free, and they set out.  Their vessel was a huge hulk which looked like a floating barn:  it was manned by twenty or thirty rowers, and to replenish his purse a little the fugitive took an oar.  The agent who had charge of the expedition required their passports:  among the number the irregularity of Piotrowski’s escaped notice.  The prayers and prostrations went on during the voyage, which lasted a fort-night.  One morning the early sunshine glittered on the gilded domes of Archangel:  the vessel soon touched the shore, and his passport was returned to him uninspected, with the small sum he had earned by rowing.

He had reached his goal; a thousand miles of deadly suffering and danger lay behind him; he was on the shores of the White Sea, with vessels of every nation lying at anchor ready to bear him away to freedom.  Yet he was careful not to commit himself by any imprudence or inconsistency.  He went with the pilgrims to their vast crowded lodging-house, and for several days joined in their visits to the different churches of Archangel; but when they embarked again for the holy island he stayed behind under the pretext of fatigue, but really to go unobserved to the harbor.  There lay the ships from every part of the world, with their flags floating from the masts.  Alas! alas! on every wharf a Russian sentinel mounted guard day and night, challenging every one who passed, and on the deck of each ship there was another.  In vain he risked the consequences of dropping his character of an ignorant Siberian peasant so far as to speak to a group of sailors, first in French and then in German; they understood neither:  the idlers on the quays began to gather round in idle curiosity, and he had to desist.  In vain, despite the icy coldness of the water, he tried swimming in the bay to approach some vessel for the chance of getting speech of the captain or crew unseen by the sentinel.  In vain he resorted to every device which desperation could suggest.  After three days he was forced to look the terrible truth in the face:  there was no escape possible from Archangel.

Baffled and hopeless, he turned his back on the town, not knowing where to go.  To retrace his steps would be madness.  He followed the shore of the White Sea to Onega, a natural direction for pilgrims returning from Solovetsk to take.  His lonely way lay through a land of swamp and sand, with a sparse growth of stunted pines; the midnight sun streamed across the silent stretches; the huge waves of the White Sea, lashed by a long storm, plunged foaming upon the desolate beach.  Days and nights of walking brought him to Onega:  there was no way of getting to sea from there, and after a short halt he resumed his journey southward along the banks of the river Onega, hardly knowing whither or wherefore he went.  The hardships of his existence at midsummer were fewer than at midwinter, but the dangers were greater:  the absence of a definite goal, of a distinct hope which had supported him before, unnerved him physically.