One day I found I had sustained an odd loss: someone had made off with a bag in which I kept some of my belongings, the chief item among them being my fetters! I had to make the somewhat curious confession to the commanding officer that, instead of wearing my chains, I had allowed them to be stolen; and I was rather surprised that, while commiserating me on account of my personal losses, he did not seem at all agitated about the loss of the Government’s property.
“What am I to do without my fetters?” I asked him, when I saw that the absence of this important detail in the attire of a convict left him unmoved.
“Well, of course we must get some for you somehow,” opined the officer. “Just wait a moment; there ought to be things of the kind lying about somewhere.” And he gave the sergeant orders to look in the lumber-room, where a new pair of fetters was discovered.
“Take care you don’t lose these!” said the officer, as I packed them among my luggage.
This is a specimen of the indulgent, almost fatherly demeanour which our guardians more and more assumed towards us as we got further east.
We were by this time in the thick of the Siberian winter and its severities. We had passed the Yablonovoi mountain ridges, and were nearing Tchita, the capital of Transbaikalia. At the last station before our arrival there we observed a great bustle going on among the ordinary prisoners; the sergeant and the soldiers were occupied with them all night, continually going in and out in a quite unusual manner. We racked our brains to imagine what could be on foot; but the riddle was only solved next day, as will be seen further.
Although the distance from Tchita was considerable for one day’s march,—about forty versts (twenty-six miles), I think,—we started very late on the following morning; but after about twenty versts’ march we came to a lonely farmhouse, standing all by itself on the high-road. We had heard from our comrades who had been in Kara that an old man lived here who gave himself out as a Decabrist.[[74]]
Our party halted in the courtyard, we “politicals” were shown into a room, and the master of the house presently paid us a visit. He introduced himself by the name of Karovàiev; and was a vivacious old gentleman, of eminently respectable appearance. According to his account of himself he had been an ensign in the Guards, had taken part in the revolt of the Decabrists, and had been exiled to Siberia; he claimed to be eighty years of age, but did not look more than sixty-five. He made himself very agreeable, and was most anxious to show us hospitality, declining to take any money from us. Meanwhile in the next room and the corridor things were very lively; there seemed to be a sort of combined market and feast going on, soldiers and convicts eating, drinking, and hobnobbing together like boon companions.
It was already dark when we arrived at the gates of the prison in Tchita, where we had at once to engage in a struggle with the governor: first, because he received the ordinary prisoners first, leaving us to wait; and next, because he gave us a room which was absolutely unfit for us to spend the night in. Only after we had made a great fuss, and threatened him with complaints, did he give us proper accommodation.