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 tarantass 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
Godfrey 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 passed through swampy tracts, it had given in the
spring thaw, and had been cut into deep ruts. Here the shaking as they
passed along at night was tremendous. Godfrey and his companion were
dashed against each other or against the sides with such force that
Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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 passed along. For a
time the scenery was similar to that which they had been passing over,
bare and desolate; but it presently assumed a different character;
fields of green wheat stretched away from the river side;
comfortable-looking little villages succeeded each other rapidly as the
steamer passed 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 passage 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 Godfrey
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 passing 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 passed tediously to Godfrey, 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 amusement 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 pass near enough to them to enable
him to get a view of them, as they generally paddled away towards the
shore as the steamer approached. He heard afterwards that they are
wonderfully skilful in the use of the bow, which they use principally
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
Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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 passing through. Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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 document
must be shown at every village."
"But I suppose prisoners do escape sometimes," Godfrey 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?" Godfrey 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 morasses, 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 Godfrey 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 Godfrey. 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."
Godfrey 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 scrape at school. He had,
as he would have said, put his foot in it horribly; but that he should
really have to pass 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 assertion 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."
Godfrey 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 Godfrey'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. Godfrey 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 grass 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 passed without large gangs of convicts being overtaken on
the road. For some distance Godfrey 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
Godfrey 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!" Godfrey 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. Godfrey 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 Godfrey with an
air of satisfaction; while the jailer, as he wrote down the particulars
in a note-book, grinned. Godfrey passed 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 Godfrey 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.
Godfrey 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 space 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 Godfrey 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 Godfrey looked hard at each other.
"Surely we have met before!" the prisoner said. "I know your face quite
well."
"And I know yours also," Godfrey replied.
"Now that you speak I know you. You are the young Englishman, Godfrey
Bullen."
"I am," Godfrey replied; "and you?"
"Alexis Stumpoff."
"So it is!" Godfrey exclaimed in surprise, and, delighted at this
meeting, they shook hands cordially.
"But what are you here for?" Godfrey asked. "I thought that you had
obtained an appointment at Tobolsk."
"Yes, I was sent out as assistant to the doctor of one of the prisons. I
suppose you understood that it was not the sort of appointment one would
choose."
"I was certainly surprised when I heard that you were going so far
away," Godfrey said, "as my friends told me that you had property. It
seemed almost like going into banishment."
"That was just what it was," the young doctor laughed. "I had been too
outspoken in my political opinions, and one or two of our set had been
arrested and sent out here; and when I was informed, on the day after I
passed my examinations, that I was appointed to a prison at Tobolsk, it
was also intimated to me that it would be more agreeable to go there in
that capacity than as a prisoner. As I was also of that opinion, and as,
to tell you the truth, some of our friends were for pushing matters a
good deal farther than I cared about doing, I was not altogether sorry
to get out of it."
"But how is it that you are here as a prisoner?" Godfrey asked.
"That is more than I can tell you. Some two months ago the governor of
the prison entered my room with two warders, and informed me briefly
that I was to be sent here as a prisoner. I had ten minutes given me to
pack up my things for the journey, and half an hour later was in the
cabin of a steamer, with a Cossack at the door. What it was for, Heaven
only knows. I had never broken any regulations, never spoken to a
political prisoner when in the hospital except to ask him medical
questions, and had never opened my lips on politics to a soul there."
"I think perhaps I can enlighten you," Godfrey said; and he related to
him the attempt to blow up the emperor at the Winter Palace, and the
fate of Petroff Stepanoff and Akim Soushiloff.
"That does indeed explain it," Alexis said. "I was very intimate with
both of them, and it is quite enough to have been intimate with two men
engaged in a plot against the life of the Czar to ensure one a visit to
Siberia. So that is it! I have thought of everything, and it seemed to
me that it must have been something at St. Petersburg--that my name had
been found on a list when some of the Nihilists were arrested, or
something of that sort; for I certainly did join them, but that was
before there was any idea of taking steps against the Czar. No wonder
you are here, after being mixed up in that escape of Valerian Ossinsky,
and then being caught again with four Nihilists just after that terrible
attempt to blow up the Czar. I wonder they did not hang you."
"I wonder too," Godfrey said. "I suppose if I had been a year or two
older they would have done so; but I can assure you I had not the
slightest idea that Petroff and Akim were Nihilists. I do think that the
country is horribly misgoverned, but as a foreigner that was no business
of mine; and however strongly I felt, I would have had nothing to do
with men who tried to gain their end by assassination. I was just as
innocent in the affair of Ossinsky. I behaved like a fool, I grant, but
that was all. I had met the woman, who as I now know was Sophia
Perovskaia, but she was only known to me then from having met her once
in Petroff and Akim's room, and she was introduced to me as Akim's
cousin Katia. I met her at the Opera-house, and she told me a
cock-and-bull story about a young officer who had come to see a lady
there, and had left his regiment at Moscow without leave to do so. His
colonel, who was at the Opera-house, had heard of his being there and
was looking for him, and I was persuaded to change dominoes with him to
enable him to slip off."
"Oh that was it!" Alexis said. "I wondered how you got mixed up in the
affair, and still more why they let you out after your having been
caught in what they considered a serious business. Well, here we are,
victims both, and it is a curious chance that has thrown us together
again."
"Well, what is our life here?" Godfrey asked.
Alexis shrugged his shoulders. "As a life it is detestable, though were
it for a short time only there would be nothing to grumble about. We are
fairly fed; we have each a patch of ground, where we can grow
vegetables. The twelve men in these huts can visit and talk to each
other. When that is said all is said. Oh, by the way, we are also
permitted to make anything we like! that is, we can buy the materials if
we have money, and the work can be sold in the town. There is one man
has made himself a turning-lathe, and he makes all sorts of pretty
little things. There is another man who was an officer in the navy; he
carves little models of ships out of wood and bone. Another man paints.
I have not decided yet what I shall do. I had two or three hundred
roubles when I was sent off here, and as I only spent four or five on
the road, I have plenty to last me for some time for tea and tobacco."
"But how do you get them?"
"The warders smuggle them in. It is an understood thing, and there is no
real objection to it, though they are very strict about bringing in
spirits. Still we can get vodka if we have a mind to; it is only a
question of bribery."
"How long are you here for, Alexis?"
"Fifteen years."
"I am supposed to be in for life," Godfrey said.
"Fifteen years is as bad as life," the young doctor said. "What is the
use of your life after having been shut up here for fifteen years?"
"Well, I don't mean to stay, that is one thing," Godfrey said. "There
can't be any difficulty in escaping from here."
"Not the least in the world," Alexis said quietly. "But where do you
propose to go?"
"I have not settled yet. It seems to me that any one with pluck and
energy ought to be able to make his way out of this country somehow;
besides, from what I hear great numbers do get away, and take to the
woods."
"Yes, but they have to give themselves up again."
"That may be; but I hear also that if they give themselves up a long way
from the prison they escape from, and refuse to give any account
whatever of themselves, they are simply sent to prison again as
vagabonds. In that case they are treated as ordinary convicts. Now from
what I hear, an ordinary convict is infinitely better off than a
political one. Of course you have to associate with a bad lot; still
that is better than almost solitary confinement. The work they have to
do is not hard, and if they are well conducted they are let out after a
time, whereas there is no hope for a political prisoner. At any rate,
even if I knew that if I was retaken I should be hung at once, I should
try it."
"But the distance to the frontier is enormous, and even when you get
there you would be arrested at the first place you come to if you have
no papers; besides, how could you get through the winter?"
"I should get through the winter somehow," Godfrey said stoutly. "There
are hundreds and thousands of people in scattered villages who live
through the winter. Why shouldn't I? I would make friends with the
natives in the north, and live in their huts, and hunt with them. But I
am not thinking of that. The distance is, as you say, enormous, and the
cold terrible. My idea is to escape by the south."
"It is a desert, Godfrey."
"Oh they call it a desert to frighten people from trying to escape that
way. But I know there is a caravan route by which the teas come from
China; besides, there are tribesmen who wander about there and pick up a
living somehow. I don't say that I am going to succeed; I only say I am
going to try. I may lose my life or I may be sent back again. Very well,
then, I will try again some other way. We are not far from the Chinese
frontier here, are we?"
"No; the frontier is at Kiakhta, not more than three or four hundred
miles away."
"What are the people like?"
"They are called Buriats, and are a sort of Mongol tribe, living
generally in tents and wandering with their flocks and herds through the
country like the patriarchs of old."
"If they have large flocks and herds," Godfrey said, "the reward the
Russians offer for escaped convicts can't tempt them much. Most likely
they are hospitable; almost all these wandering tribes are. If one had
luck one might get befriended and stick for a time to one of these
tribes in their wanderings south, and then get hold of some other
people, and so get passed on. There can't be anything impossible in it,
Alexis. We know that travellers have made their way through Africa
alone. Mungo Park did, and lots of other people have done so, and some
of the negro tribes are, according to all accounts, a deal more savage
than the Asiatic tribes. Once among them it doesn't much matter which
way one goes, whether it is east to China or west to Persia."
Alexis sat and looked with some wonder at his companion. "By the saints,
Godfrey Bullen, I begin to understand now how it is that your people,
living in a bit of an island which could be pinched out of Russia and
never missed, are colonizing half the world; how they go in ships to
explore the polar seas, have penetrated Africa in all directions as
travellers, go among the wildest people as missionaries. We are brought
up to have everything done for us: to think as we are told to think, to
have officials keep their eyes over us at every turn, to be punished if
we dare to think independently, till we have come to be a nation of
grown-up children. You are only a boy, if you will forgive my calling
you so, and yet you talk about facing the most horrible dangers as
coolly as if you were proposing going for a promenade on the Nevski. We
won't talk any more about it now, for you have made me feel quite
restless. There, you have been here two hours, and I have forgotten all
my duties as host, and have not even offered you a cup of tea; it is
shameful." And Alexis brought out a samovar and soon had water boiling
and tea made.
After they had drunk it they went out of the hut, and Godfrey was
introduced to the other exiles. Two of them who lived together were
quite old men; they had been professors at the University of Kieff, and
were exiled for having in their lectures taught what were considered
pernicious doctrines. There were three military and two naval officers,
a noble, another doctor, and two sons of merchants. All received him
cordially, and Godfrey saw that in any other place the society would be
a pleasant one; but there was an air of settled melancholy in the
majority of the faces, while the sentry fifty yards away, and the high
prison wall behind, seemed ever in their minds.
By common consent, as it seemed, no allusion was ever made to politics.
They had all strong opinions, and had sacrificed everything for them,
but of what use to discuss matters the course of which they were
powerless to influence in the smallest degree. Free, there was probably
not one of them but would again have striven in one way or another to
bring about reforms, either by instructing the ignorant, rousing the
intelligent, or frightening the powerful. But here, with no hope of
returning, the whole thing was best forgotten. The past was dead to
them, and they were without a future. The news that Godfrey brought of
the blow that had been struck against the Czar roused them for a few
days. The war then was still being carried on. Others were wielding the
weapons they had forged, but of what had happened afterwards Godfrey was
ignorant. Four men had been arrested or killed; but whether they had
played an important part in the matter he knew not, nor whether others
had shared their fate. All he could say was, that so far as he heard,
numerous arrests had taken place.
But the excitement caused by the news very speedily died away, and they
again became listless and indifferent. All worked for a little time in
their gardens, but beyond that only those who had made some sort of
occupation for themselves had anything to interest themselves actively
in. Sometimes they played chess, draughts, or cards, but they did so, as
Godfrey observed, in a half-hearted manner, with the exception, indeed,
of one of the professors, who was by far the strongest chess-player of
the party, and who passed all his time in inventing problems which, when
complete, he carefully noted down in a book, with their solutions.
"When I am dead," he said one day to Godfrey, who was watching him,
"they will send this book to a nephew of mine; you see I have written
his name and address outside. He is a great chess-player, and will send
it to England or France to be published; and it is pleasant for me to
think that my work, even here in prison, may serve as an amusement to
people out in the world."
Except in the dulness and monotony of the life there was little to
complain of, and Godfrey was surprised to find how far it differed from
his own preconceived notions of the life of a political prisoner in
Siberia. It was only when, by an effort, he looked ahead for years and
tried to fancy the possibility of being so cut off from the world for
life, that he could appreciate the terrible nature of the punishment.
Better a thousand times to be one of the murderers in the prison behind
the wall. They had work to occupy their time, and constantly changing
associates, with the knowledge that by good conduct they would sooner or
later be released and be allowed to live outside the prison.
When at eight o'clock in the evening the prisoners were locked up in
their huts, he endeavoured to learn everything that Alexis Stumpoff knew
of Siberia.
He found that his knowledge was much more extensive than he had
expected. "As I came out nominally, Godfrey, as a free man, I brought
with me every book I could buy on the country, and I almost got them by
heart. It seemed to me that I was likely to be kept here for years, if
not for life. I might be sent from one government prison to another,
from Tobolsk to the eastern sea; therefore every place possessed an
interest for me. Besides this, although I was not actually a political
prisoner myself I was virtually so, and my sympathies were wholly with
the prisoners, and I thought that I might possibly be able to advise and
counsel men who came under my charge: to describe to them the places
where they might have relations or friends shut up, and to dissuade
those who, like yourself, meditated escape, for my studies had not gone
far before I became convinced that this was well-nigh hopeless. I
learned how strict were the regulations on the frontier, how impossible,
even if this were reached, to journey on without being arrested at the
very first village that a fugitive entered, and that so strict were they
that although numbers of the convict establishments were within
comparatively short distances of the frontier, escapes were no more
frequent from them than from those three thousand miles to the east.
When I say escapes I mean escapes from Siberia. Escapes from the prisons
are of constant occurrence, since most of the work is done outside the
walls. There are thousands, I might almost say tens of thousands, get
away every spring, but they all have to come back again in winter. The
authorities trouble themselves little about them, for they know that
they must give themselves up in a few months."
"Yes, my guard told me about that. He said they were not punished much
when they came in."
"Sometimes they are flogged; but the Russian peasant is accustomed to
flogging and thinks but little of it. More often they are not flogged.
They have, perhaps, a heavier chain, for the convicts all wear
chains--we have an advantage over them there--and they are put on poorer
diet for a time. They lose the remission of sentence they would obtain
by good behaviour, that is all, even when they are recognized, but as a
rule they take care not to give themselves up at the prison they left,
but at one many hundred miles from it. In the course of the summer their
hair has grown again. They assert stoutly that they are free labourers
who have lost their papers, and who cannot earn their living through the
winter. The authorities know, of course, that they are escaped convicts,
but they have no means of identifying them. They cannot send them the
rounds of a hundred convict establishments; so instead of a man being
entered as Alexis Stumpoff, murderer, for instance, he is put down by
the name he gives, and the word vagabond is added. The next year they
may break out again; but in time the hardships they suffer in the woods
become distasteful and they settle down to their prison life, and then,
after perhaps six, perhaps ten years of good conduct they are released
and allowed to settle where they will. So you see, Godfrey Bullen, how
hopeless is the chance of escape."
"Not at all," Godfrey said. "These men are most of them peasants--men
without education and without enterprise, incapable of forming any plan,
and wholly without resources in themselves. I feel as certain of
escaping as I am of being here at present. I don't say that I shall
succeed the first time, but, as you say yourself, there is no difficulty
in getting away, and if I fail in one direction I will try in another."