“May I see them?” I asked. Whereupon my request was readily granted.
But before we went outside General Vorontzoff took the list from the Captain’s hand and scrawled his signature—the signature which sent two hundred and seven men and women to the coldest region in the world—that frozen bourne whence none ever returned.
Outside in the dark snowy night the wretched gang, in rough, grey, snow-covered clothes, were assembled, a dismal gathering of the most hopeless and dejected wretches in the world, all of them educated, and the majority being members of the professional classes. Yet all had, by that single stroke of the Governor’s pen, been consigned to a terrible fate, existence in the filthy yaurtas or huts of the half-civilised Yakuts—an unwashed race who live in the same stable as their cows, and whose habits are incredibly disgusting.
That huddled, shivering crowd had already trudged over four thousand miles on foot and survived, though how many had died on the way would never be told. They stood there like driven cattle, inert, silent and broken. Hardly a word was spoken, save by the mounted Cossack guards, who smoked or joked, several of them having been drinking vodka freely before leaving.
The Governor, standing at my side, glanced around them, mere shadows on the snow. Then he exclaimed with a low laugh, as though amused:
“Even this fate is too good for such vermin! Let’s go inside.”
I followed him in without a word. My heart bled for those poor unfortunate creatures, who at that moment, at a loud word of command from the Cossack captain, moved away into the bleak and stormy night.
In the cosy warmth of his own room General Vorontzoff threw himself into a deep armchair and declared that I must leave the “Guestnitsa” and become his guest, an invitation which I had no inclination to accept. He offered me champagne, which I was compelled out of courtesy to drink, and we sat smoking until presently the young Cossack officer reappeared, bearing a bundle of official papers.
“Well, where are they?” inquired the Governor quickly. “How slow you are!” he added emphatically.
“The two prisoners in question are still here in Yakutsk,” was the officer’s reply. “They have not yet been sent on to Parotovsk.”