In the course of a year, three urgent letters had been sent; but no
notice was taken of them, and Ivan began to despair of aid from home,
and set himself to work. His first step was to profess himself a
Mahometan. He durst not tell his master till the deed was done, and then
Kascambo was infinitely shocked; but the act did not procure Ivan so
much freedom as he had hoped. He was, indeed, no longer in chains, but
he was evidently distrusted, and was so closely watched, that the only
way in which he could communicate with his master was when they were set
to sing together, when they chanted out question and answer in Russ,
unsuspected, to the tune of their national airs. He was taken on an
expedition against the Russians, and very nearly killed by the
suspicious Tchetchenges on one side, and by the Cossacks on the other,
as a deserter. He saved a young man of the tribe from drowning; but
though he thus earned the friendship of the family, the rest of the
villagers hated and dreaded him all the more, since he had not been able
to help proving himself a man of courage, instead of the feeble buffoon
he had tried to appear.
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