Under a grey, lowering sky, a boundless, snow-covered plain stretched far away into the mist.
It was already sixteen days since my driver and myself had left Ekaterinbourg—the last Russian town—and a fortnight since we had gained the great Siberian post road. With three horses, which we changed at the post-stations, we had travelled almost night and day; yet I did not experience fatigue, for the expectation of finding Mariána sustained me.
Sitting back in the sleigh, wrapped in a heavy otter shuba, and half buried under thick rugs, painful thoughts were produced within me by the loneliness and gloom as the last rays of the short wintry day were fading amidst the icy vapours. The snorting of the horses, the jingling of the bells on the wooden arch over their heads, and the hissing of the sleigh-runners, combined to produce a noise that was indescribably irritating and monotonous.
I had already visited Tiumen, where there is a great exile-forwarding prison, through which all persons condemned to banishment, colonisation, or penal servitude have to pass. On inquiry at the Prikaz o Silnikh, or Chief Bureau of Exile Administration, I had learnt that Mariána had left a week before with a convoy of katorzhniki (hard-labour convicts) on foot for Tomsk. With the object of overtaking them, I was now travelling incessantly. The thought that she, innocent of crime, was compelled to mix with murderers, robbers, and common criminals, sharing the same filth, enduring the terrible hardships of the march, and living in the same entourage in the vile, fever-infected étapes, goaded me almost to madness.
It grew quite dark, and the icy wind blew in fierce, sharp gusts, while the snow, which commenced to fall thickly, beat into my face.
“How far is the next station?” I asked, in Russian, of the driver.
“Two versts, your High Nobility,” he replied.
“Very well,” I said, “let us hasten. We must remain there to-night, I suppose.”
As I paid him to drive me with all possible speed and without resting, he had not grumbled at being compelled to travel during the night, but my decision apparently proved gratifying to him, for he whipped up his horses, and within half an hour I was thawing myself before the great stove in the log-built post-house of Abatskaya, distant two thousand miles from Petersburg. Early on the following morning we were again on the road, continuing throughout the day. In the dull afternoon, soon after we had changed horses at Kalmakova, and were speeding across the great undulating plain towards Omsk, the driver turned suddenly, and, pointing with his whip to a distant hill, exclaimed excitedly—
“See! there they are!”