There was a rug, a mess tin, and a wooden spoon.
"What am I to do with these?" I asked.
"You will want them upon your journey."
"My journey! Where, then, am I going?"
"To the mines."
"To Siberia?" I gasped.
"Yes," he answered, adding, "Come, follow me."
I left the side of the dead prisoner and accompanied him back to my own
cell.
I would have preferred death ten thousand times, for I knew, too well,
that for the Russian convict is reserved that punishment which is
tantamount to death by slow torture--a living tomb in the quicksilver
mines beyond Tomsk. When sent under the earth he never again sees the
sunlight or breathes the fresh air, until a year or so afterwards when
he is brought to the surface to die.
Racked by the frightful pain which quicksilver produces, gaunt as
skeletons, and with hair and eyebrows dropping off, convicts are kept at
labour under the lash by taskmasters who have orders not to spare them,
working eighteen hours at a stretch, and sleeping the remaining six in
holes in the rock--mere kennels, into which they must crawl.
A sentence of Siberian hard labour always means death, for the
Government are well aware it is an absolute impossibility to live longer
than five years in such horrible torture in the depths of the earth.
To this terrible existence was I consigned. Was it surprising,
therefore, that I hoped--nay, longed--for death instead?