Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/290

278 "Then it was the Hawk? He is quite young still." Someone answered him:

"For three years the people through all the Urals were as frightened by the name of the Hawk as they were by that of the devil. No one ever seemed able to catch him, and he turned up in several places over all Russia." Then followed many legends about this prince of bandits.

After some days of punishment in the subterranean cell, he was brought back to the same room with Eristoff and the other Georgians. On his return the prisoners met him with profound respect.

"Ah, it is well," he smiled; "this I understand."

For several days succeeding his reappearance I met and talked with this bandit leader and carefully studied him. Very polite in his speech, graceful and quiet in movement, he never showed feeling of any kind but always maintained a perfectly calm exterior. However, this was only an apparent calm, like that of a tiger in a cage.

Have you ever observed a tiger in captivity? The magnificent beast of prey lies in stately repose with his powerful paws quietly resting in front of him and with his head poised as proud as a king, his bright, yellow eyes looking off into space without blinking and seeing neither the bars of his cage, the keeper nor the crowds of spectators staring in idle worship. When his pupils, looking like black rifts in the yellow beryls, happen to light on a man before him, one has the impression that he looks right through the human being and sees beyond him the vast range of the forest, to which he silently and deeply longs to return.

The Hawk looked in this same way upon his companions, the keepers and the prison. His soul, wild and untamed, longed for freedom. As he entered the cramping