“The rest of the night I spent very quietly, and the next day took leave of those whose hospitality was so near growing fatal to me. This incident carried a sad conviction to my mind that I could never ask shelter for the night of any human being without exposing myself to the greatest risks, and the Ostiake bed must be, until further notice, my only place of repose. I had, in short, to put up with this Ostiake style of sleeping during the whole of the time I was crossing from the Oural mountains to Veliki-Oustioug; that is, from the middle of February to the beginning of April. Three or four times only dared I beg hospitality for the night in some isolated hut, worn out by fifteen or twenty days’ march in the forest, almost exhausted, and scarcely knowing what I did. Every other night I was satisfied with digging out a hole to lie in, and by degrees became accustomed to that way of sleeping. Sometimes at nightfall I even found myself going towards the thick part of the wood, as to a well-known inn; at other times I confess this savage kind of life became intolerable to me. The absence of any
human habitation, the want of hot food, and even of frozen bread, my only nourishment for whole days sometimes, made me face in all their terrible reality those two hideous spectres called cold and hunger. In moments like these I dreaded specially the fits of drowsiness that suddenly came over me, for they were evident invitations to death, against which I fought with the little strength I had left. And now and then the craving for hot food became so strong in me, that it was with the greatest difficulty I resisted the temptation of begging in some hut for a few spoonfuls of the root soup of Siberia.”
After slowly climbing the heights of the Ourals, he at last crossed them on a fine night; but his troubles were precisely the same on the western side of the mountains. On one occasion, during a snowstorm he lost his way, passed a horrible night in the agonies of hunger, and at daybreak, while trying to find the path, he fell exhausted at the foot of a tree. The sleep, which in these regions is the forerunner of death, had already fallen on him, when he was saved by a trapper who was crossing the forest. This kind man gave him a little brandy and a few mouthfuls of bread, told him to take heart, pointed out to him a house of refuge, and disappeared in the woods.
“When I saw the house in the distance, my joy was beyond all description; I would have gone to it, I think, even had I known it to be full of gendarmes. I got as far as the door; but no sooner had I crossed the threshold, than I fell down and rolled under a wooden bench.”
After a few minutes of complete insensibility, he came to himself, and not being able to touch the food offered him by his host, he fell into a sleep which lasted twenty-four hours; kindly taken care of all the while by the landlord, who became doubly attentive when he found the traveller to be a pilgrim going to the holy island of the White Sea. That was the character taken by the fugitive; he had transformed himself into a bohomolets (worshipper of God) going to salute the holy images of the convent of Solovetsk, near Archangel. Protected by the respect and sympathy with which this title inspires a Russian peasant, M. Piotrowski managed, without much trouble, to get to Veliki-Oustioug, and was well received there by his brethren the bohomolets, who were waiting in large numbers in that town for the thaw which would permit them to embark on the Dwina for Archangel. After a month’s stay in the midst of them, during which he established his reputation as a good pilgrim by the punctuality with which he performed all his duties, he embarked on one of the many boats collected for that special service, and hired himself to the captain as a rower during the crossing, for the usual sum of fifteen roubles in notes, that sum being exactly what he had spent during his journey from Irbite. About a fortnight after his arrival at Veliki-Oustioug, he landed at Archangel, the point on which all his expectations were centred; for he hoped that in the port, which was much frequented by ships of all nations, he should find one vessel that would bring him over to France or England. Without neglecting the religious duties which the title of pilgrim imposed on him, nor the precautions the neglect of which might endanger him, he sought in vain during two long days for this saviour ship. On the deck of each vessel stood, night and day, a Russian sentinel; and along the whole length of the quays, to be able to cross the line of sentinels, it was necessary to give explanations and papers, a demand which the fugitive could not dream of subjecting himself to. Relinquishing then, not without grief, his long cherished hopes, he took the road to Onéga, as a pilgrim who having visited the holy images of Solovetsk, was going to Kiow “to salute the sacred bones.” After many adventures, more or less agreeable, he arrived at Vytiegra. He was accosted on the quay by a peasant who asked him where he was going, and proposed to take him in his boat to St. Petersburg. He engaged himself to the man as a rower, and on the passage had occasion to render some services to a poor old peasant woman also going to St. Petersburg. On entering the harbour the unhappy fugitive felt great anxiety as to how he could avoid the police on landing, and where he should lodge, etc. All at once his protégé, the old peasant woman, said, “Stay near me. My daughter, who knows of my arrival, is coming to meet me, and will find you a good lodging-house.” He landed, and carrying the old woman’s trunk, went to the same inn with her. There still remained the difficulty about the passport and police. He much feared that his hostess would prove exacting on this point; but, on being questioned by him as to the formalities to be gone through, she said, he need not trouble to call on the police for two or three days. Being easy on this score, he went the next day towards the harbour, furtively scanning as he walked,—for a Russian peasant ought not to know how to read,—the advertisements on many steam packets announcing the time of their departure.
“All at once my eyes fell on an announcement in large letters placed near the mast of one of the steamers, to the effect that this ship was to leave for Riga the next day. I saw a man walking on the deck with his red shirt worn over his trousers, à la Russe, but not daring to speak to him, I remained satisfied with devouring him with my eyes. In the meantime the sun went down; it was already seven in the evening, when suddenly the man with the red shirt raised his head, and called to me:—
“ ‘Do you happen to want to go to Riga? If you do, come here.’