“ ‘And where are you from?’ was asked of me.
“ ‘From Tomsk. I am the employé of N. (I gave the first name that occurred to me); my master has gone on before me to Irbite. I had to stay behind for some small matters, and am horribly late; I fear he will be angry. If you will take me there quickly, I will give you something more for yourself.’
“The peasant whistled, and the horses started like arrows. All at once the clouds gathered, the snow began to fall thickly, and the peasant lost his way, and after wandering about a good deal, we were obliged to halt, and pass the night in the forest. I pretended to be greatly enraged, and my guide humbly begged my forgiveness. It would be impossible to describe the terrible anxiety of that night, spent in a sleigh in the midst of a snowstorm, scarcely four miles distant from Ekaterininski-Zavod, and expecting every minute to hear the bells of the kibitkas sent in pursuit of me. At last the day began to dawn.
“ ‘We will return to Tara,’ I said to the peasant, ‘where I shall engage another sleigh. As for you, fool, you may expect nothing. I will take care, moreover, to give you up to the police for making me waste my time.’ The poor peasant, quite ashamed, started to return to Tara, but scarcely had he gone a verst, when he stopped, looked round, and showing the vestige of a pathway under the drifts of snow, said, ‘That is the road we should have taken!’ ‘Follow it then,’ I said, ‘and God speed us.’ He then did his utmost to make up for lost time. A most horrible idea struck me just then; I remembered how our unhappy Colonel Wysocki was, like me, detained in the forest for a whole night, and was given up to the gendarmes by his guide. Vain terrors! The peasant took me to a friend’s house, where I managed to get tea and some fresh horses. So I went on, changing my horses at very moderate prices; when having arrived late one night at a village called Soldatskaïa, and not having sufficient money to pay my guide, I went with him to an inn filled with a number of drunken wretches. I had taken from under my waistcoat a few notes, intending to have one or two changed by the landlord, when a movement of the crowd, done purposely or not, I cannot tell, pushed me from the table where I had spread my papers, which were quickly seized by some clever hand. In vain I made my loss known: I never could discover the thief, nor seriously think of calling in the gendarmes; so I resigned myself to my misfortune. I was in that manner deprived of forty-five roubles in notes; but what greatly increased my regrets, and even my terror, was the fact that the thief had taken at the same time two papers of the greatest worth to me: a small sheet on which I had inscribed the towns and villages I must pass through on my way to Archangel, and my passport, the one on stamped paper, the making of which had cost me so much pains. Thus at the outset I lost almost a quarter of the modest allowance for my journey, the note that was to have been my guide, and the only paper capable of satisfying any curious people. I was in despair.”
Still the fugitive was obliged to go on: each step taken brought him nearer to freedom; but whether he was taken at only a few miles’ distance from the place of his exile, or on the Russian frontier, his fate would be the same. Lost in the immense morass which covered the road to Irbite he did not reach the gates of that town, till the third day of his escape, having travelled, thanks to the celerity of sleigh-riding, 1000 kilometers since his departure from Ekaterininski-Zavod.
“ ‘Halt, and show your passport!’ shouted the sentinel; fortunately he added in a low tone, ‘Give me twenty kopeks, and be off with you.’ I yielded with great satisfaction to the exigencies of the law so opportunely modified in my favour.”
Having passed one night at Irbite, M. Piotrowski hastened to leave it next morning; but the expenses of his journey, and his losses by theft having reduced his purse to seventy-five roubles (about eighty francs), he could only proceed on foot.
“The winter of 1846 was extremely severe; still on the morning I left Irbite the atmosphere softened, but then the snow fell so thickly that it quite obscured the light. Walking became almost impossible among these white masses, which grew higher and thicker at every step. About midday the sky cleared a little, and my journey grew easier. I generally avoided villages, if possible; but when I found myself obliged to cross one, I went straight along as if I belonged to the neighbourhood, and needed no directions. Only at the last house of a hamlet did I venture sometimes to ask a few questions, and then not until I had great doubt as to which road I was to take. When I felt hungry, I took from my bag a piece of frozen bread, and ate it while walking, or sitting at the foot of a tree in some retired spot in the forest. To appease my thirst I looked eagerly out for the holes made in the ice by the people of the country to water their cattle. I was sometimes obliged to content myself with letting snow melt in my mouth, although that means was far from satisfactory.
“My first day’s march after leaving Irbite was very hard, and at night I found myself quite worn out. The heavy clothes I wore added to my fatigue, and still I did not dare throw them off. At nightfall I ran to the thickest part of the forest and began to prepare my bed. I knew the method used by the Ostiakes to shelter themselves in their deserts of ice; they simply hollow out a deep hole under a great heap of snow, and in that way find a bed—a hard one in truth, but a good warm one. I did the same, and soon found the repose of which I stood greatly in need.”
On the morrow he lost his way, and after wandering about almost the whole of the day, he found himself at nightfall on a road which fortunately happened to be the right one. Seeing a small house not far from a hamlet, he resolved on asking shelter there: it was not denied him. He gave himself out for a workman seeking employment in the iron works of Bohotole, in the Oural. He played his part to the best of his ability, but was thought to be too well clothed and furnished with linen for a workman, and was woke from his first sleep by peasants asking for his passport. With the greatest coolness he showed them the pass ticket, the only one he had left; fortunately the sight of the seal was sufficient for these self-appointed gendarmes, who begged his pardon for having taken him for an escaped convict.