PRISON LIFE.
Godfrey found that there was no Sunday break in the work at Kara, but
that once a fortnight the whole of the occupants of the ward had baths,
and upon these days no work was done. Upon a good many saints' days they
also rested; so that, practically, they had a holiday about once in
every ten days. For his own part he would have been glad had the work
gone on without these breaks. When the men started for work at five in
the morning, and returned to the prison at seven at night, the great
majority, after smoking a pipe or two, turned in at once, while upon the
days when there was no work quarrels were frequent; and, what was to him
still more objectionable, men told stories of their early lives, and
seemed proud rather than otherwise of the horrible crimes they had
committed. His own time did not hang at all heavy upon his hands.
One of the Tartar prisoners who spoke Russian was glad enough to agree,
in exchange for a sufficient amount of tobacco to enable him to smoke
steadily while so employed, to teach him his own dialect. Godfrey found,
as he had expected, a sufficient similarity between the two languages to
assist him very greatly, and with two hours' work every evening, and a
long bout on each holiday, he made rapid progress with it, especially as
he got into the habit of going over and over again through the
vocabulary of all the words he had learned, while he was at work in the
mine. When not employed with the Tartar he spent his time in
conversation with Osip Ivanoff and the little group of men of the same
type. They spent much of their time in playing cards, whist being a very
popular game in Russia. They often invited Godfrey to join them, but his
mind was so much occupied with his own plans that he felt quite unable
to give the requisite attention to the game.
He soon learnt the methods by which order and discipline were maintained
in the prisons. For small offences the punishment was a decrease in the
rations, the prohibition of smoking--the prisoners' one enjoyment--and
confinement to the room. The last part of the sentence was that which
the prisoners most disliked. So far from work being hardship, the break
which it afforded to the monotony of their life rendered the privation
of it the severest of punishments, and Godfrey learned that there was
the greatest difficulty in getting men to accept the position of
starosta, in spite of the privileges and power the position gave,
because he did not go out to work. For more serious offences men were
punished by a flogging, more or less severe, with birch rods. For this,
however, they seemed to care very little, although sometimes
incapacitated for doing work for some days, from the effects of the
beating.
Lastly, for altogether exceptional crimes, or for open outbreaks of
insubordination, there was the _plete_--flogging with a whip of twisted
hide, fastened to a handle ten inches long and an inch thick. The lash
is at first the same thickness as the handle, tapering for twelve
inches, and then divided into three smaller lashes, each twenty-five
inches long and about the thickness of the little finger. This terrible
weapon is in use only at three of the Siberian prisons, of which Kara is
one. From twenty to twenty-five lashes are given, and the punishment is
considered equivalent to a sentence to death, as in many cases the
culprit survives the punishment but a short time. The prisoners were
agreed that at Kara the punishment of the _plete_ was extremely rare,
only being given for the murder of a convict or official by one of the
convicts. The quarrels among the prisoners, although frequent, and
attended by great shouting and gesticulation, very rarely came to blows,
the Russians having no idea of using their fists, and the contests, when
it came to that, being little more than a tussle, with hair pulling and
random blows. Had the prisoners had knives or other weapons ready to
hand, the results would have been very different.
Godfrey had not smoked until he arrived at Kara; but he found that in
the dense atmosphere of the prison room it was almost necessary, and
therefore took to it. Besides smoking being allowed as useful to ward
off fevers and improve the health of the prisoners, it also had the
effect of adding to their contentment, rendering them more easy of
management, as the fear of the smoking being cut off did more to ensure
ready obedience than even the fear of the stick. Tea was not among the
articles of prison diet; but a samovar was always kept going by Mikail,
and the tea sold to the prisoners at its cost price, and the small sum
paid to the convicts sufficed to provide them with this and with
tobacco.
Vodka was but seldom smuggled in, the difficulty of bringing it in being
great, and the punishment of those detected in doing so being severe. At
times, however, a supply was brought in, being carried, as Godfrey
found, in skins similar to those used for sausages, filled with the
spirit and wound round and round the body. These were generally brought
in when one or other of the prisoners had received a remittance, as most
of them were allowed to receive a letter once every three months; and
these letters, in the case of men who had once been in a good position,
generally contained money. This privilege was only allowed to men after
two years' unbroken good conduct.
Godfrey's teacher in the Tartar language had been recommended to him by
Osip as being the most companionable of the Tartar prisoners. He was a
young fellow of three or four and twenty, short and sturdy, like most of
his race, and with a good-natured expression in his flat face. He was in
for life, having in a fit of passion killed a Russian officer who had
struck him with a whip. He came from the neighbourhood of Kasan in the
far west. Godfrey took a strong liking to him, and was not long before
he conceived the idea that when he made his escape he would, if
possible, take Luka with him. Such companionship would be of immense
advantage, and would greatly diminish the difficulties of the journey.
As for Luka, he became greatly attached to his pupil. The Tartars were
looked down upon by their fellow-prisoners, and the terms of equality
with which Godfrey chatted with them, and his knowledge of the world,
which seemed to the Tartar to be prodigious, made him look up to him
with unbounded respect.
The friendship was finally cemented by an occurrence that took place
three months after Godfrey arrived at the prison. Among the convicts was
a man named Kobylin, a man of great strength. He boasted that he had
committed ten murders, and was always bullying and tyrannizing the
quieter and weaker prisoners. One day he passed where Luka and Godfrey
were sitting on the edge of the plank bed talking together. Luka
happened to get up just as he came along, and Kobylin gave him a violent
push, saying, "Get out of the way, you miserable little Tartar dog."
Luka fell with his head against the edge of the bench, and lay for a
time half stunned. Godfrey leapt to his feet, and springing forward
struck the bully a right-handed blow straight from the shoulder. The man
staggered back several paces, and fell over the opposite bench. Then,
with a shout of fury, he recovered his feet and rushed at Godfrey, with
his arms extended to grasp him; but the lad, who had been one of the
best boxers at Shrewsbury, awaited his onset calmly, and, making a
spring forward just as Kobylin reached him, landed a blow, given with
all his strength and the impetus of his spring, under the Russian's
chin, and the man went backwards as if he had been shot.
A roar of applause broke from the convicts. Mikail rushed forward, but
Godfrey said to him:
"Let us alone, Mikail. This fellow has been a nuisance in the ward
ever since I came. It is just as well that he should have a lesson. I
sha'n't do him any harm. Just leave us alone for a minute or two; he
won't want much more."
[Illustration: GODFREY PUNISHES KOBYLIN IN THE CONVICT PRISON.]
The Russian rose slowly to his feet, bewildered and half stupefied by
the blow and fall. He would probably have done nothing more; but,
maddened by the taunts and jeers of the others, he gathered himself
together and renewed the attack, but he in vain attempted to seize his
active opponent. Godfrey eluded his furious rushes, and before he could
recover himself, always succeeded in getting in two or three straight
blows, and at last met him, as in his first rush, and knocked him off
his feet.
By this time Kobylin had had enough of it, and sat on the floor
bewildered and crestfallen. Everything that a Russian peasant does not
understand savours to him of magic; and that he, Kobylin, should have
been thus vanquished by a mere lad seemed altogether beyond nature. He
could not understand how it was that he had been unable to grasp his
foe, or how that, like a stroke of lightning, these blows had shot into
his face. Even the jeering and laughter of his companions failed to stir
him. The Russian peasant is accustomed to be beaten, and is humble to
those who are his masters. Kobylin rose slowly to his feet.
"You have beaten me," he said humbly. "I do not know how; forgive me; I
was wrong. I am ignorant, and did not know."
"Say no more about it," Godfrey replied. "We have had a quarrel, and
there is an end of it. There need be no malice. We are all prisoners
here together, and it is not right that one should bully others because
he happens to be a little stronger. There are other things besides
strength. You behaved badly, and you have been punished. Let us smoke
our pipes, and think no more about it."
The sensation caused in the ward by the contest was prodigious, and the
victory of this lad was as incomprehensible to the others as to Kobylin
himself. The rapidity with which the blows were delivered, and the ease
with which Godfrey had evaded the rushes of his opponent, seemed to
them, as to him, almost magical, and from that moment they regarded
Godfrey as being possessed of some strange power, which placed him
altogether apart from themselves. Osip and the other men of the same
stamp warmly congratulated Godfrey.
"What magic is this?" Osip said, taking him by the shoulders and looking
with wonder at him. "I have been thinking you but a lad, and yet that
strong brute is as a child in your hands. It is the miracle of David and
Goliath over again."
"It is simply skill against brute force, Osip. I may tell you, what I
have not told anyone before since I came here, that my mother was
English. I did not say so, because, as you may guess, I feared that were
it known and reported it might be traced who I was, and then, instead of
being merely classed as a vagabond, I should be sent back to the prison
I escaped from, and be put among another class of prisoners."
"I understand, Ivan. Of course I have all along felt sure you were a
political prisoner; and I thought, perhaps, you might have been a
student in Switzerland, which would account for you having ideas
different to other people."
"No, I was sent for a time to a school in England, and there I learned
to box."
"So, that is your English boxing," Osip said. "I have heard of it, but I
never thought it was anything like that. Why, he never once touched
you."
"If he had, I should have got the worst of it," Godfrey laughed; "but
there was nothing in it. Size and weight go for very little in boxing;
and a man knowing nothing about it has not the smallest chance against a
fair boxer who is active on his legs."
"But you did not seem to be exerting yourself," Osip said. "You were as
cool and as quiet as if you had been shovelling sand. You even laughed
when he rushed at you."
"That is the great point of boxing, Osip. One learns to keep cool, and
to have one's wits about one; for anyone who loses his temper has but a
poor chance indeed against another who keeps cool. Moreover a man who
can box well will always keep his head in all times of danger and
difficulty. It gives him nerve and self-confidence, and enables him at
all times to protect the weak against the strong."
"Just as you did now," Osip said. "Well, I would not have believed it if
I had not seen it. I am sure we all feel obliged to you for having taken
down that fellow Kobylin. He and a few others have been a nuisance for
some time. You may be sure there will be no more trouble with them after
the lesson you have given."
Luka's gratitude to Godfrey was unbounded, and from that time he would
have done anything on his behalf, while the respect with which he had
before regarded him was redoubled. Therefore when one day Godfrey said
to him, "When the spring comes, Luka, I mean to try to escape, and I
shall take you with me," the Tartar considered it to be a settled thing,
and was filled with a deep sense of gratitude that his companion should
deem him worthy of sharing in his perils.
Winter set in in three weeks after Godfrey reached Kara, and the work at
the mine had to be abandoned. As much employment as possible was made
for the convicts. Some were sent out to aid in bringing in the trees
that had been felled during the previous winter for firewood, others
sawed the wood up and split it into billets for the stoves, other
parties went out into the forest to fell trees for the next winter's
fires. Some were set to whitewash the houses, a process that was done
five times a year; but in spite of all this there was not work for half
the number. The time hung very heavily on the hands of those who were
unemployed. Godfrey was not of this number, for as soon as the work at
the mine terminated he received an order to work in the office as a
clerk.
He warmly appreciated this act of kindness on the part of the
commandant. It removed him from the constant companionship of the
convicts, which was now more unpleasant than before, as during the long
hours of idleness quarrels were frequent and the men became surly and
discontented. Besides this he received regular pay for his work, and
this was of importance, as it was necessary to start upon such an
undertaking as he meditated with as large a store of money as possible.
He had, since his arrival, refused to join in any of the proposals for
obtaining luxuries from outside. The supply of food was ample, for in
addition to the bread and soup there was, three or four times a week, an
allowance of meat, and his daily earnings in the mines were sufficient
to pay for tobacco and tea. Even the ten roubles he had handed over to
Mikail remained untouched.
One reason why he was particularly glad at being promoted to the office
was that he had observed, upon the day when he first arrived, a large
map of Siberia hanging upon the wall; and although he had obtained from
Alexis and others a fair idea of the position of the towns and various
convict settlements, he knew nothing of the wild parts of the country
through which he would have to pass, and the inhabited portion formed
but a small part indeed of the whole. During the winter months he seized
every opportunity, when for a few minutes he happened to be alone in the
office, to study the map and to obtain as accurate an idea as possible
of the ranges of mountains. One day, when the colonel was out, and the
other two clerks were engaged in taking an inventory of stores, and he
knew, therefore, that he had little chance of being interrupted, he
pushed a table against the wall, and with a sheet of tracing paper took
the outline of the northern coast from the mouth of the Lena to Norway,
specially marking the entrances to all rivers however small. He also
took a tracing, giving the positions of the towns and rivers across the
nearest line between the head of Lake Baikal and the nearest point of
the Angara river, one of the great affluents of the Yenesei.
The winter passed slowly and uneventfully. The cold was severe, but he
did not feel it, the office being well warmed, and the heat in the
crowded prison far greater than was agreeable to him. At Christmas there
were three days of festivity. The people of Kara, and the peasants
round, all sent in gifts for the prisoners. Every one laid by a little
money to buy special food for the occasion, and vodka had been smuggled
in. The convicts of the different prisons were allowed to visit each
other freely, and although there was much drunkenness on Christmas Day
there were no serious quarrels. All were on their best behaviour, but
Godfrey was glad when all was over and they returned to their ordinary
occupations again, for the thought of the last Christmas he had spent in
England brought the change in his circumstances home to him more
strongly than ever, and for once his buoyant spirits left him, and he
was profoundly depressed, while all around him were cheerful and gay.
Nothing surprised Godfrey more than the brutal indifference with which
most of the prisoners talked of the crimes they had committed, except
perhaps the indifference with which these stories were listened to. It
seemed to him indeed that some of the convicts had almost a pride in
their crimes, and that they even went so far as to invent atrocities for
the purpose of giving themselves a supremacy in ferocity over their
fellows. He noticed that those who were in for minor offences, such as
robbery with violence, forgery, embezzlement, and military
insubordination, were comparatively reticent as to their offences, and
that it was those condemned for murder who were the most given to
boasting about their exploits.
"One could almost wish," he said one day to his friend Osip, "that one
had the strength of Samson, to bring the building down and destroy the
whole of them."
"I am very glad you have not, if you have really a fancy of that sort. I
have not the least desire to be finished off in that sudden way."
"But it is dreadful to listen to them," Godfrey said. "I cannot
understand what the motive of government can be in sending thousands of
such wretches out here instead of hanging them. I can understand
transporting people who have been convicted of minor offences, as, when
their term is up, they may do well and help to colonize the country. But
what can be hoped from such horrible ruffians as these? They have the
trouble of keeping them for years, and even when they are let out no one
can hope that they will turn out useful members of the community. They
probably take to their old trade and turn brigands."
"I don't think they do that. Some of those who escape soon after coming
out might do so, but not when they have been released. They would not
care then to run the risk of either being flogged to death by the
_plete_ or kept in prison for the rest of their lives. Running away is
nothing. I have heard of a man, who had run away repeatedly, being
chained to a barrow which he had to take with him wherever he went,
indoors and out. That is the worst I ever heard of, for as for flogging
with rods these fellows think very little of it. They will often walk
back in the autumn to the same prison they went from, take their
flogging, and go to work as if nothing had happened. They are never
flogged with the _plete_ for that sort of thing; that is kept for murder
or heading a mutiny in which some of the officials have been killed. No;
the brigands are chiefly composed of long-sentence men who have got away
early, and who perhaps have killed a Cossack or a policeman who tried to
arrest them, or some peasant who will not supply them with food. After
that they dare not return, and so join some band of brigands in order to
be able to keep to the woods through the winter. I think that very few
of the men who have once served their time and been released ever come
back again."
During the winter the food, although still ample, was less than the
allowance they had received while working. The allowance of bread was
reduced by a pound a day, and upon Wednesdays and Fridays, which were
fast days, no meat was issued except to those engaged in chopping up
firewood or bringing in timber from the forest. Leather gloves were
served out to all men working in the open air, but in spite of this
their hands were frequently frost-bitten. The evenings would have been
long indeed to Godfrey had it not been for his Tartar instructor; the
two would sit on the bench in the angle of the room and would talk
together in Tartar eked out by Russian. The young fellow's face was much
more intelligent than those of the majority of his countrymen, and there
was a merry and good-tempered expression in his eyes. They chatted about
his home and his life there. His mother had been an Ostjak, and he had
spent some years among her tribe on the banks both of the Obi and
Yenesei, but had never been far north on either river. He took his
captivity easily. His father and mother both died when he had been a
child, and when he was not with the Ostjaks he had lived with his
father's brother, who had, he said, "droves of cattle and horses."
"If they would put me to work on a river," he said, "I should not mind.
Here one has plenty to eat, and the work is not hard, and there is a
warm room to sleep in, but I should like to be employed in cutting
timber and taking it in rafts down the river to the sea. I love the
river, and I can shoot. All the Ostjaks can shoot, though shooting has
brought me bad luck. If I had not had my bow in my hand when that
Russian struck me I should not be here now. It was all done in a moment.
You see I was on the road when his sledge came along. The snow was fresh
and soft, and I did not hear it coming. The horses swerved, nearly
upsetting the sledge, and knocking me down in the snow. Then I got up
and swore at the driver, and then the Russian, who was angry because the
sledge had nearly been upset, jumped out, caught the whip from the
driver and struck me across the face. It hurt me badly, for my face was
cold. I had been in the wood shooting squirrels, and I hardly know how
it was, but I fitted an arrow to the string and shot. It was all over in
a moment, and there he lay on the snow with the arrow through his
throat. I was so frightened that I did not even try to run away, and was
stupid enough to let the driver hold me till some people came up and
carried me off to prison; so you see my shooting did me harm. But it was
hard to be sent here for life for a thing like that. He was a bad man
that Russian. He was an officer in one of the regiments there, and a
soldier who was in prison with me afterwards told me that there was
great joy among the soldiers when he was killed."
"But it was very wrong, Luka, to kill a man like that."
"Yes; but then you see I hadn't time to think. I was almost mad with
pain, and it was all done in a minute. I think it is very hard that I
should be punished as much as I am when there are many here who have
killed five or six people, or more, and some of them women, and they
have no worse punishment than I have. Look at Kobylin; he was a bandit
first of all, as I have heard him say over and over again. He beat his
wife to death, because she scolded him for being drunk, then he took to
the woods. The first he killed was a Jew pedlar, then he burnt down the
house of the head-man of a village because he had put the police on his
track. He killed him as he rushed out from the door, and his wife and
children were burnt alive. He killed four or five others on the road,
and when he was betrayed, as he was asleep in the hut, he cut down with
an axe two of the policemen who came to arrest him. He is in for life,
but he is a great deal worse than I am, is he not?
"Then there is that little Koshkin, the man who is always walking about
smiling to himself. He was a clerk to a notary, and he murdered his
master and mistress and two servant women, and got away with the money
and lived on it for a year; then he went into another family and did the
same, but this time the police got on his track and caught him. Nine
lives he took altogether, not in a passion or because they were cruel to
him. I heard him say that he was quite a favourite, and how he used to
sing to them and was trusted in every way. No, I say it isn't fair that
I, who did nothing but just pay a man for a blow, should get as much as
those two."
"It does seem rather hard on you, but you see there cannot be a great
variety of punishments. You killed a man, and so you had sentence for
life. They can't give more than that, and if they were to give less
there would be more murders than there are, for every one would think
that they could kill at least one person without being punished very
heavily for it."
"I don't call mine murder at all," Luka said. "I would not kill a man
for his money; but this was just a fight. Whiz went his whip across my
face, and then whiz went my arrow."
"Oh, it is not so bad, Luka, I grant. If you had killed a man in cold
blood I would have had nothing to do with you. I could not be friends
with a man who was a cold-blooded murderer. I could never give him my
hand, or travel with him, or sleep by his side. I don't feel that with
you. In the eye of the law you committed a murder, and the law does not
ask why it was done, or care in what way it was done. The law only says
you killed the man, and the punishment for that is imprisonment for
life. But I, as a man, can see that there is a great difference in the
moral guilt, and that, acting as you did in a fit of passion, suddenly
and without premeditation, and smarting under an assault, it was what we
should in England call manslaughter. Before I asked you to teach me,
when Osip first said that he should recommend me to try you, I saw by
the badge on your coat that you were in for murder, and if it had not
been that he knew how it came about, I would not have had anything to do
with you, even if I had been obliged to give up altogether my idea of
learning your language."
The starosta continued a steady friend to Godfrey. The lad acted as a
sort of deputy to him, and helped him to keep the accounts of the money
he spent for the convicts, and the balance due to them, and once did him
real service. As Mikail's office was due to the vote of the prisoners,
his authority over them was but slight, and although he was supported by
a considerable majority of them there were some who constantly opposed
him, and at times openly defied his authority. Had Mikail reported their
conduct they would have been severely punished; but they knew he was
very averse to getting any one into trouble, and that he preferred to
settle things for himself. He was undoubtedly the most powerful man in
the ward, and even the roughest characters feared to provoke him singly.
On one occasion, however, after he had knocked down a man who had
refused to obey his orders, six or seven of his fellow convicts sprung
on him. Godfrey, Osip, and three or four of the better class of convicts
rushed to his assistance, and for a few minutes there was a fierce
fight, the rest of the prisoners looking on at the struggle but taking
no active part one way or the other. The assailants were eventually
overpowered, and nothing might have been said about the matter had it
not been that one of Mikail's party was seriously injured, having an arm
broken and being severely kicked. Mikail was therefore obliged to report
the matter, and the whole of the men concerned in the attack upon him
received a severe flogging.
"I should look out for those fellows, Mikail," Godfrey said, "or they
may injure you if they have a chance."
Mikail, however, scoffed at the idea of danger.
"They have got it pretty severely now," he said, "and the colonel told
them that if there was any more insubordination he would give them the
_plete_; and they have a good deal too much regard for their lives to
risk that. You won't hear any more of it. They know well enough that I
would not have reported them if I had not been obliged to do so, owing
to Boulkin's arm being broken; therefore it isn't fair having any grudge
against me. They have been flogged before most of them, and by the time
the soreness has passed off they will have forgotten it."
Godfrey did not feel so sure of that, and determined to keep his eye
upon the men. He did not think they would openly assault the starosta,
but at night one of them might do him an injury, relying upon the
difficulty of proving under such circumstances who had been the
assailant.
The solitary candle that burned in the ward at night was placed well out
of reach and protected by a wire frame. It could not, therefore, be
extinguished, but the light it gave was so faint that, except when
passing just under the beam from which it hung, it would be impossible
to identify any one even at arm's-length. Two of those concerned in the
attack on Mikail were the men of whom Luka had been speaking. Kobylin
the bandit muttered and scowled whenever the starosta came near him, and
there could be little doubt that had he met him outside the prison walls
he would have shown him no mercy. Koshkin on the other hand appeared to
cherish no enmity.
"I have done wrong, Mikail," he said half an hour after he had had his
flogging, "and I have been punished for it. It was not your fault; it
was mine. These things will happen, you know, and there is no need for
malice;" and he went about the ward smiling and rubbing his hands as
usual and occasionally singing softly to himself. As Godfrey knew how
submissive the Russians are under punishment he would have thought this
perfectly natural had he not heard from Luka the man's history. That was
how, he thought to himself, the scoundrel smiled upon the master and
mistress he had resolved to murder. "Of the two I think there is more to
be feared from him than from that villain Kobylin, who has certainly
been civil enough to me since I gave him that thrashing. I will keep my
eye on the little fellow."
Of necessity the ward became quiet very soon after night set in. The men
talked and smoked for a short time, but in an hour after the candle was
lit the ward was generally perfectly quiet. Godfrey, working as he did
indoors, was far less inclined for sleep than either the men who had
been working in the forest or those who had been listlessly passing the
day in enforced idleness, and he generally lay awake for a long time,
either thinking of home and school-days, or in meditating over his plans
for escape as soon as spring arrived, and he now determined to keep
awake still longer. "They are almost all asleep by seven o'clock," he
said to himself. "If any of those fellows intend to do any harm to
Mikail they will probably do it by ten or eleven, there will be no
motive in putting it off longer; and indeed the ward is quieter then
than it is later, for some of them when they wake light a pipe and have
a smoke, and many do so early in the morning so as to have their smoke
before going to work."
Five evenings passed without anything happening, and Godfrey began to
think that he had been needlessly anxious, and that Mikail must
understand the ways of his own people better than he did. The sixth
evening had also passed off quietly, and when Godfrey thought that it
must be nearly twelve o'clock he was about to pull his blanket up over
his ear and settle himself for sleep when he suddenly caught sight of a
stooping figure coming along. It was passing under the candle when he
caught sight of it. He did not feel quite sure that his eyes had not
deceived him, for it was but a momentary glance he caught of a dark
object an inch or two above the level of the feet of the sleepers.
Godfrey noiselessly pushed down his blanket, gathered his feet up in
readiness for a spring, and grasped one of his shoes, which as usual he
had placed behind the clothes-bag that served as his pillow. Several of
the sleepers were snoring loudly, and intently as he listened he heard
no footfall. In a few seconds, however, a dark figure arose against the
wall at the foot of the bench; it stood there immovable for half a
minute and then leaned over Mikail, placing one hand on the wall as if
to enable him to stretch as far over as possible without touching the
sleeper. Godfrey waited no longer but brought the shoe down with all his
force on the man's head, and then threw himself upon him pinning him
down for a moment upon the top of Mikail. The latter woke with a shout
of surprise followed by a sharp cry of pain. Godfrey clung to the man,
who, as with a great effort he rose, dragged him from the bed, and the
two rolled on the ground together. Mikail's shout had awakened the whole
ward and a sudden din arose. Mikail leapt from the bench and as he did
so fell over the struggling figures on the ground.
"Get hold of his hands, Mikail," Godfrey shouted, "he has got a knife
and I can't hold him."
But in the dark it was some time before the starosta could make out the
figures on the floor. Suddenly Godfrey felt Mikail's hand on his throat.
"That's me," he gasped. The hand was removed and a moment later he felt
the struggles of his adversary cease, and there was a choking sound.
"That is right, Mikail, but don't kill him," he said.
At this moment the door at the end of the ward opened and two of the
guard ran in with lanterns. They shouted orders to the convicts to keep
their places on the benches.
"This way," Mikail called, "there has been attempted murder, I believe."
The guards came up with the lanterns.
"What has happened to him?" one of them said, bending over the man who
was lying insensible on the ground.
"He is short of wind," Mikail said, "that is all that ails him; I had to
choke him off."
"But what is it all about?"
"I don't know myself," Mikail said. "I was asleep when I felt a thump as
if a cow had fallen on me, then I felt a sharp stab on the hip, two of
them one after the other, then the weight was lifted suddenly off and I
jumped up. As I put my feet on the ground I tumbled over Ivan here
and--who is it? Hold the lantern close to his face--ah, Koshkin. What is
it, Ivan, are you hurt?"
"He ran his knife pretty deep into my leg once or twice," Godfrey said.
"I got his arms pinned down, but I could not keep him from moving his
hands. If we had lain quiet he would have hurt me seriously, I expect;
but we were both struggling, so he only got a chance to give me a dig
now and then."
"But what is it all about, Ivan, for I don't quite understand yet?"
Mikail asked.
"I told you, Mikail, that fellow would do you a mischief. You laughed at
me, but I was quite sure that that smiling manner of his was all put on.
I have lain awake for the last five nights to watch, and to-night I just
caught sight of something crawling along at the edge of the bench. He
stood up at your feet and leant over, as I thought then, and I know now,
to stab you, but I flung myself on him, and you know the rest of it."
"Well, you have saved my life, there is no mistake about that," and
Mikail lifted and laid him on the bench. "Now," he said to the guards,
"you had better take that fellow out and put him in the guard cell, the
cold air will bring him round as soon as you get him out of this room.
You had better hold him tight when he does, for he is a slippery
customer. When you have locked him up will one of you go round to the
doctor's? This young fellow is bleeding fast, and I fancy I have lost a
good deal of blood myself."
As soon as the soldiers had left the ward carrying Koshkin between them
Mikail called Osip and Luka. "Here," he said, "get the lad's things down
from under his iron belt and try and stop the bleeding till the doctor
comes. I feel a bit faint myself or I would ask no one else to do it."
In ten minutes the doctor arrived. Godfrey had three cuts about half-way
between the hip and the knee.
"They are of no consequence except for the bleeding," the doctor said.
"Has anyone got a piece of cord?"
"There is a piece in my bag," Mikail replied. The doctor took it and
made a rough tourniquet above the wounds, then drew the edges together,
put in two stitches in each, and then strapped them up. Then he attended
to Mikail. "You have had a narrow escape," he said; "the knife has
struck on your hip bone and made a nasty gash, and there is another just
below it. If the first wound had been two inches higher there would have
been nothing to do but to bury you."
"Well, this is a nice business," Mikail said, when the doctor had left.
"To think of that little villain being so treacherous! You were right
and I was wrong, Ivan, though how you guessed he was up to mischief is
more than I can imagine."
"Well, you know the fellow's history, Mikail, and that he had murdered
nine people he had lived among and who trusted him. What could one
expect from a villain like that?"
"Oh, I know he is a bad one," Mikail said, "but I did not think he dare
take the risk."
"I don't suppose he thought there was much risk, Mikail. If I had been
asleep he would have stabbed you to the heart, and when we found you
dead in the morning who was to know what prisoner had done it?"
"Well, it was a lucky thought my putting you next to me, young fellow; I
meant it for your good not for my own, and now you see it has saved my
life."
"A kind action always gets its reward, Mikail--always, sooner or later;
in your case it has been sooner, you see. Now I shall go off to sleep,
for I feel as drowsy as if I had been up for the last three nights."