Condemned as a Nihilist: A Story of Escape from Siberia. Henty George Alfred
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in readiness. Each prisoner had a separate compartment, his two guards accompanying him. Godfrey addressed a word to his custodians. The policeman, however, said, "You are forbidden to speak," and in a minute or two the train moved off.
Godfrey dozed occasionally until morning, and then looked out at the dark woods through which they passed for hours. Twice the train stopped at lonely stations, and the prisoners were supplied with food. In the afternoon Godfrey saw the gilded and painted domes of a great city, and knew that it must be Moscow. Here, however, they made no stay, but steamed straight through the station and continued their way. Godfrey slept soundly after it became dark, waking up once when the train came to a standstill. At early morning he was roused and ordered to alight, and in the same order as before the prisoners were marched through the streets of Nijni Novgorod to the bank of the Volga. Few people were yet abroad in the streets, but all they met looked pityingly at the group of exiles, a sight of daily occurrence in the springtime of the year. Ordinary prisoners, of whom from fifteen to twenty thousand are sent annually to Siberia, are taken down the Volga in a convict barge, towed by a steamer, in batches of six or seven hundred. Political prisoners are differently treated; they are carried on board the ordinary steamer, each having a separate cabin, and during the voyage they are allowed no intercourse whatever, either with each other or with the ordinary passengers.
Of these there were a considerable number on board the steamer, as the season had but just begun, and merchants, traders, and officials were taking advantage of the river's being open to push forward into Siberia. At present, however, these were all below. The prisoners were conducted to the cabins reserved for them, and then locked in. Presently Godfrey heard a buzz of many voices and a general movement in the cabin outside, and the fact that he was a prisoner and cut off from the world came to him more strongly than it had hitherto done. An hour later there was a movement and shouting overhead. Then he felt the paddles revolving, and knew that the steamer was under way. He could, however, see nothing. A sort of shutter was fastened outside the scuttle, which gave him the opportunity to take a glimpse of the sky, but nothing of the shore or water. Nothing could be more monotonous than the journey, and yet the air and light that came down through the port-hole rendered it far more pleasant than existence in a prison cell. He knew, too, that, dull as it was in the cabin, there would be little to see on deck, for the shores of the rivers were everywhere flat and low.
After twenty-four hours' travel the steamer stopped. Since Godfrey had been in Russia he had naturally studied the geography of the empire, and knew a good deal about the routes. He guessed, therefore, that the halt was at Kasan, the capital of the old Tartar kingdom. It was a break to him to listen to the noises overhead, to guess at the passengers who were leaving and coming on board, to listen to scraps of conversation that could be heard through the open port-hole, and to the shouts of farewell from those on board to those on shore as the vessel steamed on again. He knew that after two hours' more steaming down the Volga the vessel turned up the Kama, a large river running into it and navigable for 1400 miles. Up this the vessel steamed for three days and then reached Perm. In the evening Godfrey and his companions were disembarked and, strictly guarded as before, were marched to the railway-station, placed in a special carriage attached to a train, and after twenty-four hours' travel at the rate of about twelve miles an hour reached Ekaterinburg. This railway had only been open for a year, and until its completion this portion of the journey had been one of the most tiresome along the whole route, as the Ural Mountains intervene between Perm and Ekaterinburg; their height is not great here, and the railway crosses them at not more than 1700 feet above sea-level.
On arriving at the station half the prisoners were at once placed in vehicles and the others were sent to the prison. Godfrey was one of the party that went on at once. The vehicle, which was called a telega, was a sort of narrow waggon without springs, seats, or cover; the bottom was covered with a deep layer of straw, and there were some thick rugs for coverings at night. It was drawn by three horses. Godfrey was in the last of the four vehicles that started together. His soldier guard took his place beside him, four mounted Cossacks rode, two on each side of the procession. The driver, a peasant, to whom the horses belonged, cracked his short-handled whip and the horses sprang forward. Siberian horses are wiry little animals, not taking to the eye, but possessing speed and great endurance. The post-houses are situated from twelve to twenty-five versts apart, according to the difficulty of the country, a verst being about two-thirds of an English mile. At these post-houses relays of horses are always kept in readiness for one or two vehicles, but word is sent on before when political prisoners are coming, and extra relays are obtained by the post-masters from the peasants.
To Godfrey the sensation of being whirled through the air as fast as the horses could gallop was, after his long confinement, perfectly delightful, and he fairly shouted with joy and excitement. Now that they were past Ekaterinburg, Godfrey's guard, a good-tempered-looking young fellow, seemed to consider that it was no longer necessary to preserve an absolute silence, which had no doubt been as irksome to him as to his companion.
"We can talk now. Why are you so merry?"
"To be in the air again is glorious," Godfrey said, "I should not mind how long the journey lasted if it were like this. How far do we travel in carriages?"
"To Tiumen, 300 versts; then we take steamer again, that is if you go farther."
"You don't know where we are going to then?"
"Not at all, it will be known at Tiumen; that is where these things are settled generally, but people like you are under special orders. You don't look very wicked;" and he smiled in a friendly way as he looked at the lad beside him.
"I am not wicked at all, not in the way you think," Godfrey said.
"Do not talk about that," the soldier interrupted, "I must not know anything about you; talk about other things, but not why you are here."
Godfrey nodded. "If we go on beyond Tiumen we go by steamer, do we not?"
"Yes, through Tobolsk to Tomsk, beyond that we shall drive. You are lucky, you people, that you drive, the others walk; it is long work, but not so long as it used to be, they say. I have been told that in the old times, when they started on foot from Moscow it took them sometimes two years to reach the farthest places. Now they have the railway, and the steamers on the river as far as Tomsk."
"How do they take them in the steamers?"
"They take them in great barges that are towed; we passed two on our way to Perm. They hold five or six hundred, there is a great iron cage on deck, and they let half the number up at a time in order to get air. They are always going along at this time of year, for they all go early in the season so as to get to the journey's end before the frosts set in."
"But surely all these men cannot be guilty of great crimes," Godfrey said, "for I have heard that about twenty thousand a year are sent away?"
"No, many of them are only lazy fellows who drink and will not work. We sent away three from my village the year before I was taken for a soldier. They were lazy and would not do their share of work, so the heads of the village met and decided that they should go to Siberia. They drew up a paper, which was sent to be confirmed by the judge of the district, and then soldiers came and took them away."
"But you don't mean to say," Godfrey said, "that men are sent to prison all their lives because they are lazy."
"Oh no, no one would think of such a thing as that! Men like these are only sent to the big towns, Tiumen, or Perm, or Tobolsk, and then they are settled on land or work in the towns, but they are free to do as they like. The country wants labour, and men who won't work at home and expect the community to keep them have to work here or else they would starve. Then there are numbers who are only guilty of some small offence. They have stolen something, or they have resisted the tax-gatherer, or something of that sort. They only go to prison for the term of their sentences, perhaps only three or four months, and then they too are free like the others, and can work in the towns, or trade if they happen to have money to set them up, or they can settle in a village and take up land and cultivate it. They can live where they like in Siberia. I had many rich men pointed out to me in Tobolsk who had come out as convicts."
"You have been here before then?" Godfrey said.
"Yes, this is my second journey. I hope I shall come no more. We