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, inRussian America, the trail ceased. He sat in the snow, arms tied behind him, waitingthe torture. He stared curiously before him at a huge Cossack, prone in the snow, moaning in his pain. The men had finished handling the giant and turned him overto the women. That they exceeded the fiendishness of the men, the man's criesattested.Subienkow looked on, and shuddered. He was not afraid to die. He had carried hislife too long in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsaw to Nulato, to shudder atmere dying. But he objected to the torture. It offended his soul. And this offence, inturn, was not due to the mere pain he must endure, but to the sorry spectacle thepain would make of him. He knew that he would pray, and beg, and entreat, even asBig Ivan and the others that had gone before. This would not be nice. To pass outbravely and cleanly, with a smile and a jest-ah! that would have been the way. Butto lose control, to have his soul upset by the pangs of the flesh, to screech andgibber like an ape, to become the veriest beast-ah, that was what was so terrible.There had been no chance to escape. From the beginning, when he dreamed thefiery dream of Poland's independence, he had become a puppet in the hands ofFate. From the beginning, at Warsaw, at St. Petersburg, in the Siberian mines, inKamtchatka, on the crazy boats of the fur-thieves, Fate had been driving him to thisend. Without doubt, in the foundations of the world was graved this end for him-for him, who was so fine and sensitive, whose nerves scarcely sheltered under hisskin, who was a dreamer, and a poet, and an artist. Before he was dreamed of, it hadbeen determined that the quivering bundle of sensitiveness that constituted himshould be doomed to live in raw and howling savagery, and to die in this far land ofnight, in this dark place beyond the last boundaries of the world.He sighed. So that thing before him was Big Ivan-Big Ivan the giant, the manwithout nerves, the man of iron, the Cossack turned freebooter of the seas, whowas as phlegmatic as an ox, with a nervous system so low that what was pain toordinary men was scarcely a tickle to him. Well, well, trust these Nulato Indians tofind Big Ivan's nerves and trace them to the roots of his quivering soul. They werecertainly 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 longas any of the others.4Subienkow felt that he could not stand the Cossack's sufferings much longer. Whydidn't Ivan die? He would go mad if that screaming did not cease. But when it didcease, his turn would come. And there was Yakaga awaiting him, too, grinning athim even now in anticipation-Yakaga, whom only last week he had kicked out ofthe fort, and upon whose face he had laid the lash of his dog-whip. Yakaga wouldattend to him. Doubtlessly Yakaga was saving for him more refined tortures, moreexquisite nerve-racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivanscreamed. The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter and clappingof hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous thing that had been perpetrated, andbegan to laugh hysterically. The Indians looked at him in wonderment that heshould laugh. But Subienkow could not sto