Condemned as a Nihilist Part 9

"And do many wives come?"

"A good many," the soldier said; "but I only know what I have heard. I was with one of you last time, and it was only on the way back that I heard of things about the others. Formerly the guards remained in Siberia if they chose, it was too far to send them back to Russia; but now that the journey is done so quickly, and we can get back all the way from Tomsk by the rivers, except this little bit, we go back again as soon as we have handed over our charges. I did not go farther than Tomsk last time, and I was back at Nijni in less than three months after starting. What part of Russia do you come from?"

"I am an Englishman."

The soldier looked round in surprise. "I did not know Englishmen could speak our language so well; of course I noticed that your speech was not quite like mine, but I am from the south and I thought you must come from somewhere in the north or from Poland. How did--" and here he stopped. "But I must not ask that; I don't want to know anything, not even your name. Look there, we are just going to pa.s.s a convoy of other prisoners."

In a minute or two they overtook the party. It consisted of about a hundred and fifty prisoners escorted by a dozen mounted Cossacks. The men were in prison garb of yellowish-brown stuff with a coloured patch in the back between the shoulders. They had chains fastened to rings round the ankles and tied up to their belts. They were not heavy, and interfered very little with their walking. The procession in no way accorded with G.o.dfrey's preconceived idea. The men were walking along without much attempt at regular order. They were laughing and talking together or with their guards, and some of them shouted chaffing remarks to the four vehicles as they swept past them.

"They do not look very unhappy," G.o.dfrey said.

"Why should they?" the soldier replied; "they are better off than they would be at home. Lots of men break the law on purpose to be sent out; it is a good country. They say wives get rid of their husbands by informing against them and getting them sent here. I believe there are quite as many husbands with scolding wives who get themselves sent here to be free of them. As long as they are on the road or employed in hard labour they are fed better than they ever were at home, better a great deal than we soldiers are. Even in the prisons they do not work so very hard, for it is difficult to find work for them; only if they are sent to the mines their lot is bad. Of that I know nothing, but I have heard.

As for the rest, from what I have seen of it I should say that a convict here is better off than a peasant at home. But here we are at the post-house."

CHAPTER V.

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

The stay at the post-houses was very short. As soon as the vehicles were seen coming along the straight level road, the first set of horses were brought out, and the leading taranta.s.s was ready to proceed in two or three minutes. The other horses were changed as quickly, and in less than ten minutes from their arrival the whole were on their way again.

While the horses were being changed the prisoners were permitted to get out and stretch their legs, but were not allowed to exchange a word with each other or with anyone else. At every fourth stage a bowl of soup with a hunch of bread was brought to each prisoner by one of the guards at the ostrov or prison, where the convicts were lodged as they came along. There were rugs in the vehicles to lay over them at night when the air was sharp and chilly, although in the day the sun had great power, and the dust rose in clouds under the horses' feet.

There was little of interest to be seen on the journey. Only round the villages was there any cultivation, and the plains stretched away unbroken save by small groups of cattle, horses, and sheep. Although G.o.dfrey had not minded the shaking of the springless vehicle for the first stage or two, he felt long before he reached the journey's end as if every bone was dislocated. As a rule the road was good, but in some places, where it pa.s.sed through swampy tracts, it had given in the spring thaw, and had been cut into deep ruts. Here the shaking as they pa.s.sed along at night was tremendous. G.o.dfrey and his companion were dashed against each other or against the sides with such force that G.o.dfrey several times thought his skull was fractured, and he was indeed thankful when, after forty hours on the road, they drove into Tiumen.

Tiumen is a town of over 15,000 inhabitants, and is the first town arrived at in Siberia proper, the frontier between Russia and that country running between Ekaterinburg and that town. Here the prisoners were at once placed on board a steamer, and G.o.dfrey was glad indeed to throw himself down upon the bed, where he slept without waking until the steamer got under way in the morning. He was delighted to see that the port-hole was not, as in the first boat, blocked by an outside shutter, but that he could look out over the country as they pa.s.sed along. For a time the scenery was similar to that which they had been pa.s.sing over, bare and desolate; but it presently a.s.sumed a different character; fields of green wheat stretched away from the river side; comfortable-looking little villages succeeded each other rapidly as the steamer pa.s.sed along, and save for the difference of architecture and the peculiar green domes and pinnacles of the little churches he might have been looking over a scene in England.

The river was about two hundred yards wide here, a smooth and placid stream. The steamer did not proceed at any great pace, as it was towing behind it one of the heavy convict barges, and although the pa.s.sage is ordinarily performed in a day and a half, it took them nearly a day longer to accomplish, and it was not until late in the afternoon of the third day that Tobolsk came in sight. Through his port-hole G.o.dfrey obtained a good view of the town, containing nearly 30,000 inhabitants, with large government buildings, and a great many houses built of stone.

It is built in a very unhealthy position, the country round being exceedingly low and marshy. After pa.s.sing Tobolsk they entered the Obi, one of the largest rivers in Asia. The next morning the steamer again started for her sixteen-hundred-mile journey to Tomsk. The journey occupied eight days, the convict barge having been left behind at Tobolsk.

The time pa.s.sed tediously to G.o.dfrey, for the banks were low and flat, villages were very rare, and the steamer only touched at three places.

Herds of horses were seen from time to time roaming untended over the country. The only amus.e.m.e.nt was in watching the Ostjaks, the natives of the banks of the Obi. These people have no towns or villages, but live in rough tents made of skins. He saw many of them fishing from their tiny canoes, but the steamer did not pa.s.s near enough to them to enable him to get a view of them, as they generally paddled away towards the sh.o.r.e as the steamer approached. He heard afterwards that they are wonderfully skilful in the use of the bow, which they use princ.i.p.ally for killing squirrels and other small animals. These bows are six feet long, the arrows four feet. The head is a small iron ball, so as to kill without injuring the fur of small animals, and the feats recorded of the English archers of old times are far exceeded by the Ostjaks. Even at long distances they seldom fail to strike a squirrel on the head, and G.o.dfrey was informed by a man who had been present that he saw an Ostjak shoot an arrow high into the air, and cut it in two with another arrow as it descended, a feat that seemed to him altogether incredible, but is confirmed by the evidence of Russian travellers.

Tomsk is situated on the river Tom, an affluent of the Obi. The town is about the same size as Tobolsk; the climate of the district is considered the best in Siberia; the land is fertile, and among the mountains are many valuable mines. Although a comparatively small province in comparison to Tobolsk on one side and Yeneseisk on the other, it contains an area of half a million square miles, and, excluding Russia, is bigger than any two countries of Europe together.

It contains a rural population of 725,000-130,000 natives, chiefly Tartars and Kalmucs, and 30,000 troops.

Here G.o.dfrey was landed, and marched to the prison. Of these there are two, the one a permanent convict establishment, the other for the temporary detention of prisoners pa.s.sing through. G.o.dfrey slipped a few roubles into the hand of his guard, for his watch, money, and the other things in his pockets had been restored to him before starting on his journey. After two days' stop in the prison the journey was continued as before, a soldier sitting by the driver, a police-officer taking the place of the soldier who had before accompanied him. He began to speak to G.o.dfrey as soon as they started.

"We are not so strict now," he said. "You will soon be across the line into Eastern Siberia, and you will no longer meet people through whom you might send messages or letters. As to escape, that would be out of the question since you left Ekaterinburg, for none can travel either by steamer or post without a permit, or even enter an inn, and the doc.u.ment must be shown at every village."

"But I suppose prisoners do escape sometimes," G.o.dfrey said.

"There have not been a dozen escapes in the last fifty years," the policeman said. "There are great numbers get away from their prisons or employments every year, but the authorities do not trouble about them; they may take to the mountains or forests, and live on game for a few months in summer, but when winter arrives they must come in and give themselves up."

"What happens to them then?" G.o.dfrey asked.

"Perhaps nothing but solitary confinement for a bit, perhaps a beating with rods, just according to the temper of the chief official at the time. Perhaps if it is a bad case they are sent to the mines for a bit; that is what certainly happens when they are political prisoners."

"Why can't they get right away?"

"Where are they to go to?" the officer said with a laugh. "To the south there are sandy deserts where they would certainly die of thirst; to the north trackless forests, cold that would freeze a bullock solid in a night, great rivers miles wide to cross, and terrible mora.s.ses, to say nothing of the wolves who would make short work of you. The native tribes to the west, and the people of the desert, are all fierce and savage, and would kill anyone who came among them merely for his clothes; and, besides, they get a reward from government for every escaped prisoner they bring in alive or dead. No, we don't want bolts or bars to keep prisoners in here. The whole land is a prison-house, and the prisoners know well enough that it is better to live under a roof and to be well fed there than to starve in the forest, with the prospect of a flogging at the end of their holiday. Still there are thousands take to the woods in the summer. The government does not care.

Why should it? It is spared the expense of feeding them, and if they starve to death or kill each other off in their quarrels (for the greater part of them would think no more of taking life than of killing a fowl) there is an end of all further trouble about them, for you understand, it is only the men who have life sentences, the murderers, and so on, that attempt to run away; the short-sentence men are not such fools.

"No," he went on kindly, seeing that G.o.dfrey looked depressed at what he had heard; "whatever you do don't think of running away. If you behave well, and gain the good opinion of the authorities, you won't find yourself uncomfortable. You will be made a clerk or a store-keeper, and will have a good deal of liberty after a time. If you try to run away, you will probably be sent to the mines; and though it is not so bad there as they say, it is bad enough."

But even this prospect was not very cheering to G.o.dfrey. Hitherto it had seemed to him that there could be no real difficulty, although there might be many hardships and privations, in making his escape from so vast a prison. He had told himself that it must be possible to evade pursuit in so vast a region; but now it seemed that nature had set so strong a wall round the country that the Russians did not even trouble themselves to pursue, confident that in time the prisoners must come back again. But he was not silent long. With the buoyancy of youth he put the question aside for the present with the reflection, "Where there is a will there is a way; anyhow some fellows have got away, and if they have done it, I can."

G.o.dfrey had not as yet realized his situation; the sentence "for life"

had fallen upon his ears but not upon his mind; he still viewed the matter as he might have viewed some desperate sc.r.a.pe at school. He had, as he would have said, put his foot in it horribly; but that he should really have to pa.s.s his whole life in these wilds, should never see England again, his father, mother, or sisters, was a thing that his mind absolutely refused to grasp. "Of course I shall get away somehow." This had been the refrain that was constantly running through his mind, and even now a satisfactory reply to the a.s.sertion that not a dozen men had made their escape at once occurred to him. There was no motive to induce them to make their escape. They could not return to Russia, and in any other country they would be even more in exile than here, where everyone spoke their language, and where, as far as he had seen, the climate was as good as that of Russia, and the country no more flat and ugly.

"There is nothing they can want to escape for," he repeated to himself.

"I have everything to escape for, and I mean to do it." Having once re-established that view to his satisfaction, he began to chat away cheerfully again to his companion. "It is not everyone," he said, "who possesses my advantages, or who can travel five or six thousand miles by rail, steamer, and carriage, without ever having to put his hand in his pocket for a single kopec. The only objection to it is that they don't give me a return ticket."

"That is an objection," the policeman agreed, smiling.

"We are not going to travel night and day, as we did between Ekaterinburg and Tiumen, I hope?"

"Oh, no; we shall only travel while it is light."

"Well, that is a comfort. It was bad enough for that short distance. It would be something awful if it had to be kept up for a fortnight. How long shall we be before we get to Irkoutsk?"

"About a month. I know nothing as to what will be done with you beyond that. You may, for anything I know, go to the mines at Nertchinsk, which are a long distance east beyond Irkoutsk; or you may go to Verkhoyansk, a Yakout settlement 3000 miles from Irkutsk, within the Arctic Circle.

There are lots of these penal settlements scattered over the country.

They do not send the ordinary convict population there. There is no danger from them; but the theory is that the politicals are always plotting, and therefore they are for the most part sent where by no possibility can they get up trouble."

G.o.dfrey set his lips hard together and asked no questions for the next half-hour. Although the journey was not continued by night the telega was still G.o.dfrey's constant place of abode. Sometimes it was wheeled under a shed, sometimes it stood in the road, but in all cases the policeman was by his side night and day. G.o.dfrey was indifferent whether he slept in a bed or in the telega, which, when the straw was fresh shaken up and a couple of rugs laid upon it, was by no means uncomfortable. The nights were not cold and no rain had fallen since he left Nijni. He further reflected that probably there would be fleas and other vermin in the post-houses, and that altogether he was a gainer instead of a loser by the regulation.

He was pleased with the appearance of Atchinsk, a bright little town a day's journey from Tomsk. It was, like all the Siberian towns, built of wood, but the houses were all painted white or gray, picked out with bright colours. It stood in the middle of a large gra.s.s plain, with inclosed meadows of luxuriant herbage and bright flowers, among which large numbers of sheep and cattle were feeding. Beyond this the country again became dull and monotonous. Krasnoiarsk was the next town reached.

Between this town and Kansk the country was again cultivated.

Scarce a day pa.s.sed without large gangs of convicts being overtaken on the road. For some distance G.o.dfrey suffered terribly from mosquitoes, which swarmed so thickly that the peasants working in the fields were obliged to wear black veils over their faces. Fortunately he had been warned by his guard at Atchinsk that there would be trouble with these pests on further, and the man had, at his request, bought for him a few yards of muslin, under which they sat during the day and spread over the telega at night. It was, however, a long and dreary journey, and G.o.dfrey was heartily glad when at last they saw the domes of Irkoutsk, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants.

They drove rapidly through the town to the prison, where he was placed in a cell by himself. The morning after his arrival the warder entered with a man carrying a basin and shaving apparatus.

"Confound it!" G.o.dfrey muttered. "I have been expecting this ever since I saw the first gang of convicts, but I hoped they did not do it to us."

It was of course useless to remonstrate. His hair, which had grown to a great length since he left St. Petersburg, was first cut short; then the barber lathered his head and set to work with a razor. G.o.dfrey wondered what his particular style of hair was going to be. He had noticed that all the convicts were partially shaved. Some were left bare from the centre of the head down one side; others had the front half of the head shaved, while the hair at the back was left; some had only a ridge of hair running along the top of the head, either from the forehead to the nape of the neck or from one ear to the other.

"He is shaving me like a monk," he said to himself as the work proceeded. "Well, I think that is the best after all, for with a cap on it won't show."

When the barber had done he stepped back and surveyed G.o.dfrey with an air of satisfaction; while the jailer, as he wrote down the particulars in a note-book, grinned. G.o.dfrey pa.s.sed his hand over his head and found that, as he supposed, he had been shaved half-way down to the ears; but in the middle of this bald place the barber had left a patch of hair about the size of half-a-crown which stood up perfectly erect. He burst into a shout of laughter, in which the other two men joined. The jailer patted him approvingly on the shoulder. "Bravo, young fellow!" he said, pleased at seeing how lightly G.o.dfrey took it, for many of the exiles who had stood bravely the loss of their liberty were completely broken down by the loss of a portion of their hair, which branded them wherever they went as convicts.

G.o.dfrey was then taken out into a large court-yard and out through a gate into another inclosure. This had evidently been added but a very short time to the precincts of the prison. It was of considerable size, being four or five acres in extent, and was surrounded on three sides by a palisade some fourteen feet in height, of newly-sawn timber. The wall of the prison formed the fourth side of the square. In each corner of the inclosure was placed a clump of six little wooden huts. Two low fences ran across the inclosure at right angles to each other, dividing the s.p.a.ce into four equal squares. Where the fences crossed each other there was an inclosure a few yards across, and in this were two sentry-boxes with soldiers, musket in hand, standing by them. A few men were listlessly moving about, while others were digging and working in small garden patches into which the inclosures were divided. The policeman who accompanied G.o.dfrey led him to one of the little huts. He opened the door and went in. A young man was sitting there.

"I have brought you a companion," the policeman said. "He will share your hut with you. You can teach him what is required." With this brief introduction he closed the door behind him and left. The young man had risen, and he and G.o.dfrey looked hard at each other.