The G.A. Henty

by G. A. Henty

  Some of the prisoners, indeed, scarcely ever exchanged a word with the rest, but moved about in moody silence paying no attention to what was going on around them. Some again were always quarrelling, and seemed to take a delight in stirring up others by giving them unpleasant nicknames, or by turning them into ridicule.

  “I am glad indeed, Mikail,” Godfrey said, as he lay down beside the starosta that night, “that you were not seriously hurt. I only heard to-day that you had a wife waiting for you outside.”

  “Yes, it is true,” Mikail replied. “I never talk of her. I dare not even let myself think of her, it seems too great a happiness to be true; and something may occur, one never knows. Ah, Ivan, if it had not been for you what news would have been taken to her! Think of it, after her long journey out here; after waiting ten years for me, to hear that it was useless. I tremble like a leaf when I think of it. That night I lay awake all night and cried like a young child, not for myself, you know, but for her. She has taken a cottage already, and is furnishing it with her savings. She is allowed to write to me, you know, once every month. At first it was every three months. What happiness it was to me when my first five years was up and she could write once a month! Do you think I shall know her? She will have changed much. I tell myself that always; and I—I have changed much too, but she will know me, I am sure she will know me. I tremble now at the thought of our meeting, Ivan; but I ought not to talk so, I ought not to speak to you of my happiness—you, who have no friend waiting to see you.”

  “I like to hear you talk of your wife, Mikail. My friends are a long way off indeed; but I hope that I shall see them before very long.”

  “You think that you may be pardoned?” Mikail asked.

  “No, I mean to escape.”

  “Ah, lad,” Mikail said kindly, “I don’t suppose there is ever a prisoner comes here who does not say to himself, I will escape. Every spring there are thousands who take to the woods, and scarce one of these but hopes never to see the inside of a prison again, and yet they come back, every one of them.”

  “But there have been escapes, Mikail, therefore there is nothing impossible in it.”

  “There are twenty thousand convicts cross the frontier every year, lad. There is not one man makes his escape in five years.”

  “Well, I mean to be the man this five years, Mikail.”

  “I would not try if I were you. Were you in on a life sentence for murder, or still worse, as a political prisoner, I would say try if you like, for you would have nothing to lose; but you have a good prospect now. I am sure you must have been a political, but now that you have been a wanderer you are so no longer. You have won the governor’s good-will, and as soon as your time is up, perhaps before, you will be allowed to live outside the prison. If you go away in the spring you will, when you return as winter comes on, forfeit all this, and have to begin again. When you come out there will be my little hut ready for you, and such a welcome from my wife and me that you will forget how small and rough it is, and there you will live with us till your five years are up, and you can go anywhere you like in Siberia.”

  “I thank you sincerely, Mikail, and I should, I am sure, be as happy as an exile could be with you and your faithful wife; but if I have to try afresh every year for twenty years I will break out and strive to escape. You know that I am English by my mother’s side. I can tell you now that I am altogether English, and I will gain England or die. At any rate, if it is to be done I will do it. I have health and strength and determination. I have learnt all that there is to be learnt as to the difficulties of the journey. I have more to gain, more to strive for than other prisoners. Even if they escape they cannot return home. They must still be exiled from Russia; must earn their bread among strangers as they are earning it here. I have a home awaiting me—a father, mother, and sisters—to whom I shall come back as one from the grave. Why, man, the difficulties are nothing in comparison to the reward. A journey across Asia is as nothing to the journeys many of my countrymen have made across Africa. Here there is no fear of fever, of savage tribes, or savage beasts. It is in comparison a mere pleasure excursion. I may not succeed next time, just as I did not succeed last year, but succeed in the end I will.”

  “I believe you,” Mikail said earnestly, infected by Godfrey’s enthusiasm. “Did you not overthrow, as if he were a babe, Kobylin, whom everyone else feared? Yes, if anyone can do it you can.”

  At last the long winter was over, the thaw came, and the work at the mine was renewed. Godfrey was afraid that he might be still kept in the office, and he spoke to Mikail on the subject; the latter spoke to one of the officials, and told him that the prisoner Ivan Holstoff petitioned that he might be again put to work on the mine instead of being kept in the office, as he felt his health suffering from the confinement. Two days later Godfrey was called into the governor’s room.

  “I hear that you have asked to go to the mine again, lad.”

  “Yes, sir; I like active work better than sitting indoors all day.”

  The colonel looked at him keenly. “You are doing well here, lad; it will be a pity to have to begin over again. I can guess what is in your thoughts. Think it over, lad, don’t do anything rash; but if—,” and he hesitated, “if you are headstrong and foolish, remember you will be better off here than elsewhere, and that I am never very hard on runaways. That will do; you will go out again with the gang to-morrow.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Godfrey said earnestly, and with a bow returned to his work at the desk in the next room.

  On the following day work at the mine was resumed. Godfrey at once began his preparations for his flight, and as a first step managed to conceal under a lump of rock a heavy hammer and a pick used in the work; he had already laid in a stock of a dozen boxes of matches. The next evening he said to Mikail when they had lain down for the night,—

  “Now, Mikail, I want you to help me.”

  “So you really mean to go?”

  “Yes, my mind is quite made up. I want you to get me in some things from outside.”

  “I will get you anything if you will tell me what you want.”

  “I want most of all two long knives.”

  “Yes, knives are useful,” Mikail said; “but they are awkward things to get. I dare not ask any of the people who trade here to get such a thing. Ah! I know what I will do; I am losing my head. I will steal you two from the kitchen; but that must be done the last thing, for if knives were missed there would be a great search for them. What is the next thing?”

  “I should like a coil of thirty or forty yards of fine rope, and some string. They are always useful things to have.”

  “That is so,” the convict assented.

  “Then I shall want some thread and needles.”

  “There is no difficulty about that; I can buy them for you at the gate. I don’t know what excuse to make to get you the rope, but I will think of something.”

  “I don’t think there is anything else, except that I should like these twenty roubles changed into kopecks.”

  The man nodded. “When will you try?”

  “To-morrow. It is dark now by the time we leave off work; it will be easy to slip away then. Luka is going with me.”

  “That is good,” Mikail said, “he will be very useful; he is a good little fellow, and will be faithful to you. You had best keep steadily west, and give yourself up at Irkutsk. It is a rough road working round by the north of Lake Baikal; but you had better take that way, it is safer than by the south. But no doubt if you are careful you might go that way too. Then the summer after, if you can get away again, you can give up at Tomsk. Once fairly away from here there is no fear of your being overtaken; they never take the trouble to hunt the woods far, they know it is of no use. Remember, as long as you don’t go too far from the road, you will light upon cottages and little farm-houses where you can get something to eat; but if you go too far into the woods you may starve. There will be no berries except strawberries yet, and strawberri
es are not much use to keep life together when you are travelling.”

  “Oh, by the by, there is one more thing I want you to get for me if possible, and that is fish-hooks and line.”

  “That is difficult,” Mikail said; “however, a rouble or two will go a long way. But you must put off your start for another two or three days. The rope and the hooks will need time to get.”

  It was, indeed, the fourth evening before Mikail told Godfrey that he had got everything except the knives. “I will manage to get these in the morning,” he said, “when I go into the kitchen and see about breakfast. If I were you, I would put on those two spare shirts over the one you wear, and take your three spare pairs of stockings. Of course you will wind the rope round your waist. I suppose you will buy bread from the others, there are always plenty ready to sell; you had better take enough for two or three days. Cut it in slices, put them inside your upper shirt with the other things you take, your belt will keep them safe. Don’t try to slip away unless you see a really good opportunity; it is no use being shot at. Besides, with those irons on your legs, they would soon overtake you. Better put it off for another time than to run any risk.”

  Godfrey at once informed Luka that they were to try to escape on the following evening, told him to put on his spare shirts at night, gave him the matches, and told him to stow away in the morning as much bread as he could carry. The young Tartar made no reply beyond a pleasant nod; his confidence in his companion was unbounded. The next morning, while eating their breakfasts by the dim light of a candle, Mikail passed close to Godfrey and slipped two long knives into his hand; these he hid instantly inside his shirt.

  “I have got the bread,” Mikail said; “it was better for me to buy it than you. I have put it under your bag.”

  As it was quite dark in the corner of the room Godfrey had no difficulty in cutting up the hunks of bread, and concealing them without observation. Mikail strolled up while he was so engaged. Godfrey had already given him money for the various purchases, and he now pressed a hundred-rouble note into his hand, and said:

  “Now, Mikail, you must take this from me; it is not a present to you, but to your brave wife. When you get out you will want to do your share towards making the house she has got for you comfortable. Till you get your free ticket you will still be working in the mines like the others; and though you will get the same pay as free labourers then, it will be some time before you can lay much by. When your term is over you will want to take up a piece of land and farm, and you must have money for this until your crops grow.”

  “I will not take it,” the man said huskily; “it is a hundred roubles. I would not rob you; you will want every kopeck you have. The money would be a curse to me.”

  “I have five hundred still left, Mikail, which will be ample for me. You will grieve me if you refuse to take it. It will be pleasant to me, whether I am taken again or whether I escape, to think that I have made one home happier for my stay here, and that you and your brave wife, in your comfortable home, think sometimes of the young fellow you were kind to.”

  “If you wish it I will take it,” Mikail said. “Feodora and I will pray before the ikon to the saints morning and night to protect you wherever you may be.”

  “Pray for me as Godfrey Bullen, Mikail; that is my real name. I am English, and it is to England I shall make my way.”

  “Godfrey Bullen,” the man repeated four or five times over. “I shall not forget it. Feodora and I will teach it to our children if the good God should send us any.”

  “I should like to let you know if I get safely home,” Godfrey said; “how can I write to you?”

  “I can receive letters when I am out of prison,” Mikail said. “You know my name, Mikail Stomoff; put Karoff, that is the name of the village my wife lives at—Karoff, near Kara. If the letter does not come until my term is over, and I have left, I will leave word there where it can be forwarded to me.”

  “I hope that you will get it long before that, Mikail. The journey is too long to do in one summer. I shall winter somewhere in the north, and I hope to be in England by the following autumn; therefore, if I have got safely away, you may look for a letter before the Christmas after next. If it does not come by that time, you will know that I have failed in my first attempt, and then you will, I hope, get one a year later. I shall, of course, be careful what I say; in case it should be opened and read, there will be nothing in it about your knowing that I intended to escape.”

  “We shall look for it, Godfrey Bullen, we shall look for it always, and pray the good God to send it to us.”

  The next morning when Godfrey rose he wrung Mikail’s hand warmly.

  “God bless you,” the starosta said with tears in his eyes. “I shall not come near you again; they would see that something was strange with me, and when you were missing, would guess that I knew you were going. May all the saints preserve you.”

  Before they formed up to march to their work, Godfrey shook hands with his friend Osip. “I am going to try on our way back to-night,” he said.

  “Good-bye, and good luck to you,” Osip replied. “I would go with you if I was in for life; but I have lost two years already by running away, and I dare not try again.”

  During the day Godfrey observed very carefully the spot where he had hidden the tools, so that he might be able to find it in the dark, piling three small stones one on the top of the other by the roadside at the point nearest to it. When work was over, he managed to fall in with Luka at the rear of the line. A Cossack marched alongside of him.

  “Five roubles,” Godfrey whispered, “if you will let us drop behind.”

  Five roubles was a large sum to the soldier. The life of the guards was really harder than that of the prisoners, except that they did no work, for they had to mount guard at night when the convicts slept, and their rations were much more scanty than those given to the working convicts, and they were accustomed to eke out their scanty pay by taking small bribes for winking at various infractions of the prison rules. The Cossack at once held out his hand. Godfrey slipped five rouble notes into it. They kept on till they reached a wood, where beneath the shadow of the trees it was already perfectly dark.

  The Cossack had stepped forward two or three paces and was walking by the next couple.

  “Now, Luka,” Godfrey said, and the two sprang off the path among the trees. They waited two or three minutes, then returned to the road and hurried back to the mine. They had been the last party to start for the prison, and the place was quite deserted. It took them fully half an hour to find the tools. The rings round their ankles were sufficiently loose to enable the pick to be inserted between them and the leg; thrusting it in as far as it would go under the rivet, it was comparatively easy work to break off the head with the hammer. In ten minutes both were free. Leaving the chains and tools behind them, they made their way out of the cutting and struck across the country, and in an hour entered the forest. It was too dark here to permit them to proceed farther; they lay down and slept until day began to break, and then continued their way up the rising ground until, after four hours’ walking, they were well among the mountains. They found an open space by the side of a rivulet where the wild strawberries grew thickly, and here they sat down and enjoyed a hearty meal of bread and strawberries.

  “Now we have got to keep along on this side of that range of mountains in front of us till we get to Lake Baikal,” Godfrey said. “We will push on for a day or two, and then we must find some cottages, and get rid of these clothes. What we want above all things, Luka, are guns.”

  “Yes, or bows and arrows,” Luka said.

  “It would be as difficult to get them as guns. They don’t use them in these parts, Luka.”

  “I can make them,” Luka said; “not as good as the Ostjaks’ bows, but good enough to kill with.”

  “That is satisfactory, Luka. If I can get hold of a gun and you can make a bow and arrows we shall do very well.”

  For four days the
y continued their journey through the forest, gathering much fruit, chiefly strawberries and raspberries, and eating sparingly of their bread. At night they lit fires, for the evenings were still cold, and slept soundly beside them. On the fifth morning Godfrey said, “We must turn south now, Luka, our bread won’t last more than two days at the outside, and we must lay in a fresh supply. We have kept as near west as we could, and we know by the mountains that we cannot be far wrong, still it may take us some time to find a village.” To Godfrey’s satisfaction they arrived at the edge of the forest early in the afternoon.

  “We cannot be very far from Nertchinsk,” he said. “We must be careful here, for there are lots of mines in the neighbourhood.”

  After walking for another three or four hours several large buildings were seen among the trees in the valley, and these it was certain belonged to one or other of the mines. When it became dark they descended still farther, and kept down until they came upon a road. This they followed until about midnight they came upon a small village. They found, as they had hoped, bread and other provisions upon several of the window-sills, and thankfully stowing these away again struck off to the hills.

  “This is capital,” Godfrey said, as after getting well into the forest they lighted a fire, threw themselves down beside it, and made a hearty meal. “If we could rely upon doing as well as this always I should not mind how long our journey lasted. It is glorious to be out in these woods after that close prison.”

  The Tartar nodded. The closeness of the air in the prison never troubled him, but he was quite ready to agree to anything that Godfrey might say. “Good in summer,” he said, “but not very good in winter.”

  “No, I expect not; but we shall have to make the best of it, Luka, for it is quite certain that we shall have to spend the winter out somewhere.”

  “We will make skin coats and keep ourselves warm,” Luka said confidently. “Make a good hut.”