“No, plenty of time,” I said indifferently, although I had a difficult task to keep my countenance. Turning to my friends, I explained, “That’s my interpreter, Ivanovitch.” Meanwhile, the object of our attention had walked across to the van to see his own trunk placed with mine.
Five minutes afterwards, when we were in the carriage together, gliding out over the bridge that spans the Thames, I burst into a hearty laugh as I, for the first time, regarded her critically. Her disguise was so complete that, for the moment when she had greeted me, I had been deceived. Laughing at her successful make-up, she removed her round fur cap, and showed how she had contrived, by cutting her hair shorter, to make it appear like a man’s. Underneath her overcoat she wore a suit of thick, rough tweed, and with great gusto she related how she had filled up her large boots with wool.
She produced the inevitable cigarettes, and we spent the two hours between London and Queenborough in smoking and chatting.
To describe in detail our long railway journey across Europe by way of Berlin and Moscow would occupy too much space. Suffice it to say that I travelled through Holy Russia with a passport which bore the visé of the Minister of the Interior at Petersburg, and which ensured myself and my “servant” civility and attention on the part of police officials.
At length we passed through the Urals and alighted at Ekaterinbourg, where the railway at that time ended. A fortnight after leaving London, I purchased a sleigh, hired three Government horses, and Prascovie and I, in the great fur coats, skin gloves, and sheepskin boots we had bought, took our seats; the baggage and provisions having been packed in the bottom of the conveyance, and covered with a layer of straw. Then our driver shouted to the little knot of persons who had assembled before the post-station, whipped up the three shaggy horses, and away we started on the first stage of our long, dreary drive across Siberia. Over the snow the horses galloped noiselessly, and the bells on the wooden arch over their heads tinkled merrily as we moved swiftly along through the sharp, frosty air.
Soon we were out upon the Great Post Road, and as far as the eye could see, there was no other object visible on the broad, snow-covered plain but the long straight line of black telegraph poles and striped verst-posts that marked our route.
Day after day we continued our journey, often passing through miles of gloomy pine forests, and then out again upon the great barren steppes. Frequently we met convoys of convicts, pitiful, despairing bands of men and women, dragging their clanking chains with them wearily, and trudging onward towards a life to which death would be preferable. No mercy was shown them by their mounted escorts, for if a prisoner stumbled and fell from sheer exhaustion, he was beaten back to his senses with the terrible knout which each Cossack carried.
On dark nights we halted at post-houses, but when the moon shone, we continued our drive, snatching sleep as best we could. We lived upon our tinned meats and biscuits, the post-houses—which are usually about twenty to thirty miles apart—supplying tea and other necessaries.
Although the journey was terribly monotonous and uncomfortable, with a biting wind, and the intense white of the snow affecting one’s eyes painfully, my fair fellow-traveller uttered no word of complaint. All day she would sit beside me chatting in English, laughing, smoking cigarettes, and now and then carrying on a conversation in Russian with our black-bearded, fierce-looking driver, afterwards interpreting his observations. Indeed, it appeared that the further we travelled from civilisation, the more light-hearted she became.
Arriving at last at Tomsk, we remained there three weeks, during which time I visited the kameras of the “forwarding prison,” the horrors of which I afterwards fully described. An open letter I had from the Minister of the Interior admitted me everywhere, but I was compelled to secrete the notes I made in the money-belt I wore under my clothes, otherwise they would have been discovered and confiscated by the prying ispravniks, or police officers, during the repeated examination of our baggage at almost every small town we passed through.