Condemned as a Nihilist Part 22

G.o.dfrey at once informed Luka that they were to try to escape on the following evening, told him to put on his spare shirts at night, gave him the matches, and told him to stow away in the morning as much bread as he could carry. The young Tartar made no reply beyond a pleasant nod; his confidence in his companion was unbounded. The next morning, while eating their breakfasts by the dim light of a candle, Mikail pa.s.sed close to G.o.dfrey and slipped two long knives into his hand; these he hid instantly inside his shirt.

"I have got the bread," Mikail said; "it was better for me to buy it than you. I have put it under your bag."

As it was quite dark in the corner of the room G.o.dfrey had no difficulty in cutting up the hunks of bread, and concealing them without observation. Mikail strolled up while he was so engaged. G.o.dfrey had already given him money for the various purchases, and he now pressed a hundred-rouble note into his hand, and said:

"Now, Mikail, you must take this from me; it is not a present to you, but to your brave wife. When you get out you will want to do your share towards making the house she has got for you comfortable. Till you get your free ticket you will still be working in the mines like the others; and though you will get the same pay as free labourers then, it will be some time before you can lay much by. When your term is over you will want to take up a piece of land and farm, and you must have money for this until your crops grow."

"I will not take it," the man said huskily; "it is a hundred roubles. I would not rob you; you will want every kopeck you have. The money would be a curse to me."

"I have five hundred still left, Mikail, which will be ample for me. You will grieve me if you refuse to take it. It will be pleasant to me, whether I am taken again or whether I escape, to think that I have made one home happier for my stay here, and that you and your brave wife, in your comfortable home, think sometimes of the young fellow you were kind to."

"If you wish it I will take it," Mikail said. "Feodora and I will pray before the _ikon_ to the saints morning and night to protect you wherever you may be."

"Pray for me as G.o.dfrey Bullen, Mikail; that is my real name. I am English, and it is to England I shall make my way."

"G.o.dfrey Bullen," the man repeated four or five times over. "I shall not forget it. Feodora and I will teach it to our children if the good G.o.d should send us any."

"I should like to let you know if I get safely home," G.o.dfrey said; "how can I write to you?"

"I can receive letters when I am out of prison," Mikail said. "You know my name, Mikail Stomoff; put Karoff, that is the name of the village my wife lives at--Karoff, near Kara. If the letter does not come until my term is over, and I have left, I will leave word there where it can be forwarded to me."

"I hope that you will get it long before that, Mikail. The journey is too long to do in one summer. I shall winter somewhere in the north, and I hope to be in England by the following autumn; therefore, if I have got safely away, you may look for a letter before the Christmas after next. If it does not come by that time, you will know that I have failed in my first attempt, and then you will, I hope, get one a year later. I shall, of course, be careful what I say; in case it should be opened and read, there will be nothing in it about your knowing that I intended to escape."

"We shall look for it, G.o.dfrey Bullen, we shall look for it always, and pray the good G.o.d to send it to us."

The next morning when G.o.dfrey rose he wrung Mikail's hand warmly.

"G.o.d bless you," the starosta said with tears in his eyes. "I shall not come near you again; they would see that something was strange with me, and when you were missing, would guess that I knew you were going. May all the saints preserve you."

Before they formed up to march to their work, G.o.dfrey shook hands with his friend Osip. "I am going to try on our way back to-night," he said.

"Good-bye, and good luck to you," Osip replied. "I would go with you if I was in for life; but I have lost two years already by running away, and I dare not try again."

During the day G.o.dfrey observed very carefully the spot where he had hidden the tools, so that he might be able to find it in the dark, piling three small stones one on the top of the other by the roadside at the point nearest to it. When work was over, he managed to fall in with Luka at the rear of the line. A Cossack marched alongside of him.

"Five roubles," G.o.dfrey whispered, "if you will let us drop behind."

Five roubles was a large sum to the soldier. The life of the guards was really harder than that of the prisoners, except that they did no work, for they had to mount guard at night when the convicts slept, and their rations were much more scanty than those given to the working convicts, and they were accustomed to eke out their scanty pay by taking small bribes for winking at various infractions of the prison rules. The Cossack at once held out his hand. G.o.dfrey slipped five rouble notes into it. They kept on till they reached a wood, where beneath the shadow of the trees it was already perfectly dark.

The Cossack had stepped forward two or three paces and was walking by the next couple.

"Now, Luka," G.o.dfrey said, and the two sprang off the path among the trees. They waited two or three minutes, then returned to the road and hurried back to the mine. They had been the last party to start for the prison, and the place was quite deserted. It took them fully half an hour to find the tools. The rings round their ankles were sufficiently loose to enable the pick to be inserted between them and the leg; thrusting it in as far as it would go under the rivet, it was comparatively easy work to break off the head with the hammer. In ten minutes both were free. Leaving the chains and tools behind them, they made their way out of the cutting and struck across the country, and in an hour entered the forest. It was too dark here to permit them to proceed farther; they lay down and slept until day began to break, and then continued their way up the rising ground until, after four hours'

walking, they were well among the mountains. They found an open s.p.a.ce by the side of a rivulet where the wild strawberries grew thickly, and here they sat down and enjoyed a hearty meal of bread and strawberries.

"Now we have got to keep along on this side of that range of mountains in front of us till we get to Lake Baikal," G.o.dfrey said. "We will push on for a day or two, and then we must find some cottages, and get rid of these clothes. What we want above all things, Luka, are guns."

"Yes, or bows and arrows," Luka said.

"It would be as difficult to get them as guns. They don't use them in these parts, Luka."

"I can make them," Luka said; "not as good as the Ostjaks' bows, but good enough to kill with."

"That is satisfactory, Luka. If I can get hold of a gun and you can make a bow and arrows we shall do very well."

For four days they continued their journey through the forest, gathering much fruit, chiefly strawberries and raspberries, and eating sparingly of their bread. At night they lit fires, for the evenings were still cold, and slept soundly beside them. On the fifth morning G.o.dfrey said, "We must turn south now, Luka, our bread won't last more than two days at the outside, and we must lay in a fresh supply. We have kept as near west as we could, and we know by the mountains that we cannot be far wrong, still it may take us some time to find a village." To G.o.dfrey's satisfaction they arrived at the edge of the forest early in the afternoon.

"We cannot be very far from Nertchinsk," he said. "We must be careful here, for there are lots of mines in the neighbourhood."

After walking for another three or four hours several large buildings were seen among the trees in the valley, and these it was certain belonged to one or other of the mines. When it became dark they descended still farther, and kept down until they came upon a road. This they followed until about midnight they came upon a small village. They found, as they had hoped, bread and other provisions upon several of the window-sills, and thankfully stowing these away again struck off to the hills.

"This is capital," G.o.dfrey said, as after getting well into the forest they lighted a fire, threw themselves down beside it, and made a hearty meal. "If we could rely upon doing as well as this always I should not mind how long our journey lasted. It is glorious to be out in these woods after that close prison."

The Tartar nodded. The closeness of the air in the prison never troubled him, but he was quite ready to agree to anything that G.o.dfrey might say.

"Good in summer," he said, "but not very good in winter."

"No, I expect not; but we shall have to make the best of it, Luka, for it is quite certain that we shall have to spend the winter out somewhere."

"We will make skin coats and keep ourselves warm," Luka said confidently. "Make a good hut."

"Yes, that part of the thing seems simple enough," G.o.dfrey agreed; "the difficulty will be in feeding ourselves. But we need not bother about that now. Well, we had better go off to sleep, Luka; we have been tramping fully eighteen hours, and I feel as tired as a dog."

In a few minutes they were fast asleep, but they were on their feet again at daybreak and journeyed steadily for the next three days, always keeping near the edge of the forest. On the fourth day they saw a small farm-house lying not far from the edge of the wood.

"Here is the place that we have been looking for for the last week,"

G.o.dfrey said. "This is where we must manage to get clothes. The question is, how many men are there there? Not above two or three, I should say.

But anyhow we must risk it."

They waited until they saw lights in the cottage, and guessed that the family had all returned from their work.

"Now then, Luka, come along. You must look fierce, you know, and try to frighten them a bit. But mind, if they refuse and show fight we must go away without hurting them."

Luka looked up in surprise. "Why that?" he asked. "You could beat that pig Kobylin as if he were a child, why not beat them and make them give?"

"Because I am not going to turn robber, Luka. I know some of the runaways do turn robbers, and murder peasants and travellers. You know some of the men in the prison boasted of what they had done, but that is not our way. We are honest men though we have been shut up in prison. I am willing to pay for what I want as long as I have money, after that we shall see about it. If these people won't sell we shall find others that will."

They went quietly up to the house, lifted the latch and walked in, holding their long knives in their hands. Two men were seated at table, three women and several children were near the fire. There was a general exclamation of alarm as the two convicts entered.

"Do not fear," G.o.dfrey said loudly; "we do not wish to rob anyone. We are not bandits, we are ready to pay for what we require, but that we must have."

The men were both convicts who had long since served out their time.

"What do you want?" one of them asked.

"We want clothes. You need not be afraid of selling them to us. If we were captured to-morrow, which we don't mean to be, we will swear to you that we will not say where we obtained them. We are ready to pay the full value. Why should you not make an honest deal instead of forcing us to take life?"

"We will sell them to you," one of the men said after speaking a few words in a low tone to the other, and then rising to his feet.

"Sit down," G.o.dfrey said sternly. "We want no tricks. Tell the women to fetch in the clothes."

The man, seeing that G.o.dfrey was determined, abandoned his intention of seizing a club and making a fight for it, and told one of the women to fetch some clothes down. She returned in a minute or two with a large bundle.