RUSSIA FROM WITHIN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3133, 4 September 1922, Page 2

RUSSIA FROM WITHIN.

It was after midnight when we drove out. and, conditions being good, the drive over the sea to a point well along the Finnish coast, was to take us between four and five hours. The siedgo was of the type known as drovny, a wooden one, broad and low, filled with hay. The drovny, used mostly for farm haulage, is my favorite kind of sledge, and nestling comfortably at full length under the hay, 1 thought of long night-drives in the interior in days gone by. when someone used to ride ahead on hiws ! eback with a torch to keep away the wolves. In a moment we were out, flying at break-neck speed across the ice, windswept after recent storms. The halfinch of frozen enow just gave grip to the horse's hoofs. Twice, suddenly bumping into enow ridges, we capsized completely. When we got going again the runnere sang jnst like at sawmill. The driver noticed this too. and was alive to the danger of being heard from shore a couple of miles' away:. but his sturdy pony, exhilarated by tlife keen frosty air, was hard to restrain. x >t Sonic miles out of Petrograd there lie's cm an island in the Finnish Gull the famous fortress of Cronstadifc, one of the most impregnable in the world. Searchlights from the fortress played from time to time across the belt of ice separating the fortress from tho northern shore. The passage through this narrow belt was the crucial point in our journey. Once past Cronstadt we should be in Finnish waters and sale.

To avoid danger from the searchlights the Finn drove within a mile of the mainland, the runners hissing and singing Kke wiws. As we entered the narrows a dazzling beam of light wwopt the horizon from the fortress. catching lis momentarily in its track; hut we were sufficiently near the shore not to appear as a black speck adrift on the ice. Too near, perhaps? The dark lino of the w.oods seemed hut a stone's throw away ! You could almost sec the individual trees. Hell! what a noise our sledge-runners made! "Can't you keep the horse hack a hit. man ?"

"Yes, hut this is the spot we've got to drive past quickly!" We were crossing the line of Lissy Nos, a jutting point on the coast marking the narrowest part of the strait. Again a beam of light shot out from the fortress, and the wooden pier and huts of Ijissy Noa were lit as by a flash of lightning. But we had passed the point already. It was rapidly receding into the darkness as we regained the open sea. Sitting upright on the heap of hay, I kept my eyes riveted on the receding promontory. We wen l nearly ;u mile away now, and you could no longer distinguish objects clearly. Hut my eyes were still riveted on the rocky promontory. Were those rocks—moving? T tried to pierce the darkness, my eyes rooted to tile black point! Hocks ? Trees ! J Or— or

1 sprang to my feet and shook the Finn by the shoulders with all my force. . ~, ... "Damn it, man! Drive like hell—we're being pursued!" Riding out from Lissy Nos was a group of horsemen, five or six in number. My driver gaVe a moan, lashed his horse, the' sledge leapt forward, and nie chase began in earnest. , "Ten thousand marks if we escape! I veiled in the Finn's ear. For a time we kept a good lead, but in the darkness it was to see whether we were gaining or losing. My driver was making low moaning erics; he appeared to be pulling: hard on the reins, and the sledge jerked so that' I could scarcely stand. Then 1 saw that the pursuers- were gaining—and gaining rapidly! The moving dots grew into figures galloping at full speed. Suddenly there was \k flash and a crack; then another, and another. They were firing with carbines, against which a pistol was useless. I threatened the driver with my revolver if he did not pull ahead, but dropped like a stone into the hay as a bullet whizzed close to my car. At that moment the sledge suddenly swung round. The driver had clearly had difficulty with his reins, which appeared to have got caught in the shalft. and before I realised what was happening, the horse fell, the sledge whirled round and came to a sudden stop. At such moments one has to think rapidly. What would the pursuing lied Guards go for first—a fugitive Not if there was possible loot. And what more likely than that the sledge contained loot? Eel-like, I slithered over the side and made in the direction of the shore. Progress was difficult, for there were big patches of ice, coal-black in color, which were completely wind-swept and as slippery as glass. Stumbling along. I drew from my pocket a packet, wrapped! in dark brown paper, containing maps and documents which were sufficient, if discovered, to assure my being shot without further ado, and held it ready to hurl away across the ice. If seized. I would plead smuggling. It seemed impossible that T could es cape! Looking backward I saw the group round the sledge. The Beds, dismounted, were examining the driver; in a moment they would renew the pursuit, and I should be spotted at once, running over the ice. Then an idea occurred. The ice, where completely windswept, formed great patches as black as ink. My clothes were dark. I ran into the middle of a big black patch and looked at my boots. I could not si'o them! To get to the shore was impossible, anyway, so this was the only chance. Jerking the packet a few yards from me where J might easily find it, I dropped Hat on the black ice and lay motionless, praying that I should be invisible. It was not long before I beard the sound of hoofs and voices approaching. The search for mo had begun. But the riders avoided the slippery wind-swept places as studiously as I had done in running, and. thank Heaven! just there much of the ice was wind-swept. As they nxlo round and about. 1 felt that someone was bound to ride just over me! Yet they didn't, after all. It seemed hours and »days of night and darkness before the riders retreated the sledge and rode off with it, returning whence they had come. But time is measured not by degrees of hope or despair, but by fleeting seconds and minutes, and by my luminous watch T detected that it was only halfpast one. Prosaic half-past one! (From "Bed Dusk and the Morrow," by Sir Paul Dukes, K.8.F.. late chiefof the British Secret Service in Soviet Russia).