“There you are!” we cried to the officer. “You have brought this on yourself. It is your fault for having inflamed those men against us.”
The man lost his presence of mind in face of this danger; and, scared out of his wits, instead of giving orders, appealed to us for counsel.
“In God’s name, what’s to be done?”
We advised him to let the fellows start off at once, under command of the sergeant, so as to get them out of the way.
“At six o’clock we will be ready, and will go after them; but we won’t start a minute sooner.”
He went off somewhat humbled, and gave the order as we had suggested. We drank our tea very peacefully, and got ready at our leisure. From time to time the orderly appeared, and asked if we would start; but we always looked at the time and said it was only so many minutes to six. Punctually on the stroke of the hour we got up and set off after the rest of the convoy.
This occurrence had the effect of winning us the respect and sympathy of most of the convicts. Our firmness and decision pleased them and impressed them. They were surprised that such a handful of us—fourteen men and women—should have successfully resisted the domineering of an officer, who had at his command a hundred soldiers and their own contingent into the bargain.
Friendly relations were established between our two divisions, and throughout our journey we never came into collision. One only of the convicts had a grudge against us, and took every opportunity of evincing his dislike. He was an old hand, had repeatedly escaped from prison, and was now being transported as a criminal of “unknown antecedents.” He was evidently from the working-classes, but was distinguished by keen reasoning powers, and had read an astonishing amount. Reading seemed to be his master passion, but the works of reactionary authors exclusively had fallen into his hands—Katkov, Meshtchèrsky, etc.—and his views were according. He had formed really remarkable opinions on politics in general, and Socialism in particular. He was genuinely convinced that the revolutionists had killed Alexander II. solely because he had emancipated the serfs! He accused us before all the other convicts of being either discontented aristocrats or their paid agents. After this, several of us entered into discussion with him, and tried to convert him. By degrees our arguments began to take effect; he begged us to lend him books, and sought our society whenever possible. I had many talks with him, and tried to get him to tell me about his past and his wandering life; but I never succeeded in learning who and what he really was. He remained to the end the “Ivan of unknown antecedents,” as he was called in his record-book. Yet he would readily tell us tales of his vagabondage. I asked him on one occasion how he managed to get through to European Russia when he escaped from Siberia.
“Oh, where’s the difficulty?” he replied. “The chief thing is to have the Urals behind your back; then you get a train or a steamboat, and stop wherever you like. I would go in that way to Kharkov, or Kiëv, or Odessa, or Rostov, hire a room, and live quite comfortably. I was always respectably dressed; my passport was all right (that we see to ourselves), and so nobody bothered about me. The one thing I cared about was to subscribe to a library and get books. I’ve read all sorts of good things—Gaboriau, Paul de Kock, Ponson du Terrail, and lots more beside. At midday I would dine at a restaurant, and go to the theatre in the evening sometimes.”
“That sounds very nice. But where did you get the money for all that?” I inquired, with interest.