to me on the road. She was greatly amused and laughed heartily.

We bade each other good-by, and I went to the lodging which had been prepared for me. In that little town I had to wait for my comrade who was to help me cross the border into Manchuria. He had to get a passport and money. I stopped at the house of a Polish woman, who knew nothing about me. My friends had invented a very romantic story for her benefit, telling her I had run away because I wanted to marry a man of whom my parents did not approve. She sympathized with all such cases, because she herself had run away from home and secretly married her present husband. She held whispered conversations with me, offering advice as to how best to have the ceremony performed and where to go afterwards.

“Are you quite sure that your fiancé will come?” she asked me on the second day.

“Oh, yes,” I assured her.

At last my comrade came, and we began to lay our plans. It is very difficult to get across the border, and our task was not a light one. When a train arrives at the frontier station the gendarmes lock all the cars and examine the passports. I had reason to fear such an examination, as among the gendarmes there might be disguised spies who knew me. Moreover, the passport procured by my comrade was a forged one. He had not succeeded in getting a suitable document.

It was necessary to invent some scheme whereby we could lessen the risk of being recognized. The Polish woman with whom we were stopping helped us. She went to the railroad station and reserved for us a first-class coupé. I and my comrade dressed up as though for a wedding. My face was covered with a white veil which reached far down my back, and my dress had a long train. This costume made me look much taller and slimmer than I really was. Two splendid carriages came to take us to the station. In one I sat with my comrade, and in the other the Polish woman with her husband.

At the station the porters cleared the way for us with a show of great respect, and in a few seconds we were seated in our coupé. But the main difficulty was yet to be overcome. There remained about fifteen minutes before starting. We heard the noise of closing doors and the clinking of spurs. My heart began to beat violently, and I thought: What if I should be recognized! My comrade would pay dearly for his effort to help me. He, too, had run away from his place of exile, and for his escape he would have been sentenced to four years of hard labor. The fact that he would have been caught in my company would aggravate his offense. This man had known me in Odessa, when I was only seventeen. He, as is not unusual among revolutionists in Russia, sacrificed a great deal for me. He gave up a lucrative position with a gold-mining concern in Siberia, which he did not expect to get back, and left his wife whom he dearly loved. She, too, had known me in Odessa, and gladly consented to let her husband accompany me on this dangerous journey.

My comrade held in his hand the necessary documents—the passport, certificates of birth, and the certificate of marriage, all forged by himself a few hours before. I stood with my face to the window and my back to the door. There came a knock, and the door opened. An officer of the frontier guards entered, accompanied by several gendarmes. My comrade answered in a calm voice all the questions put to him by the officer.

“We are on our honeymoon trip to Japan, and expect to be back in three months,” I heard him say.

The officer turned the bundle of documents in his hands, evidently not knowing what to examine first. The time was limited. Casting a hasty glance around our coupé they went out, without having examined a single document. When the door closed after them, I looked gratefully at my comrade, and he shook my hands with great feeling. A few minutes later the train started.

After thirty-six hours of travel we arrived at Kharbin. I was not well enough to continue our journey without a rest. My health was growing worse and worse, as the result of my early start after the operation. Having rested two days in that city, we went to Dairen, formerly the Russian city of Dalny. I did not have sufficient funds to go on to Europe, and we waited three weeks in Dairen, until we received money from Russia.

In those three weeks my health improved remarkably. Manchurian scenery greatly impressed me with the splendor of its wonderful colors. For days I sat on the shore of the Yellow Sea enjoying the sight of the sparkling waters. When the air was hot I bathed in the sea, and every touch of the mighty waves added vigor to my regenerated body. In those wonderful days, when the sun of the Orient warmed me with its soft rays, I thought there could not be a being happier than myself. I was free, free from so many chains. And it seemed to me that the stormy sea alone had it in its power to penetrate into the depths of my soul and heal all my bleeding wounds. Only at the sea I found absolute peace. Never before had I felt so much love. There was no hatred in my heart: I loved each and all. The feeling of love was stronger than myself. I couldn’t understand what was going on within me. In sheer paroxysms of delight I would throw myself on the ground, which was covered with soft grass. My body trembled from the contact with the soil. In those moments I forgot everything, and through my memory passed the pictures of my native hills and fields, in the midst of which I was born and raised.

THE PRISON YARD AND GATE ]

We received the money we were expecting, and decided to go to Shanghai, China, where I could get a steamer direct to Europe. At eleven o’clock in the morning of a sunny day we sailed from Dairen on a Japanese steamer. Soon the strains of a march reached our ears. It was the call for lunch. When I, with my companion, came to the dining-room all the passengers already were at the table. Directly opposite me sat an old woman who tried to explain something in German to a Chinese waiter. I do not know until now in what way she resembled my mother, but as soon as my eyes fell on her gray hair I had a vivid recollection of my mother. I felt happy when, during the meal, I could guess her wishes and satisfy them. “My mother is just as old and just as gray, perhaps,” I thought, looking at the old woman, and my heart filled with love for the stranger.

Without finishing her lunch she retired to her cabin, as the steamer was beginning to rock quite perceptibly and she felt sick. In the afternoon the sea became stormy. Big waves rolled so high that our little steamer at times disappeared in the foam. It grew dark, and almost all the passengers went to their cabins. I was not sea-sick, and seeing the sufferings of my comrade and others I greatly pitied them. I remembered the old woman, and asked a Chinese steward to take me to her. She was in bed and suffering intensely. She wept like a child and prayed to God to take her to Heaven. I knelt near her bed and held her head in my hands. I don’t know how long I remained in that posture. The voice of my comrade roused me from my stupor.

“Where in Heaven are you, Marie?” he called to me in dissatisfied tones. “Go to your room. You will fall ill yourself. Don’t forget your own situation.”

I obeyed, but returned in ten minutes and directed them to put a cot for me in the woman’s room. I stayed with her the whole night. In the morning the sea quieted down and she felt better. She looked at me with a very grateful expression in her eyes, and asked who I was and where I was going. I told her that I was traveling with my husband after our marriage.

When the steamer neared Shanghai, the woman found me and said:

“You have been like a daughter to me, and I want to be of service to you. I live in a fine, large house, and would be very glad to have you and your husband stop with me.”

I mentioned something about a hotel.

“Why go to a hotel?” she interrupted. “That will cost you a lot of money. If you don’t want to stop with me because I will not accept money from you, you may pay me.”

I agreed, disregarding the protests of my comrade. I could see nothing suspicious in her inviting me to her house. On the way there we found that a German steamer would be in Shanghai two weeks later, and we really could not spare much money for hotel accommodations.

The room in which we were put up was on the same floor with the woman’s own apartment. Only a small hall-room separated us. To one side of the door stood a bed and to the other a table. A couch, on which my noble and unselfish companion was to spend the night, stood in a corner. We hung up our things on the door, and on the table we put my hand-bag containing my diary and some money, my comrade’s watch and some other articles. The door was locked.

In the morning when my comrade got up he found that all our things had disappeared. The door as well as the window remained locked. How was the theft to be explained? There could be no doubt that our things were stolen by some one of the household. I was in great fear lest my identity should be discovered from my diary. We knew that while in Shanghai we were not safe, as the Chinese police could deliver us into the hands of the Russian Consul the moment our presence in Shanghai was discovered.

I dressed immediately and summoned the woman to my room. My comrade questioned her about the mysterious theft in her house.

“You are inventing it!” she fairly shouted at him. “There could be no such thing as a theft in my house. I know who you are and what your business is,” she shrieked in angry tones.

My comrade grew pale. Before I could realize it, he had grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her out of the room. She fell heavily on the threshold. I placed myself between them and begged my comrade to calm himself. The woman lay on the floor yelling and cursing him in most violent language. She threatened to go to the Russian Consul and denounce him as a “white slaver.” My comrade was a powerful man and of a very excitable temper, and I saw that if the woman did not leave immediately, he could choke her to death. I dragged her away from the threshold and closed the door.

“I shall come to you presently,” I tried to quiet her. “For God’s sake, don’t go to the Consul.”

“Well, we got in here mighty bad,” remarked my comrade to me when I returned to our room. “And we must get out of this hole without losing a moment’s time.”

“What if the woman should report us to the Consul and we should be arrested?” I asked myself. I had not the slightest idea what she meant when she shouted to my comrade that he was a “white slaver.” My mind was busy with the thought of how to regain possession of my diary which was a direct proof of my identity. I decided to talk it over with the woman myself.

Without saying anything to my comrade of my intention I went to her. She evidently was waiting for me. She led me through many rooms, and finally we came to a luxuriously furnished drawing-room. She locked the door and put the key in her pocket.

“Well, dearie,” she began in a very soft voice, “you must remain with me. You needn’t go where he sends you. You will be getting much more money here.”

These dreadful words frightened me.

“You are greatly mistaken in what you think of me,” I said. “I am an honest girl, and nobody sends me anywhere.”

“Don’t deny it,” she insisted. “I can see that in your eyes. You —” she began to speak very warmly— “you yourself don’t understand your charms. You are a real treasure, and I will give you all the money you may wish. You will live here like a queen. You see, all this will be yours.”

She opened a wardrobe and began to pile on the floor expensive dresses of different colors and design. She looked at me so queerly that I began to tremble. I felt as if she were undressing me.

“Still better, if you are an honest girl. I watched you, and I know that you are honest, and the better it will be for you; the more money you will get.”

How shall I escape from here? I asked myself. Will I be able to take the key from her by force, or shall I break the window and jump from the second story? Or would it be better, perhaps, to cry out so that my comrade can hear me? I hesitated, not knowing what means of escape to choose.

At last a happy idea struck me. I took out all the money I kept in my corsage. There must have been about four hundred rubles. “Look here,” I said, “all this money will be yours.”

Her eyes began to sparkle.

“I swear to you,” I continued, “that before you will have a chance to sell my body, I shall kill myself. You are an old, gray-haired woman, and you have lived a great many years in this world. Is it possible that you can’t tell me from those unfortunate women with whom you have had to deal? Give me back my papers. I know that they are of no value to you, but to me they are everything. And let me out of your house.”

The woman stood silent, but her face showed signs of hesitation.

“I can’t report you to the Consul,” I went on, “because I am a ‘political’ and have no real passport. Consequently you do not risk anything by letting me go.”

“Give me the money,” said the woman without looking at me.

“Give me first my papers. I don’t trust you,” I ventured.

She unlocked the door, and we went into the same room where I had found her. She returned to me my bag with all the papers in it intact, and I gave her all the money I had with me.

My comrade was beginning to feel uneasy at my long absence. He was pacing up and down the room when I opened the door. I entered and, without saying a word, showed him my diary. He felt greatly relieved. We hastily packed our things and went to the railroad station. There we changed our cab and drove to a hotel in another part of the city.

After four weeks of anxious waiting we succeeded at last in getting some more money from Russia, but not sufficient to pay for second cabin passage, and I had to travel in the steerage.

The impressions of those four weeks in China are still fresh in my memory. I have seen and experienced all sorts of misery in my life, I have suffered much want and privation, but what I saw there was worse than anything I could imagine. It is not enough to say that the Chinese live in poverty. To understand the awful conditions of their life, one must see them with one’s own eyes. I used to go to the market and see what food a Chinese woman buys for a family of five or six for a whole day’s supply. A little rice, a few nuts, and a couple of tomatoes, that’s all. For all this she spends three cents.

Their houses are not any better than dog-kennels in Russia. There are hundreds of families who live on floats, where they work and sleep, and where their children are born and raised. Nowhere else have I seen so many beggars. On some streets they sit in companies of a dozen and more. Labor in China is terribly underpaid. For a whole day’s work a Chinese laborer sometimes receives four cents; a jinrikisha-man drives you the greatest distance for five cents; and he runs faster than a horse. The Chinese go about almost naked, and the only thing they work for all their lives is a piece of bread, of which they never have enough. And yet the load that a Chinaman can carry on his back is beyond description. The hotel in which I stopped was located near the port, and day and night I could hear the heart-rending groans, called singing, with which the “longshoremen” enliven their task. Prostitution is practised without restraint in China, and women are traded like horses.

I was glad to leave that country. Having bid good-by to my comrade, I sailed on a German steamer bound for Genoa. As I spoke nothing but Russian—but understood a little German—all the steerage passengers, most of whom were Germans, were greatly mystified by my silence. “Who is this girl with the pale face and sparkling eyes who looks all day at the sea?” they used to ask the stewards and one another. And every one of them stared insolently at me. Oh, how I hated them for their curious stares! But whenever they forgot about my presence, I remained alone with the sea and listened to the wonderful music of the waves. For days and days I sat looking on the water, and only then I realized that I was free, that my freedom was a living reality, not a dream.

But as soon as I _felt_ that I was free, the old wounds re-opened in my heart. Memories of the past, day after day and year after year, rose in my mind and whispered to me: “There can be no freedom for you after all that you have gone through, after all that you _know_. There can be no freedom for you when all your best and dearest friends have remained in the world of shadows and stone walls, in the world of torture and humiliation. There can be no freedom for you!”

A sudden change came over everything. The melodious music of the calm waves turned into a storm, it grew dark, and our gigantic steamer was thrown about like a shell by the storming seas.

“Go back, go back there whence you came!” roared the sea. “Your life no more belongs to you. You have saved yourself not for your own sake. You must either free them all, or be with them....”

I ran about the deck. My face burned. Where am I going, and why? I asked myself.

The sea and skies became red like the blood of my martyred comrades. The music in my heart ceased, and the thought of my freedom no longer agitated me. The decision to go back to them and continue that for which they perished was slowly forming in my mind. And all through the rest of the journey it was uppermost in my thoughts. The jungles of India, the Red Sea, the green coasts of Africa and the bare desert of Arabia, the Suez Canal, and the beautiful skies of Italy—all those wonders of nature did not for a minute change my resolution, did not weaken my desire to go back and throw myself again into the unequal struggle.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

▪ Printers’ errors, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ▪ Variations in hyphenation have been preserved. ▪ For the reader’s convenience, a Table of Contents has been added and is granted to the public domain. ▪ Page numbers in the List of Illustrations reflect the position of the illustration in the original text, but links point to the current position of the illustrations. ▪ Pg. 3: Removed duplicate half-title.