Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/364

342, and then replied, bluntly but not unkindly, "You can't go in the steerage—it's jammed full of Chinese emigrants. Nobody ever goes in the steerage except Chinamen; it's no place for you." Volkhófski replied that the case was urgent—that he must get to British Columbia at once—and as he had not money enough to pay even for a second-class passage, there was nothing for him to do but go third class. The purser finally sold him a steerage ticket, but declared, nevertheless, that a white man could not possibly live for three weeks with opium-smoking Chinese coolies, and that he should put him in some other part of the vessel as soon as possible after leaving port.

Until the Batavia had actually sailed and was out of the harbor, Volkhófski did not dare to let the passengers, or even the officers, of the steamer know who he really was and whence he had come. The Japanese were in the habit of giving up Siberian refugees to the Russian authorities; and if it should accidentally become known that he was an escaping political exile, he might be arrested, even in Yokohama, and put on board a Russian man-of-war. He believed that he had narrowly escaped detection and capture in Nagasaki, and he did not intend to run any more risks that could be avoided. At last, however, when the Batavia was far at sea, and the coast of Japan had sunk beneath the rim of the western horizon, he told his story to the officers of the ship, and afterward admitted to the passengers with whom he became acquainted that he was an escaped political exile from Siberia. The interest and sympathy excited by his narrative deepened as the officers and passengers became better acquainted with him, and long before the Batavia reached Vancouver, he had so completely won the hearts of the whole ship's company that they took up a collection for the purpose of providing him with transportation from Vancouver to the city of Washington. To this collection every soul on board contributed, from the captain down to the steward, the cook,