Condemned as a Nihilist: A Story of Escape from Siberia

by G. A. Henty

"What is he in for? I never asked before. Of course, I see that he has the murderer's badge on his back. Do you know how it happened? I never heard him speak of it."

"Yes, he told us about it one evening, that was before he became starosta. Some vodka had been smuggled in and he had more than was good for him, and that opened his lips. He had been a charcoal-burner and having had the good fortune to escape the conscription he married. She was a pretty girl, and it seems that the son of a rich proprietor had taken a fancy to her, and when the next year's conscription came he managed by some unfair means to get Mikail's name put down again on the list. Such things can be done, you know, by a man with influence. Mikail ran away and took to the woods. He was hunted for two or three months in vain. Then someone betrayed him, and one morning he woke up in a hut he had built for himself and saw the place was surrounded by soldiers.

"With the officers was the man who had injured him. Mikail was mad with fury, and rushing out with a big club he had cut he stretched the fellow dead on the ground—and served him right. However, of course Mikail was taken, tried, and condemned. He had killed a noble's son, and three weeks later was on his way to Siberia. His wife has followed him, and is living now in a village two miles away. Another six months and Mikail will have served his ten years, which is the least time a murderer can serve before he gets leave to live outside the prison. He is sure to get it then, his conduct has been always good, and no doubt this affair will count in his favour. His wife came out two years after he was sent here. She keeps herself by spinning and helping at a farm. It has been a good thing for Mikail, for it has kept him straight. If it had not been for that he would have taken to the woods long ago."

"I don't call that a murder," Godfrey said indignantly. "If I had been on the jury I would never have convicted him. He was treated illegally and had the right to resist."

"I don't blame him very much myself," Osip said. "Of course it would have been wiser to have submitted, and then to have tried to get off serving, but I don't suppose anyone would have listened to him. If it hadn't been a noble he killed I have no doubt he would have got off."

"But you are noble yourself, Osip."

"Yes, but that does not give me any marked advantage at present. Of course it will make a difference when I get out. My friends will send me money, and I shall live at Tobolsk and marry some wealthy gold-miner's daughter, and be in the best society. Oh, yes, it is an advantage being noble born, even in Siberia."

Godfrey was quite touched with the joy that Luka manifested when, on his return from work, he found him in the ward. "Ah, my master," he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, "why did you not tell me that you were watching? I would have kept awake all night and would have thrown myself on that dog; it would have made no matter if he had killed me. It would not have hurt me so much as it did to see you bleeding."

"You must not call me master," Godfrey said, holding out his hand, which the Tartar seized and pressed to his forehead. "You and I are friends, there are no masters here."

Godfrey learnt that every effort had been made by the authorities to discover how Koshkin had obtained the knife, but without success. He must have bribed one of the guards to fetch it in for him, but there was no tracing which had been concerned in the matter. All the prisoners had been searched and their bags examined, but no other weapons had been discovered. Godfrey did not hear a single word of pity for Koshkin, or of regret at his death. Indifference for others was one of the leading characteristics of the prisoners. Although living so long together they seldom appeared to form a friendship of any kind; each man lived for and thought only of his own lot. Godfrey observed that it was very seldom that a prisoner shared any dainty he had purchased with another, and it was only when three or four had clubbed together to get in a ham, a young sucking pig, or some vodka that they were seen to partake of it together.