He
allowed them out on parole. He supplied them with clothing and money.
He forwarded them to Kamchatka on the first boat outward bound, the
_St. Peter and Paul_, with forty-three of a crew and ten cannon, which
had just come back from punishing American Indians for massacring the
Russians.
A year less two days from the night they had been whisked out of St.
Petersburg, the exiles reached their destination--the little log fort
or _ostrog_ of Bolcheresk, about twenty miles up from the sea on the
inner side of Kamchatka, one hundred and fifty miles overland from the
Pacific. The rowboat conducting the exiles up-stream met rafts of
workmen gliding down the current. Rafts and rowboat paused within
call. The raftsmen wanted news from Europe. Benyowsky answered that
exiles had no news. "Who are you?" an officer demanded bluntly.
Always and unconsciously playing the hero part of melodrama, Benyowsky
replied--"Once a soldier and a general, now a slave." Shouts of
laughter broke from the raftsmen. The enraged Pole was for leaping
overboard and thrashing them to a man for their mockery; but they
called out, "no offence had been meant": they, too, were exiles; their
laughter was welcome; they had suffered enough in Kamchatka to know
that when men must laugh or weep, better, much better, laugh! Even as
they {114} laughed came the tears.
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