Still, I had been accustomed to hardships of that kind
before now, in the frozen North. At last the gentle roar of the
waterfall ceased, and I realized my cell was emptying itself. When I
reached my shelf again, I stretched my limbs back and forth as
strenuously as I could, and as silently, for I wished no sound to give
any hint that I was still alive, if, indeed, sound could penetrate to
the passage, which is unlikely. Even before the last of the water had
run away from the cell, I lay stretched out at full length on the
floor, hoping I might have steadiness enough to remain death-quiet
when the men came in with the lantern. I need have had no fear. The
door was opened, one of the men picked me up by the heels, and, using
my legs as if they were the shafts of a wheelbarrow, dragged me down
the passage to the place where the stream emerged from the last cell,
and into this torrent he flung me. There was one swift, brief moment
of darkness, then I shot, feet first, into space, and dropped down,
down, down through the air like a plummet, into the arms of my
mother."
"Into what?" cried Dorothy, white and breathless, thinking the recital
of these agonies had turned the man's brain.
"The Baltic, Madam, is the Finlander's mother. It feeds him in life,
carries him whither he wishes to go, and every true Finlander hopes to
die in her arms. The Baltic seemed almost warm after what I had been
through, and the taste of the salt on my lips was good.
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