THE GOLD MINES OF KARA.
In the background a murky, leaden colored sky. Outlined against it,
ranges of low hills scantily clad with stunted larches and pines and
whitened by a light fall of snow. At their base a stream, narrow and
rapid, brawling between scattered rocks and huge shapeless mounds of
gravel and sand. In the foreground a straggling village of whitewashed
cabins and long barracks of unpainted logs, with a few more pretentious
houses with tin roofs, and a black, weather beaten log prison, in the
open space before which stand a group of Cossacks in sheepskin boots and
dark green uniforms, leaning moodily upon their Berdan rifles.
Such was the scene on a dreary January morning in that portion of the
Siberian gold mine settlements known as Middle Kara.
Within the gloomy prison the convicts have answered to the morning roll
call, and are now taking their breakfast of weak tea and rye bread. A
moment later the heavy doors are thrown open and the mournful procession
files out, a haggard, toil worn group of men, wearing long gray overcoats
with yellow diamonds on their backs. The Cossacks shoulder their rifles,
surround the convicts front and rear, and at the sharp word of command
from the officer in charge, the column is moving briskly up the dreary
valley to begin another day’s relentless toil.
A sad and hopeless place is this valley of the Kara River, lined at
intervals, for a distance of nearly twenty miles, by the prisons
and settlements that constitute the Czar’s convict mines. The mines
themselves consist of a series of open placers, stretching at irregular
intervals along the Kara River—a river in name only. From these placers
the convicts extract yearly, by the sweat of their brow, about 3,600
pounds of pure gold—all of which goes into the Czar’s private purse. The
misery and suffering of the unfortunate beings who are condemned to spend
their days here in hard labor, is not unknown to the civilized world. It
need not be dwelt upon further.
Among the group of convicts who marched up the valley in the gray wintry
light of this particular morning was one whose figure had not lost its
straightness, nor his face its look of conscious pride, in spite of the
wretchedness he had endured for two long years. But his features were
haunted, nevertheless, by an expression of suffering that might have
defied recognition from any who knew Victor Sandoff in the days when he
was the famous Inspector of the terrible Third Section. Two years had
come and gone since his arrest and conviction—one year of monotonous
journeying across Siberia, and one year of toil, day by day, in the gold
placers of the Kara River. He had nothing to look forward to but a long
vista of slavery—terminated, perhaps, by an unmarked grave among the
Siberian hills, or at the best by a return to Russia in poverty, disgrace
and degradation, to spend the remainder of his life shunned by all men.
Strange irony of fate, that this man whose signature had sent many a poor
wretch to Siberia, should come at last to the same place! Many of those
by whose side he worked from day to day owed their arrest and conviction
to him, but none knew him, nor did he know them. The gray convict garb
makes its wearer only an indistinguished unit in the army of slaves.
His thoughts—and terrible they must have been at times—Victor Sandoff
kept well beneath the surface. His face was always grave, impassive,
set in that rigid expression which sometimes awed his companions, and
impressed even the rude Cossacks.
On this morning his keen blue eyes had a far away look as he plodded
over the frozen clods of snow, for it was two years to a day since the
fateful 10th of January that had witnessed such a change in his life,
and he could not help recalling the series of events that had wrought
his undoing—the visit of Zamosc and Poussin, the interview with Vera
Shamarin, and the abrupt entry of the gendarmes into his room with the
terrible order of arrest.
Thus absorbed he failed to note his surroundings—the squads of mounted
Cossacks who galloped by or were seen at a distance, winding over some
barren hill top, the eager mutterings of his companions, and the excited
interest of the guards who had the convicts in charge.
At sunrise that morning, while he was yet lying on his hard bed, half
awake, half asleep, he had heard the dull boom of a cannon echoing
through the valley, and now when a second report thundered among the
hills, he glanced up, curious to know what it meant.
A brief exchange of words between the Cossack officer and one of his
men—who were marching close by—gave him the wished for information.
“There goes another gun,” said the latter. “The fugitive must be still at
large.”
“They will soon capture her,” returned the other, with a harsh laugh.
“It is seldom that a man gets five miles away from the valley—what can a
woman hope to do?”
A woman, then, had escaped! Sandoff was conscious of a vague hope that
the poor creature might elude her pursuers—a hope that he knew could
never be realized. It was a frequent thing for convicts to break away
from the mines, but they either perished from cold and hunger or were
ultimately brought back to endure aggravated miseries in expiation of
their offense. The knowledge of this deterred many who could easily have
accomplished a temporary escape. What would have been the use? It was
five thousand miles to St. Petersburg, and a good thousand to the Pacific
coast. Every foot of the way was beset by incredible perils.
The scene of the day’s toil was reached after a march of an hour—for it
lay three miles from the settlement. Without delay the men were put to
work under the keen eye of the overseer, while the Cossacks stacked their
rifles and built fires, about which they gathered, stamping their feet
and clapping their arms together, for the weather was bitterly cold and
the snow was beginning to fall thickly from the leaden sky.
With pick and shovel the convicts delved into the stratum of clay and
gravel beneath which lies the bed of gold bearing sand—sometimes at a
depth of twenty feet. The frozen clods of earth were taken in charge by
others, who loaded them on rude wheelbarrows and trundled them away. At
a spot some little distance down the stream, a bed of sand, uncovered on
the previous day, was being washed out in the wooden hoppers.
The biting cold compelled the men to work with more than their usual
energy, and all were hungry when the time for the scanty noonday lunch
arrived. They drew as close to the fires as the Cossacks would permit,
and ate their bread and drank their weak tea, sitting on the snowy ground.
Sandoff found himself opposite a man who interested him strangely—a tall,
slender fellow of about his own age, with dark hair, piercing black
eyes, and an expression that was moody and even desperate, as though the
burning remembrance of his wrongs was always taunting him.
Two nights before this man had been placed in the prison cell occupied by
Sandoff and two others, having been transferred to Middle Kara from one
of the lower settlements. He had maintained a dogged silence ever since,
and Sandoff had more than once found the stranger’s eyes fixed upon him
with a strange earnestness of gaze.
The man ate the last morsel of his bread and washed it down with his tea,
glancing casually at Sandoff as he did so. Suddenly his face flushed and
a tigerish look came into his eyes—a look of hatred and recognition. The
Cossacks were some distance away, and before they could note what was
going on, much less take any action, the fellow sprang to his feet and
hurled himself on Sandoff, clutching his throat in a vicious grip.
“I know you, I know you,” he cried in passionate accents. “I can’t be
mistaken. You are Inspector Sandoff. It was you, you traitorous dog, who
deceived my sister and decoyed me from my hiding place!”
In an instant all was wild excitement. The convicts gathered eagerly
about the scene of the struggle, but were speedily thrown aside by the
guards, who tore the combatants roughly apart, the one senseless with
rage, the other stunned and bewildered.
“Who are you?” demanded Sandoff in a troubled voice.
“You should easily guess,” replied the other bitterly; “but I will tell
you my name. I am Felix Shamarin.”
A strange look came into Sandoff’s eyes, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“You do well to attack me,” he said. “Could not your own eyes have told
you the truth? What, think you, brought me here? It was the passport I
gave your sister on that night two years ago. I am suffering for her
sake, and for yours. Did you know nothing of it?”
Shamarin drew a short, fierce breath. His face changed color, and a tear
forced itself into each eye.
“As God is my witness,” he said with emotion, “I did not know of this
thing. I thought it was you who betrayed us—your perfidy that decoyed
us to the railway station. And so the fulfillment of your oath to Vera
proved your ruin! I wish to God she had never gone near you on that
night. It were better for me to have been caught and to have suffered
alone. Can you ever forgive me?—I must seem to you the basest, the most
ungrateful of men. My sudden passion when I recognized you destroyed my
reason, else I must have suspected the truth.”
“It was but natural,” replied Sandoff gently. “Say no more.”
He leaned forward and took the hand that Shamarin extended to him. For a
moment the two men were united by a common bond of misery, despite the
great gulf that had separated their lives in former days.
The Cossacks had paid no attention to this brief conversation, but just
at that moment their officer, Lieutenant Zagarin, pushed his way to the
spot with a flushed and angry face.
The cause of the quarrel mattered not to him, nor did he make any
distinction between the offenders, though it was perfectly plain that
Shamarin had been the aggressor.
“You mutinous dogs!” he cried harshly. “You deserve to be shot. I will
be lenient this time—but beware in future. Chain these men to their
barrows,” he added, turning to the Cossacks, “and put them to work in
that spot yonder, where the soil is so hard. See that they get no supper
when they return tonight—or on the following night either.”
Remonstrance or explanation would have been worse than useless. The
officer’s command was speedily obeyed, and in a short time Sandoff and
Shamarin were working by themselves in a small hollow on the western side
of the river, opposite their companions. A single Cossack was detailed to
guard them.
The stratum of gravel was unusually hard at this point, and they found
the labor very severe as they dug out the clods with their picks and
conveyed them to the water’s edge in the wheelbarrows. The watchful eye
of the Cossack was upon them, and conversation was out of the question.
The hollow in which they were working was square in shape, bounded on one
side by the river, and on the other three sides by a bluff about fifteen
feet high, the top of which was covered with dense, scrubby bushes. Being
a little way down stream this hollow was beyond the scrutiny of the
Cossacks or of the labor gang, and the two toilers were in range of only
one pair of eyes, the property of the solitary Cossack.
This individual was disposed to regard his position as somewhat of a
sinecure. He had no fear that his captives would run away, for they were
securely chained to their wheelbarrows. Nor did he imagine that they
would quarrel, for with his own eyes he had seen the reconciliation
between them. His duty was to keep them at work, and as this did not
require his presence on the exact spot he varied the monotony of his
employment by marching up and down that portion of the river shore which
commanded a view of the hollow, and by gazing fiercely at Sandoff or
Shamarin when they approached with a load of clods. The snow was now an
inch thick on the ground, and as the afternoon waned it came down still
more persistently, blowing to and fro in blinding flurries.
The men could have conversed with safety, since the Cossack was beyond
earshot, but neither felt in the mood for speech. The cold was so intense
that their only refuge from it was in hard and incessant work. They had
just returned from wheeling a load of clods to the river, and as they
drove their picks into the hole they had excavated a ringing sound came
to their ears. Glancing around, they saw the Cossack place his rifle
against a rock and bend down toward the water, tin cup in hand, with the
evident intention of procuring a drink.
That instant a stone, thrown from above, struck Shamarin smartly on the
arm. His sudden exclamation startled Sandoff, and both glanced up to see
a face peering dimly over the edge of the bluff between the parted bushes.
“Be cautious,” whispered a feminine voice of singular sweetness. “Keep
your heads down and pretend to be working, but don’t lose a word I say.”
Shamarin staggered and nearly dropped his pick.
“My God!” he muttered hoarsely, “it is Vera—my sister!”
“Yes, it is I, Vera,” came the reply from above. “Is your companion to be
trusted? Quick!”
Shamarin instantly regained his self possession.
“Yes, he is all right,” he replied. “Go on. I am listening.”
The Cossack was still bending over the water. It took him a long time to
find a suitable drinking place.
“Here, take this,” said the girl. She threw down a short thin package,
which Shamarin deftly caught and hid in his bosom.
“You heard the cannon this morning?” she continued quickly. “They were
for me. I escaped last night from the women’s prison at Ust Kara. I will
explain all later. I have been watching here all day. Tonight you must
escape. Remove a board from the floor of your cell—that packet contains
tools which will help you. Come directly to this spot. I have plans which
I will explain then. Don’t be alarmed about me. I am warmly clothed, and
have a safe hiding place.”
“If possible we shall be there,” replied Shamarin. “I think your plan
will work—but if anything happens and we don’t come, give yourself up. I
have a strange thing to tell you. This man here, my companion, is——”
“Hush! hush! the Cossack is returning. Good by—until tonight.”
Vera quickly withdrew her head and Sandoff and Shamarin plied their picks
with trembling hands and agitated faces, as the Cossack came quickly
forward, shouldering his rifle. He had evidently received some signal
from his companions, for as he reached the spot he said gruffly: “The
lieutenant has ordered a return. The snow is becoming too deep to do good
work.”
He conducted his temporary prisoners out of the hollow, and across the
shallow stream on the scattered stones. A few moments later the convict
gang was marching back to the settlement. At least two of their number
bore lighter hearts than had been theirs when they started from their
cells that morning.