Part 28 (1/2)
His Majesty might tell him.
If so, what then?
CHAPTER TWENTY.
THE LAND OF NO RETURN.
The day had been grey and dispiriting, the open windswept landscape a great limitless expanse of newly-fallen snow of dazzling whiteness--the same cheerless wintry tundra over which I had been travelling by sledge for the past four weary weeks to that everlasting jingle of harness-bells.
My companion, the police-agent Petrakoff, a smart, alert young man, wrapped to the tip of his nose in reindeer furs, was asleep by my side; and I, too, had been dozing, worn out by that fifteen hundred miles of road since leaving the railway at Ekaterinburg.
Suddenly I was awakened by Vasilli, our yams.h.i.+ck, a burly, bearded, unkempt ruffian in shabby furs, who, pointing with his whip to the grey far-off horizon, shouted:
”Tomsk! Tomsk! Look, Excellency!”
Straining my tired eyes, I discerned upon the far skyline a quant.i.ty of low, snow-covered, wood-built houses from which rose the pointed cupolas of several churches.
Yonder was the end of the first stage of my long journey. So I awoke Petrakoff, and for the next half-hour we sat with eyes fixed eagerly upon our goal, where we hoped to revel in the luxury of a hotel after a month of those filthy stancias or povarnias, the vermin-infested rests for travellers on the Great Post Road of Siberia.
The first sod of the great Trans-Siberian railway had already been cut by the Tzarevitch at Tcheliabyisk, but no portion of the line was at that time complete. Therefore all traffic across Asia, both travellers and merchandise, including the tea-caravans from China, pa.s.sed along that great highway, the longest in the world.
Six weeks had elapsed since I had left the Emperor's presence, and I had accomplished by rail and road a distance of two thousand four hundred miles.
Since I had left the railway at Ekaterinburg I had only rested for a single night on two occasions, at Tiumen and at Tobolsk.
At the former place I made my first acquaintance with the inhuman exile system, for moored in the river Obi I saw several of those enormous floating gaols, in which the victims of Russia's true oppressor were transported _en route_ to the penal settlements of the Far East--great double-decked barges, three hundred feet long, with a lower hold below the main deck. Along two-thirds of the barge's length ran an iron cage, reaching from the lower to the upper deck-cover, and having the appearance of a great two-storied tiger's cage. Eight of them were moored alongside the landing-stage. Five of them were crowded by wretched prisoners, each barge containing from four to five hundred persons of both s.e.xes and the Cossack guards--a terrible sight indeed.
Provided as I was with an Imperial permit and a doubly-stamped road-pa.s.sport that directed all keepers of post-stations to provide me with the mail horses, and give me the right of way on the Post Road, I had set forth again after a day's rest towards Tobolsk.
The first snow had fallen on the third day after leaving Tiumen, and the country, covered by its white mantle, presented always a dreary aspect, rendered drearier and more dispiriting by the gangs of wretched exiles which we constantly overtook.
Men, women, and children in companies from a hundred to three hundred, having left the barges, were marching forward to that far-off bourne whence none would ever return. They, indeed, presented a woeful spectacle, mostly of the criminal cla.s.ses, all their heads being half, or clean-shaven. The majority of the men were in chains, and many were linked together. Not a few of the women marched among the men as prisoners, while the rest trudged along into voluntary exile, holding the hands of their husbands, brothers, lovers or children. Some of the sick, aged and young were in springless carts, but all the others toiled onward through the snow like droves of cattle, bent to the icy blast, a grey-clad, silent crowd, guarded by a dozen Cossacks, with an officer taking his ease in a taranta.s.s in the rear.
Once we met a family of Jews--husband, wife and two children--in a taranta.s.s, with a Cossack with bayonet fixed alongside. We stopped to change horses with them, as we were then midway between post-stations.
The man, a bright, intelligent, middle-aged fellow, addressed us in French, and said he had been a wealthy fur merchant in Nijni Novgorod, but was exiled to the Yenisei country simply because he was a Jew. His eyes were clouded with regret at the bitter consciousness of his captivity. Four thousand of his townsmen had, he said, emigrated to England and America, and then pointing to his pretty, delicate wife and two chubby children, the tears rolled down his cheeks, as he faltered out: ”Siberie!” Poor fellow!
That word had all the import of a h.e.l.l to many--many more than him.
The distance between relays on the Great Post Road was, we found, from sixteen to thirty versts, and the speed of fresh horses about ten versts an hour.
Vasilli, the ugly bearded yams.h.i.+ck who had lost one eye, we had engaged in Tiumen, and he had contracted to drive me during the whole of my journey. He was a sullen fellow, who said little, but on finding that I was travelling with an Imperial permit, his chief delight was to hustle up the master of each post-station and threaten to report to the Governor of the province if I, the Excellency, were kept waiting for a single instant.
Usually, changing operations at the stations occupied anything from forty minutes to two hours, according to the temper or trickishness of the post-horse keeper and his grooms, for they were about the meanest set of knaves and rogues on the face of Asia. Yet sight of my permit caused them all to tremble and cringe and hustle, and I certainly could not complain of any undue delay.
We had set out in a taranta.s.s from Tiumen--the town from which the Imperial courier had despatched the order to the various Governors--but as soon as the snow came I purchased a big sledge, and in this we managed to travel with far greater comfort over the snow than by cart over the deeply-rutted road.
None can know the terrible monotony of Siberian travel save those who have endured it.
Nowadays one can cover Siberia from the frontier to far Vladivostock in fifteen days in a luxurious drawing-room car, with restaurant and sleeping-berth, a bath-room and a piano, the line running for the most part near the Old Post Road. But leave the railway and strike north or south, and the same terrible greyness and monotony will grip your senses and depress you as perhaps no other journey in the world can do.
It was dusk when at last we sped, our runners hissing over the frozen snow, into the wood-built town of Tomsk, and alighted at the Hotel Million, a dismal place with corridors long and dark, and bedroom doors fastened by big iron padlocks and hasps! The full-bearded proprietor wandered along with an enormous bunch of keys, opening the doors and exhibiting his uninviting apartments; and at first I actually believed that Vasilli had mistaken my order and driven to a Siberian prison instead of conducting me to a hotel.