In this village dwelt the exiles, earning
their living by hunting or acting as servants for the officers of the
Cossacks.
Here, then, came Benyowsky and his companions, well received because of
forged letters sent on, but with no time to lose; for the first spring
packet overland might reveal their conspiracy. The raftsmen, who had
welcomed them, now turned hosts and housed the newcomers. The Pole was
assigned to an educated Russian, who had been eight years in exile.
"How can you stand it? Do you fear death too much to dare one blow for
liberty?" Benyowsky asked the other, as they sat over their tea that
first night.
{116} But a spy might ask the same question. The Russian evaded
answer, and a few hours later showed the Pole books of travel, among
which were maps of the Philippines, where twenty or thirty exiles might
go _if they had a leader_.
Leader? Benyowsky leaped to his feet with hands on pistol and cutlass
with which he had been armed that morning when Governor Nilow liberated
them to hunt on parole. Leader? Were they men? Was this settlement,
too, ready to rise if they had a leader?
No time to lose! Within a month, cautious as a man living over a
volcano, the Polish nobleman had enlisted twenty recruits from the
exile settlement, bound to secrecy by oath, and a score more from a
crew of sailor exiles back from America, mutinous over brutal treatment
by their captain.
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