The G.A. Henty

by G. A. Henty

  The next morning at daybreak Godfrey was placed in a vehicle. A soldier mounted by the side of the driver, the latter shouted to his horses, and started at full gallop. Soon after leaving the town they passed a caravan of forty carts carrying tea. The soldier, who appeared a chatty fellow, told him they would be three months on their way to Moscow. At a town named Verchne Udinsk they regained the main road and turned east and continued their journey through Chita, a town of three thousand inhabitants, to Nertchinsk, a distance of six hundred miles. The country was hilly, and for the most part wooded, but varied at times by rolling prairies on which large herds of cattle were grazing. The journey was far more pleasant than that Godfrey had before made, for being no longer regarded as a political prisoner his guard chatted with him freely; and at night, instead of having to sleep in the vehicle in the open air, he was lodged in the convict stations, which, as the season was late, were for the most part unoccupied. He was glad, however, when he arrived at Nertchinsk, for the jolting of the springless vehicle was very trying. He did not see the governor of the prison, but was at once assigned to a cell there on the guard handing to the authorities the official report of the governor at Kiakhta.

  “You are to go on again to-morrow,” the warder said to him that evening. “We are full here, and there is a party going on to Kara. You will go with them. The barber will be here to shave you directly. You have not been out very long, judging by the length of your hair. Here is your prison dress. You must put that on to-morrow instead of the one you have on, but you may carry yours with you if you like, it will be useful to you when your term in the prison is done.”

  Accordingly the next morning Godfrey was taken into the court-yard, where some fifty other prisoners were assembled, and ten minutes later marched off under a guard of eight mounted Cossacks. He carried his peasant’s clothes and fur coat rolled up into a bundle on his shoulder, and had, after he changed his dress, sewn up his money in the collar of his jacket with a needle and thread he had brought with him, keeping out some twenty roubles for present purposes. The journey occupied five days, the marches averaging twenty-five miles apiece. The prisoners talked and sung by the way, picked the blackberries and raspberries that grew thickly on the bushes by the wayside, and at night slept in the stations, their food consisting of very fair broth, with cabbage in it, meat, and black bread. Godfrey was asked no questions. He did not know whether this was because the convicts thought only of themselves, and had no curiosity about their companions, or whether it was a sort of etiquette observed among them. Godfrey was surprised to find how much the country differed from the ideas he had formed of Siberia.

  The forests were beautiful with a great variety of foliage. Late lilies bloomed by the roadside with flowers of other kinds, of whose names he was ignorant. To the north was a chain of hills of considerable height. The forest was alive with birds, and he frequently caught sight of squirrels running about among the branches. No objection was offered by the guards to their making purchases at the villages through which they passed, except that they would not allow them to buy spirits. At the first opportunity Godfrey laid out four or five roubles in tea and tobacco, some of which he presented to the guards, and divided the rest among his fellow-prisoners, who forthwith dubbed him “the count.” At length Kara was reached. It was not a town, but purely a convict settlement, the prisoners being divided among four or five prisons situated two or three miles from each other. They were first marched to the most central of these. Here they were inspected by the governor, who had the details of each case reported by the authorities of the prisons they had left. They were at once divided into parties in accordance with the vacancies in the various prisons.

  Only four were left behind. These were taken to a guardroom until allotted to the various wards. One by one they were taken out, Godfrey being the last to be summoned. He was conducted to a room in which several convicts were seated writing; through this a long passage led to the governor’s room.

  “You are known as Ivan Holstoff,” the governor said when the warder had retired.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Age?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Charged with being a vagabond, found without papers or documents, and unable to give a satisfactory account of yourself.”

  Godfrey bowed. The colonel glanced through the paper by his side signed by the governor at Kiakhta, and saying that the prisoner had been most favourably reported upon by a wealthy Buriat, a government contractor with whom he had been living out on the plains.

  “You persist in giving no further account of yourself?” the governor asked.

  “I would rather say nothing further, sir,” Godfrey replied.

  “You are not a Russian,” the governor said sharply.

  “I am a Russian born,” the lad replied.

  “You speak with a slight accent.”

  “I was away for some years from my country,” Godfrey replied.

  “I suppose you would call yourself a student?”

  “Yes, sir, I was a student until lately.”

  “You are a young lad to have got yourself into trouble. How was it? Do not tell me what crime you are charged with, but you can tell me anything else. It will go no farther, and there will be no record of what you say.”

  Godfrey liked the officer’s face. It was stern, but sternness is a necessity when a man is in charge of some three thousand prisoners, the greater proportion of whom are desperate men; but there was a kindness in the half-smile with which he spoke.

  “I am here, sir, from pure misfortune. I have no doubt most people you question declare they are innocent, and I do not expect you to believe me. The facts against me were very strong, so strong that I believe any jury would have convicted me upon them, but in spite of that I was innocent. I behaved like a fool, and was made the dupe of others, but beyond that I have nothing whatever to blame myself for or to regret.”

  “It may be as you say,” Colonel Konovovitch said. “I am not here to revise sentences, but to see them carried out. Conduct yourself well, lad, and in two years you will get a permit to reside outside the prison. Three years later you will be practically free, and can go where you like in Siberia and earn your living in any way you choose. Many of the richest men in the country have been convicts. I shall keep an eye on you, and shall make matters as easy for you as I can.”

  He touched the bell, and the warder re-entered and led Godfrey away. The colonel sat for some little time in thought. He liked the lad’s face and his manner, which, although perfectly respectful, had none of the servility with which Russians generally address their superiors. “He did not say that he was a Russian,” he said to himself, “only that he was born in Russia. I should say from his appearance and manner that he was English. What was he sent out here for, I wonder? He may have been a clerk and been condemned for forgery or embezzlement. He may have been a political prisoner, most likely that I should say. He may have got mixed up in some of these Nihilist plots; if so, he has done well to become a vagabond. I can’t help thinking he was speaking the truth when he declared he was innocent. Well, perhaps in the long run it will be the best for him. A clerk’s lot is not a very bright one, and I should say he is likely to make his way anywhere. He has a hard two years’ time before him among those scoundrels, but I should think he is likely to hold his own.”

  Then he dismissed the subject from his thoughts and turned to a pile of papers before him.

  Godfrey, on leaving the presence of the governor, was taken by the warder to one of the prison blocks, and was handed over to the prison official in charge of it. He was taken to a small room and there furnished with a bag in which to keep his underclothing and other effects.

  “You will use this bag for a pillow at night,” the official said. “What money you have you can either give to me to take charge of for you, or can hand it over to the head man of the room to lay out for you as you require it, or you can keep it yourself. If you choose to hold it yourself you had
better keep a very sharp look-out; not that there are any professional thieves here, it is only for very serious offences that men are sent east of Irkutsk.”

  Godfrey thanked the official, but said that what little he had he might as well keep with him. His money in paper was safely hidden in the lining of his convict jacket, and as he knew that that would be worn by night as well as by day, it was perfectly safe there. He was provided with some flannel shirts and other underclothing.

  “I see you have underclothing of your own,” the official said; “but of course you have the regular allowance given you; if you run short of money you can sell them. Now come along with me.”

  Godfrey was led into a large room, where the scene somewhat widely differed from what he had pictured to himself would be the interior of a prison at the dreaded mines of Kara. The room was large and fairly lofty; the walls were clean and whitewashed; down both sides ran benches, six feet wide, similar to one he had seen in an English guard-house. There were some sixty men in the room; some of these were lying upon the bed-places smoking pipes, others were sitting on them talking together or mending their clothes, and several parties were engaged in card-playing. Save for the ugly gray uniforms with the coloured patches in the centre of the back, significant of the term of imprisonment to which their wearers had been sentenced, and the strangely shaved heads of those present, he might have been in a singularly free-and-easy barrack-room. Most of the men looked up as the official entered.

  “A new comrade,” he said. “Mikail Stomoff, do you take him in your charge;” and having said this he at once left the room.

  Mikail Stomoff, a big powerful man, came across to Godfrey. He was the starosta or head man of the ward, elected to the position by the votes of his fellow-prisoners. It was his duty to keep order and prevent quarrelling, and to see that the ward was swept out and kept tidy. He transacted all business for the prisoners, made their purchases outside, and was generally the intermediary between them and the authorities. In return for all this he was free from labour at the mines.

  “Well, my lad,” he said, “you began early. How long are you in for, and what have you done?”

  “I am in here for being a vagabond,” Godfrey said, “and I believe the punishment for that is five years.”

  “A vagabond, eh? we have not many of them here. The wanderers generally work their way west. However, I daresay you had your reasons, and I don’t know that you are not right, for most of us prefer hard work here to the dulness of the prisons in the west. Now, lad,” he went on, dropping his voice, “if you have got any money do not say a word about it. You will be robbed to a certainty if you keep it yourself. The best thing you can do is to hand it over to me, and I will take care of it for you.” Godfrey nodded, and putting his hand in his pocket pulled out the ten-rouble note he had set aside, and two or three smaller notes, and slipped them into the man’s hand.

  “You can have it out as you want it,” the man said; “and anything you want outside I can get for you out of it. The only thing prohibited is vodka.”

  Some of the other men came round, and Godfrey thought he had never seen more villainous faces. Some of them were heavy, stolid, and stupid; others were fierce and passionate.

  “He is a vagabond,” Mikail said to them. “I don’t know what he has been before that, and if he is wise,” and he gave a significant glance at Godfrey, “he will keep that to himself.”

  “I should say he had been a political,” one of the men said in a tone of contempt, for there was a certain jealousy of the politicals among the convict class; because, although their lot was really much harder than that of ordinary convicts, they were allowed to retain their own clothes, were lodged separately, and were almost all men of education, and in many cases of noble family. The feeling was evidenced by the indifference with which the rest of the men strolled away again when they heard the suggestion.

  “How do they all get tobacco?” Godfrey asked the starosta. “Is it part of the rations? Surely the money they may have when they come in here must soon be spent.”

  “We may buy the tobacco,” Mikail said. “Every man has something for his work. They pretend it is half the value of the work we do, but of course we know better than that. Still we all get something each day, and can spend it as we like. I don’t think they allow smoking in the western prisons, but they do in all those east of Irkutsk. The authorities encourage it, indeed, for it is considered healthy and keeps away fever. There are no fevers in summer, but in winter, from so many men being shut up together, the air gets bad and sometimes we have outbreaks of fever.”

  “But where do you buy your tobacco?”

  “People come to the prison gates and sell it as we come back from work. You can buy anything except vodka, and you can buy that, though not openly; it gets smuggled in.”

  “How many hours do you work a day?”

  “Thirteen; but of course it is only for five months in the year. In winter the ground is too hard.”

  “Too hard!” Godfrey repeated. “Why, it never gets cold in mines.”

  “You don’t think you are going to work underground, do you?” the man said; “there are very few underground mines here. It is all on the surface. There are some underground, because I have worked in them. I would rather work there than here. They can’t look after you so sharp, and you can take it as easily as you like.”

  Godfrey looked astonished. His ideas of the Siberian mines had been taken from stories written by men who had never been within thousands of miles of them, and who drew terrible pictures of the sufferings of exiles simply for the purpose of exciting feeling throughout Europe against the Russian government.

  “But it is very unhealthy in the mines underground, is it not?”

  “No; why should it be? It is much cooler and pleasanter working underground than it is in the dust and heat, I can tell you.”

  “But I thought all quicksilver mines were unhealthy.”

  “Quicksilver!” the man repeated; “there is not a quicksilver mine in all Siberia. There is gold and silver, but I don’t believe there is a place where quicksilver is found. Anyhow there is not one that is worked. They have been gammoning you, young fellow.”

  “Well, they have gammoned a good many other people too,” Godfrey said. “I know I have read frightful accounts of the sufferings of prisoners in quicksilver mines.”

  “Who wrote them?” Mikail asked. “There are a few convicts who may years afterwards be proved innocent, and allowed to return to Russia, but they are not the sort that would write lies about this place, for if they did they would soon find themselves on the road again. There are not a dozen men who have ever made their escape. Some of them may have invented lies for the sake of getting pity, and make themselves out to be hard used. Have you ever read any books by them?”

  “Only one,” Godfrey said. “It was written by Baron Rosen; he was a political prisoner who was pardoned after being here a great many years. He described the life of political prisoners, of course, and even that was not very bad. Many of them had their wives with them, and they seem to have lived together pretty comfortably.”

  “Ah! well, I don’t think a political prisoner who came here now would say as much. They are sent to lonely settlements, many of them up at Yakutsk; though, of course, there are some down here. It is a horribly dull life. Some of them do work in the mines, but they are better off than those who have no work to do at all. I would rather be in for murder a hundred times than be a political; and what name do you go by, young fellow?”

  “I am entered as Ivan Holstoff.”

  “That will do well enough. Don’t you be fool enough to tell any one what your real name is. There are sneaks here as well as elsewhere who are glad enough to curry favour so as to get easy jobs, or to be let out sooner than they otherwise would be, by acting as spies; so you keep your real name to yourself. If it got to the ears of the governor he might find out what prison you escaped from and what you were in for, and if you were a poli
tical you would either be sent back there, or put with the politicals here, so keep it to yourself.”

  “Shall I give you my watch?”

  “Yes, I think you had better. It would be of no good to anyone who took it as long as he was in here, but he would be able to sell it when he went to live outside. I will take care of it for you. I have got a safe where I keep the money and things locked.

  “We have got to work, and pretty hard, but I tell you we are a good bit better off than they are in the prisons of Russia. We have got plenty to eat, though I cannot say much for its niceness; anyhow we are a long way better fed than the soldiers who look after us; but here comes the food.”

  A warder brought in a huge tray upon which were placed bowls of a sort of soup, while two others brought baskets piled up with huge chunks of black bread. Mikail took from a cupboard a spoon, and gave it to Godfrey. “You keep this for yourself,” he said; “we don’t have knives and forks, and do not want them.”

  “Is this a day’s allowance of bread?” Godfrey asked, as he took hold of one of the lumps.

  “No. You get as much as that in the morning. Our allowance is four pounds a day, two in the morning and two in the evening. The evening bread generally lasts for evening and morning soup, and we take the morning bread away with us to eat in the middle of the day.”

  Godfrey sat down on the edge of the bed bench and ate his supper. As he looked at the men more carefully he saw that there were greater differences between them than he had at first noticed. Some of them he judged to have been gentlemen, and he afterwards found that there were three or four who had been officers in the army, but sentenced for grave military crimes. There were half a dozen in for forgery or embezzlement, and over thirty for murder. Some among the prisoners were Tartars. These were all in for murder or robbery with violence.

  “Where am I to sleep?” he presently asked Mikail.

  “I sleep in that corner next to the wall. Put your bag next to mine. They are not so likely to play tricks with you then.”