We descended to the water under cover of the tumbledown villa and the bushes. The stream was about twenty paces wide at this point. Along both banks there was an edging of ice. I looked across at the opposite side. It was open meadow, but the trees loomed darkly a hundred paces away on either hand in the background. On the left I could just see the cottage of the Red patrol against which the Finns had warned me.
The cadaverous man took up his station at a slight break in the thickets. A moment later he returned and announced that all was well. “Remember,” he enjoined me once more in an undertone, “run slightly to the left, but—keep an eye on that cottage.” He made a sign to the other two and from the bushes they dragged out a boat. Working noiselessly they attached a long rope to the stern and laid a pole in it. Then they slid it down the bank into the water.
“Get into the boat,” whispered the leader, “and push yourself across with the pole. And good luck!”
I shook hands with my companions, pulled at my little bottle of whisky, and got into the boat. I started pushing, but with the rope trailing behind it was no easy task to punt the little bark straight across the running stream. I was sure I should be heard, and had amidstream the sort of feeling I should imagine a man has as he walks his last walk to the gallows. At length I was at the farther side, but it was impossible to hold the boat steady while I landed. In jumping ashore I crashed through the thin layer of ice. I scrambled out and up the bank. And the boat was hastily pulled back to Finland behind me.
“Run hard!” I heard a low call from over the water.
Damn it, the noise of my splash had reached the Red patrol! I was already running hard when I saw a light emerge from the cottage on the left. I forgot the injunctions as to direction and simply bolted away from that lantern. Halfway across the sloping meadow I dropped and lay still. The light moved rapidly along the river bank. There was shouting, and then suddenly shots, but there was no reply from the Finnish side. Then the light began to move slowly back towards the cottage of the Red patrol, and finally all was silent again.
I lay motionless for some time, then rose and proceeded cautiously. Having missed the right direction I found I had to negotiate another small stream that ran obliquely down the slope of the meadow. Being already wet I did not suffer by wading through it. Then I reached some garden fences over which I climbed and found myself in the road.
Convincing myself that the road was deserted, I crossed it and came out on to the moors where I found a half-built house. Here I sat down to await the dawn—blessing the man who invented whisky, for I was very cold. It began to snow, and half-frozen I got up to walk about and study the locality as well as I could in the dark. At the crossroads near the station I discovered some soldiers sitting round a bivouac fire, so I retreated quickly to my half-built house and waited till it was light. Then I approached the station with other passengers. At the gate a soldier was examining passports. I was not a little nervous when showing mine for the first time, but the examination was a very cursory one. The soldier seemed only to be assuring himself the paper had a proper seal. He passed me through and I went to the ticket office and demanded a ticket.
“One first class to Petrograd,” I said, boldly.
“There is no first class by this train, only second and third.”
“No first? Then give me a second.” I had asked the Finns what class I ought to travel, expecting them to say, third. But they replied, “First, of course,” for it would be strange to see an employee of the Extraordinary Commission travelling other than first class. Third class was for workers and peasants.
The journey to Petrograd was about twenty-five miles, and stopping at every station the train took nearly two hours. As we approached the city the coaches filled up until people were standing in the aisles and on the platforms. There was a crush on the Finland Station at which we arrived. The examination of papers was again merely cursory. I pushed out with the throng, and looking around me on the dirty, rubbish-strewn station I felt a curious mixture of relief and apprehension. A flood of strange thoughts and recollections rushed through my mind. I saw my whole life in a new and hitherto undreamt-of perspective. Days of wandering Europe, student days in Russia, life amongst the Russian peasantry, and three years of apparently aimless war work all at once assumed symmetrical proportions and appeared like the sides of a prism leading to a common apex at which I stood. Yes, my life, I suddenly realized, had had an aim—it was to stand here on the threshold of the city that was my home, homeless, helpless, and friendless, one of the common crowd. That was it—one of the common crowd! I wanted not the theories of theorists, nor the doctrines of doctrinaires, but to see what the greatest social experiment the world has ever witnessed did for the common crowd. And, strangely buoyant, I stepped lightly out of the station into the familiar streets.
II
Five Days
One of the first things that caught my eye as I emerged from
