Condemned as a Nihilist: A Story of Escape from Siberia

by G. A. Henty

"But it is dreadful to listen to them," Godfrey said. "I cannot understand what the motive of government can be in sending thousands of such wretches out here instead of hanging them. I can understand transporting people who have been convicted of minor offences, as, when their term is up, they may do well and help to colonize the country. But what can be hoped from such horrible ruffians as these? They have the trouble of keeping them for years, and even when they are let out no one can hope that they will turn out useful members of the community. They probably take to their old trade and turn brigands."

"I don't think they do that. Some of those who escape soon after coming out might do so, but not when they have been released. They would not care then to run the risk of either being flogged to death by the plete or kept in prison for the rest of their lives. Running away is nothing. I have heard of a man, who had run away repeatedly, being chained to a barrow which he had to take with him wherever he went, indoors and out. That is the worst I ever heard of, for as for flogging with rods these fellows think very little of it. They will often walk back in the autumn to the same prison they went from, take their flogging, and go to work as if nothing had happened. They are never flogged with the plete for that sort of thing; that is kept for murder or heading a mutiny in which some of the officials have been killed. No; the brigands are chiefly composed of long-sentence men who have got away early, and who perhaps have killed a Cossack or a policeman who tried to arrest them, or some peasant who will not supply them with food. After that they dare not return, and so join some band of brigands in order to be able to keep to the woods through the winter. I think that very few of the men who have once served their time and been released ever come back again."

During the winter the food, although still ample, was less than the allowance they had received while working. The allowance of bread was reduced by a pound a day, and upon Wednesdays and Fridays, which were fast days, no meat was issued except to those engaged in chopping up firewood or bringing in timber from the forest. Leather gloves were served out to all men working in the open air, but in spite of this their hands were frequently frost-bitten. The evenings would have been long indeed to Godfrey had it not been for his Tartar instructor; the two would sit on the bench in the angle of the room and would talk together in Tartar eked out by Russian. The young fellow's face was much more intelligent than those of the majority of his countrymen, and there was a merry and good-tempered expression in his eyes. They chatted about his home and his life there. His mother had been an Ostjak, and he had spent some years among her tribe on the banks both of the Obi and Yenesei, but had never been far north on either river. He took his captivity easily. His father and mother both died when he had been a child, and when he was not with the Ostjaks he had lived with his father's brother, who had, he said, "droves of cattle and horses."

"If they would put me to work on a river," he said, "I should not mind. Here one has plenty to eat, and the work is not hard, and there is a warm room to sleep in, but I should like to be employed in cutting timber and taking it in rafts down the river to the sea. I love the river, and I can shoot. All the Ostjaks can shoot, though shooting has brought me bad luck. If I had not had my bow in my hand when that Russian struck me I should not be here now. It was all done in a moment. You see I was on the road when his sledge came along. The snow was fresh and soft, and I did not hear it coming. The horses swerved, nearly upsetting the sledge, and knocking me down in the snow. Then I got up and swore at the driver, and then the Russian, who was angry because the sledge had nearly been upset, jumped out, caught the whip from the driver and struck me across the face. It hurt me badly, for my face was cold. I had been in the wood shooting squirrels, and I hardly know how it was, but I fitted an arrow to the string and shot. It was all over in a moment, and there he lay on the snow with the arrow through his throat. I was so frightened that I did not even try to run away, and was stupid enough to let the driver hold me till some people came up and carried me off to prison; so you see my shooting did me harm. But it was hard to be sent here for life for a thing like that. He was a bad man that Russian. He was an officer in one of the regiments there, and a soldier who was in prison with me afterwards told me that there was great joy among the soldiers when he was killed."

"But it was very wrong, Luka, to kill a man like that."

"Yes; but then you see I hadn't time to think. I was almost mad with pain, and it was all done in a minute. I think it is very hard that I should be punished as much as I am when there are many here who have killed five or six people, or more, and some of them women, and they have no worse punishment than I have. Look at Kobylin; he was a bandit first of all, as I have heard him say over and over again. He beat his wife to death, because she scolded him for being drunk, then he took to the woods. The first he killed was a Jew pedlar, then he burnt down the house of the head-man of a village because he had put the police on his track. He killed him as he rushed out from the door, and his wife and children were burnt alive. He killed four or five others on the road, and when he was betrayed, as he was asleep in the hut, he cut down with an axe two of the policemen who came to arrest him. He is in for life, but he is a great deal worse than I am, is he not?

"Then there is that little Koshkin, the man who is always walking about smiling to himself. He was a clerk to a notary, and he murdered his master and mistress and two servant women, and got away with the money and lived on it for a year; then he went into another family and did the same, but this time the police got on his track and caught him. Nine lives he took altogether, not in a passion or because they were cruel to him. I heard him say that he was quite a favourite, and how he used to sing to them and was trusted in every way. No, I say it isn't fair that I, who did nothing but just pay a man for a blow, should get as much as those two."

"It does seem rather hard on you, but you see there cannot be a great variety of punishments. You killed a man, and so you had sentence for life. They can't give more than that, and if they were to give less there would be more murders than there are, for every one would think that they could kill at least one person without being punished very heavily for it."

"I don't call mine murder at all," Luka said. "I would not kill a man for his money; but this was just a fight. Whiz went his whip across my face, and then whiz went my arrow."

"Oh, it is not so bad, Luka, I grant. If you had killed a man in cold blood I would have had nothing to do with you. I could not be friends with a man who was a cold-blooded murderer. I could never give him my hand, or travel with him, or sleep by his side. I don't feel that with you. In the eye of the law you committed a murder, and the law does not ask why it was done, or care in what way it was done. The law only says you killed the man, and the punishment for that is imprisonment for life. But I, as a man, can see that there is a great difference in the moral guilt, and that, acting as you did in a fit of passion, suddenly and without premeditation, and smarting under an assault, it was what we should in England call manslaughter. Before I asked you to teach me, when Osip first said that he should recommend me to try you, I saw by the badge on your coat that you were in for murder, and if it had not been that he knew how it came about, I would not have had anything to do with you, even if I had been obliged to give up altogether my idea of learning your language."