The Early Ayn Rand

"Yes, sir, Comrade Chief, the Lord bless you, yes, sir..." the peasant muttered, bowing.

He was still bowing when the sleigh flashed out of his yard in a cloud of snow.

------VII------

At midnight, the head of the guards sneaked noiselessly to the door of the pit. He listened cautiously; he heard no sound in the monastery. He pulled the trapdoor open and called down, raising his lantern over the pit:

"Are you there, Grisha?"

"Is it..." came from far below, in a gust of coughing,"... you, Makar?"

"It is. Wanted to know how you were getting along, pal."

At the bottom of a deep well with icicles sparkling in the crevices of its stone walls,

Comrade Fedossitch huddled in the straw, his thin fingers at his throat, his eyes like two black puddles in his livid face. He hissed, a growl that ended in a moan:

"It took you long enough to get curious."

"His orders. Said not to come near you."

"Seen him around in the last few hours?"

"No."

"Let me out!"

"Are you in your right mind, Grisha? Against his orders?"

"You blind fool! See if you can find him. Or the woman. Or the motorboat."

"Lord help us, Grisha! Do you think..."

"Hurry! Go and see! Then let me out!"

Comrade Fedossitch laughed when Makar came running back, blubbering crazily, incredulously:

"He's gone! He's gone! They're gone! The boat's gone!"

"I'm the head of this island, now," said Comrade Fedossitch, his teeth chattering, when the rope jerked him out of the pit. "And it's my boot into the teeth of the first one who doesn't obey orders!"

"Bring Citizen Volkontzev here!" was the first order.

Makar departed obediently and returned wide-eyed, reporting that Citizen Volkontzev had gone, too.

"Well," laughed Comrade Fedossitch, "the Comrade Commandant was a bigger fool than I thought."

Up the old tower stairs to the wireless room Comrade Fedossitch ran, stumbling, stopping to cough, shadows dancing crazily around the shaking lantern in his hand. Makar followed, bewildered. Comrade Fedossitch's boot kicked the door open. The light of the lantern shuddered in a red circle over the crushed remains of the wireless set.

"I'll get him," Comrade Fedossitch choked. "I'll get him! That great red hero! That arrogant Beast!"

Then he raised his lantern, and waved it triumphantly, and yelled, pointing to a dark object in a corner:

"The spotlight, Makar! The spotlight! We'll signal the coast! We'll get him! Connect it and bring it up! To the bell tower!"

Comrade Fedossitch's woolen scarf slapped him furiously in the face when he emerged upon the platform of the bell tower. He threw himself forward against the wind, as if pushing aside an unseen, gigantic hand that tried to hurl him back down the stairs; his long shadow leaped dizzily over the parapet and into space.

He put his lantern down and seized the rope of the bells. It burned his bare hand. He tore the scarf off his neck and wound it around his fingers. Then he pulled the rope.

In clear weather the bells could be heard on the mainland. The sky was clear. The wind was blowing towards the coast.

The bells gave a long, moaning cry. Frozen snow showered Comrade Fedossitch's shoulders. A shudder ran through the old monastery, from the tower down to the pit.

The bells roared in agony, the brass ringing in long, clamorous sobs. Furious blows hammered like a huge metal whip, and the droning thunder rose heavily, floating slowly away, high over the sea.

Comrade Fedossitch swung the rope ferociously. He dropped his scarf. He did not feel his bare hands freezing to the rope. He laughed deliriously, coughing. He ran across the platform and swung back, his legs and arms twisted around the rope, flying, swaying over the tower like a monstrous pendulum.

Makar came up the stairs with the spotlight, dragging, like a snake rustling against the steps, a long wire that connected it with a dynamo in the room below. He stood still, terrified. Comrade Fedossitch yelled, swinging, twisting the rope:

"They've got to hear! They've got to hear!"

Across the sea, at the coast guard station, the moving searchlight stopped suddenly.

"Do you hear?" asked a soldier who wore a peaked khaki cap with a red star.

"Funny," said his assistant. "Sounds like a bell."

"Can't be coming from anywhere but hell, perhaps."

"It's from Strastnoy Island."

And as they stood, listening, peering into the darkness, a bright tongue of light flashed far out on the horizon, like a lance slashing the black sky, and the wound quickly closed again.

"Trouble," said the soldier in the peaked cap...