Chapter I: Prologue

Someone cried out that the flashing light we saw upon the far horizon was Tollboken itself, and at this we left the quarter-deck and hurried to the bows of the ship. Even the invalid clergyman, who had not been more than an hour at the tea table, came panting up the companion and stood with us while the beacon magnified and gained majesty, and other lights shone over the vista of the waters, and the black line of the island fortress took shape as some terrible mausoleum of the sea. We had made Kronstadt at last--the Kronstadt of my dreams. While others turned the pages of their guide-books, while some were ready with history and some with anecdote, I gazed entranced as the mighty citadel shaped itself against the lurid canopy of cloud which hung in the eastern sky, and all the outward power and sullen magnificence were revealed to me. I stood at the gate of Russia indeed, at the impregnable gate, which the summons of war will never open. The exclamations of wonder uttered by my companions seemed the lispings of credulous children. The chatter of the tourist was like a horrid discord in the temple of majestic silence. I had the wish to be apart from my fellows, to stand in some place of solitude and offer the worship of the imagination at the altar where I had worshipped in spirit so many months.

A Russian stood at my side, a young officer of artillery, who spoke English with some fluency. He had found our pleasure yacht at Copenhagen, and had taken passage with us to the island of Kronstadt, where his duty lay. We had found him a pleasant companion--a man who gave his laughter no holiday. But when the shores of the gulf began to draw in toward one another, and the lights of the great citadel flashed upon the horizon, I observed that the Russian was silent. Awe of his own home possessed him. He leaned heavily upon the bulwarks of the yacht, and had no eyes but for the ramparts and bastions before him. When I spoke to him he came down from some high place of the imagination to answer me; moments of time passed before he realised that he stood upon the deck of a ship, and that gaping tourists were his companions.

“Forgive me,” he said, while he watched the group contemptuously. “You asked me----?”

“If those two lights to the right of Tollboken are the lights of Menzikoff?”

The question interested him, and after a word of surprise that I knew the name of the harbour fort, he began to explain many things to me.

“Yes,” he said, “that is Menzikoff, though the lights are not the lights of the fort but of the harbour gates. The seven-fathom channel is there, and that flashing light, still more to the right, is the lantern upon the fort of Kronslott. Away a little to the south is Fort Paul, and that battery which crosses its fire is Battery 3. You see how well we protect the channel, which is no more than three hundred yards wide, though covered by a hundred guns.”

I asked him how long the island was, questioning at the same time the accuracy of the statement that the southern channel was so narrow.

“I should have given it a breadth of at least a mile, but of course there are shallows.”

“Exactly; the Oranienbaum spit runs out as far as Kronslott itself. It is a spur of sand creating shallows--another barrier which nature has put between Russia and her enemies. Though I am a Russian, and my word may be the word of prejudice, I say that there is not in all the world another citadel such as this; there is not one stamped out of the earth so clearly, a work of God unmistakable, for the defence of an empire. Observe the great bay into which we are sailing. It is in the shape of a V; the mouth turned toward the Baltic, the apex toward our capital. Kronstadt itself is also V-shaped, but the mouth of the letter is now turned toward Petersburg, the apex toward the open sea. Observe this clearly and you will see how the island, fitting into the neck of the gulf, becomes a vast and natural wedge which foreign ships may never pass. If they come by the north channel, there is the great boom of granite which a hundred navies could not destroy. If they attack us by the south channel, there are the guns of all the forts, a tremendous armament, which would crumble cities to the dust. No, my friend, you may search all seas and you will never find another citadel like this. She is invincible, the terrible gate of my country. We call her the tomb of spies, for no spy has betrayed her or ever will betray her. She stands for all that is dear to us--our liberty and our freedom. Her secrets are entombed in a heart of granite. He who seeks for them walks with Death for his guide.”

He turned upon his heel and left me to wonder as much at his eloquence as at his earnestness. I had supposed him to be a mere lieutenant of artillery doing his duty soberly and with no concern for the romance of war. But it has been my good fortune since that day to meet many of those who serve the fortress of Kronstadt, and I have found the same love of the citadel, the same pride in its power influencing them all. To them it is more than the mistress of the Gulf of Finland, it is the temple of their country’s freedom, the arsenal of God’s weapons, a barrier given of the Eternal for the safety of their kingdom. When it shall fall the empire must fall with it. But that day will be the great, the dreadful day.

It was almost dark when our yacht came abreast the eastern end of the island, where the lieutenant took leave of us. We seemed at this time to be hemmed in by forts and batteries and by the tremendous walls which protect the town and harbours; lights flashed from every side, the lights of war-ships, the lights of barracks, the red and white and green lanterns of the bastions. I thought as I watched the lieutenant rowing away to the service he loved so well, that he had spoken truly when he named Death as the comrade of him who would snatch the secrets of this mighty fortress. Death indeed; or if not death, then the terror worse than death, the sunless labour of the mines, the eternal solitude, the groans and sufferings of the desolate land.

To write a story of this fortress, and of certain people named in its recent history, I had come to Russia. No books or plans could help me to measure the achievements or the courage of those I was to speak about. I must see with my own eyes the things which they had seen, must stand where they had stood. As far as it lay in my power, I must realise the grandeur and the greatness of that sanctuary of war which they had invaded so resolutely; must hear the tramp of armed men and the bugle’s blast where they had heard them. In that spirit I left my yacht and entered the city which the Russian had called the tomb of spies. And I thought as I went of Marian Best, the Woman of Kronstadt, of her love and of her sorrows.*

* The author would wish it to be clearly understood that the characters in this book are entirely fictional.