Condemned as a Nihilist Part 19

The friends.h.i.+p was finally cemented by an occurrence that took place three months after G.o.dfrey arrived at the prison. Among the convicts was a man named Kobylin, a man of great strength. He boasted that he had committed ten murders, and was always bullying and tyrannizing the quieter and weaker prisoners. One day he pa.s.sed where Luka and G.o.dfrey were sitting on the edge of the plank bed talking together. Luka happened to get up just as he came along, and Kobylin gave him a violent push, saying, "Get out of the way, you miserable little Tartar dog."

Luka fell with his head against the edge of the bench, and lay for a time half stunned. G.o.dfrey leapt to his feet, and springing forward struck the bully a right-handed blow straight from the shoulder. The man staggered back several paces, and fell over the opposite bench. Then, with a shout of fury, he recovered his feet and rushed at G.o.dfrey, with his arms extended to grasp him; but the lad, who had been one of the best boxers at Shrewsbury, awaited his onset calmly, and, making a spring forward just as Kobylin reached him, landed a blow, given with all his strength and the impetus of his spring, under the Russian's chin, and the man went backwards as if he had been shot.

A roar of applause broke from the convicts. Mikail rushed forward, but G.o.dfrey said to him:

"Let us alone, Mikail. This fellow has been a nuisance in the ward ever since I came. It is just as well that he should have a lesson. I sha'n't do him any harm. Just leave us alone for a minute or two; he won't want much more."

[Ill.u.s.tration: G.o.dFREY PUNISHES KOBYLIN IN THE CONVICT PRISON.]

The Russian rose slowly to his feet, bewildered and half stupefied by the blow and fall. He would probably have done nothing more; but, maddened by the taunts and jeers of the others, he gathered himself together and renewed the attack, but he in vain attempted to seize his active opponent. G.o.dfrey eluded his furious rushes, and before he could recover himself, always succeeded in getting in two or three straight blows, and at last met him, as in his first rush, and knocked him off his feet.

By this time Kobylin had had enough of it, and sat on the floor bewildered and crestfallen. Everything that a Russian peasant does not understand savours to him of magic; and that he, Kobylin, should have been thus vanquished by a mere lad seemed altogether beyond nature. He could not understand how it was that he had been unable to grasp his foe, or how that, like a stroke of lightning, these blows had shot into his face. Even the jeering and laughter of his companions failed to stir him. The Russian peasant is accustomed to be beaten, and is humble to those who are his masters. Kobylin rose slowly to his feet.

"You have beaten me," he said humbly. "I do not know how; forgive me; I was wrong. I am ignorant, and did not know."

"Say no more about it," G.o.dfrey replied. "We have had a quarrel, and there is an end of it. There need be no malice. We are all prisoners here together, and it is not right that one should bully others because he happens to be a little stronger. There are other things besides strength. You behaved badly, and you have been punished. Let us smoke our pipes, and think no more about it."

The sensation caused in the ward by the contest was prodigious, and the victory of this lad was as incomprehensible to the others as to Kobylin himself. The rapidity with which the blows were delivered, and the ease with which G.o.dfrey had evaded the rushes of his opponent, seemed to them, as to him, almost magical, and from that moment they regarded G.o.dfrey as being possessed of some strange power, which placed him altogether apart from themselves. Osip and the other men of the same stamp warmly congratulated G.o.dfrey.

"What magic is this?" Osip said, taking him by the shoulders and looking with wonder at him. "I have been thinking you but a lad, and yet that strong brute is as a child in your hands. It is the miracle of David and Goliath over again."

"It is simply skill against brute force, Osip. I may tell you, what I have not told anyone before since I came here, that my mother was English. I did not say so, because, as you may guess, I feared that were it known and reported it might be traced who I was, and then, instead of being merely cla.s.sed as a vagabond, I should be sent back to the prison I escaped from, and be put among another cla.s.s of prisoners."

"I understand, Ivan. Of course I have all along felt sure you were a political prisoner; and I thought, perhaps, you might have been a student in Switzerland, which would account for you having ideas different to other people."

"No, I was sent for a time to a school in England, and there I learned to box."

"So, that is your English boxing," Osip said. "I have heard of it, but I never thought it was anything like that. Why, he never once touched you."

"If he had, I should have got the worst of it," G.o.dfrey laughed; "but there was nothing in it. Size and weight go for very little in boxing; and a man knowing nothing about it has not the smallest chance against a fair boxer who is active on his legs."

"But you did not seem to be exerting yourself," Osip said. "You were as cool and as quiet as if you had been shovelling sand. You even laughed when he rushed at you."

"That is the great point of boxing, Osip. One learns to keep cool, and to have one's wits about one; for anyone who loses his temper has but a poor chance indeed against another who keeps cool. Moreover a man who can box well will always keep his head in all times of danger and difficulty. It gives him nerve and self-confidence, and enables him at all times to protect the weak against the strong."

"Just as you did now," Osip said. "Well, I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. I am sure we all feel obliged to you for having taken down that fellow Kobylin. He and a few others have been a nuisance for some time. You may be sure there will be no more trouble with them after the lesson you have given."

Luka's grat.i.tude to G.o.dfrey was unbounded, and from that time he would have done anything on his behalf, while the respect with which he had before regarded him was redoubled. Therefore when one day G.o.dfrey said to him, "When the spring comes, Luka, I mean to try to escape, and I shall take you with me," the Tartar considered it to be a settled thing, and was filled with a deep sense of grat.i.tude that his companion should deem him worthy of sharing in his perils.

Winter set in in three weeks after G.o.dfrey reached Kara, and the work at the mine had to be abandoned. As much employment as possible was made for the convicts. Some were sent out to aid in bringing in the trees that had been felled during the previous winter for firewood, others sawed the wood up and split it into billets for the stoves, other parties went out into the forest to fell trees for the next winter's fires. Some were set to whitewash the houses, a process that was done five times a year; but in spite of all this there was not work for half the number. The time hung very heavily on the hands of those who were unemployed. G.o.dfrey was not of this number, for as soon as the work at the mine terminated he received an order to work in the office as a clerk.

He warmly appreciated this act of kindness on the part of the commandant. It removed him from the constant companions.h.i.+p of the convicts, which was now more unpleasant than before, as during the long hours of idleness quarrels were frequent and the men became surly and discontented. Besides this he received regular pay for his work, and this was of importance, as it was necessary to start upon such an undertaking as he meditated with as large a store of money as possible.

He had, since his arrival, refused to join in any of the proposals for obtaining luxuries from outside. The supply of food was ample, for in addition to the bread and soup there was, three or four times a week, an allowance of meat, and his daily earnings in the mines were sufficient to pay for tobacco and tea. Even the ten roubles he had handed over to Mikail remained untouched.

One reason why he was particularly glad at being promoted to the office was that he had observed, upon the day when he first arrived, a large map of Siberia hanging upon the wall; and although he had obtained from Alexis and others a fair idea of the position of the towns and various convict settlements, he knew nothing of the wild parts of the country through which he would have to pa.s.s, and the inhabited portion formed but a small part indeed of the whole. During the winter months he seized every opportunity, when for a few minutes he happened to be alone in the office, to study the map and to obtain as accurate an idea as possible of the ranges of mountains. One day, when the colonel was out, and the other two clerks were engaged in taking an inventory of stores, and he knew, therefore, that he had little chance of being interrupted, he pushed a table against the wall, and with a sheet of tracing paper took the outline of the northern coast from the mouth of the Lena to Norway, specially marking the entrances to all rivers however small. He also took a tracing, giving the positions of the towns and rivers across the nearest line between the head of Lake Baikal and the nearest point of the Angara river, one of the great affluents of the Yenesei.

The winter pa.s.sed slowly and uneventfully. The cold was severe, but he did not feel it, the office being well warmed, and the heat in the crowded prison far greater than was agreeable to him. At Christmas there were three days of festivity. The people of Kara, and the peasants round, all sent in gifts for the prisoners. Every one laid by a little money to buy special food for the occasion, and vodka had been smuggled in. The convicts of the different prisons were allowed to visit each other freely, and although there was much drunkenness on Christmas Day there were no serious quarrels. All were on their best behaviour, but G.o.dfrey was glad when all was over and they returned to their ordinary occupations again, for the thought of the last Christmas he had spent in England brought the change in his circ.u.mstances home to him more strongly than ever, and for once his buoyant spirits left him, and he was profoundly depressed, while all around him were cheerful and gay.

Nothing surprised G.o.dfrey more than the brutal indifference with which most of the prisoners talked of the crimes they had committed, except perhaps the indifference with which these stories were listened to. It seemed to him indeed that some of the convicts had almost a pride in their crimes, and that they even went so far as to invent atrocities for the purpose of giving themselves a supremacy in ferocity over their fellows. He noticed that those who were in for minor offences, such as robbery with violence, forgery, embezzlement, and military insubordination, were comparatively reticent as to their offences, and that it was those condemned for murder who were the most given to boasting about their exploits.

"One could almost wish," he said one day to his friend Osip, "that one had the strength of Samson, to bring the building down and destroy the whole of them."

"I am very glad you have not, if you have really a fancy of that sort. I have not the least desire to be finished off in that sudden way."

"But it is dreadful to listen to them," G.o.dfrey said. "I cannot understand what the motive of government can be in sending thousands of such wretches out here instead of hanging them. I can understand transporting people who have been convicted of minor offences, as, when their term is up, they may do well and help to colonize the country. But what can be hoped from such horrible ruffians as these? They have the trouble of keeping them for years, and even when they are let out no one can hope that they will turn out useful members of the community. They probably take to their old trade and turn brigands."

"I don't think they do that. Some of those who escape soon after coming out might do so, but not when they have been released. They would not care then to run the risk of either being flogged to death by the _plete_ or kept in prison for the rest of their lives. Running away is nothing. I have heard of a man, who had run away repeatedly, being chained to a barrow which he had to take with him wherever he went, indoors and out. That is the worst I ever heard of, for as for flogging with rods these fellows think very little of it. They will often walk back in the autumn to the same prison they went from, take their flogging, and go to work as if nothing had happened. They are never flogged with the _plete_ for that sort of thing; that is kept for murder or heading a mutiny in which some of the officials have been killed. No; the brigands are chiefly composed of long-sentence men who have got away early, and who perhaps have killed a Cossack or a policeman who tried to arrest them, or some peasant who will not supply them with food. After that they dare not return, and so join some band of brigands in order to be able to keep to the woods through the winter. I think that very few of the men who have once served their time and been released ever come back again."

During the winter the food, although still ample, was less than the allowance they had received while working. The allowance of bread was reduced by a pound a day, and upon Wednesdays and Fridays, which were fast days, no meat was issued except to those engaged in chopping up firewood or bringing in timber from the forest. Leather gloves were served out to all men working in the open air, but in spite of this their hands were frequently frost-bitten. The evenings would have been long indeed to G.o.dfrey had it not been for his Tartar instructor; the two would sit on the bench in the angle of the room and would talk together in Tartar eked out by Russian. The young fellow's face was much more intelligent than those of the majority of his countrymen, and there was a merry and good-tempered expression in his eyes. They chatted about his home and his life there. His mother had been an Ostjak, and he had spent some years among her tribe on the banks both of the Obi and Yenesei, but had never been far north on either river. He took his captivity easily. His father and mother both died when he had been a child, and when he was not with the Ostjaks he had lived with his father's brother, who had, he said, "droves of cattle and horses."

"If they would put me to work on a river," he said, "I should not mind.

Here one has plenty to eat, and the work is not hard, and there is a warm room to sleep in, but I should like to be employed in cutting timber and taking it in rafts down the river to the sea. I love the river, and I can shoot. All the Ostjaks can shoot, though shooting has brought me bad luck. If I had not had my bow in my hand when that Russian struck me I should not be here now. It was all done in a moment.

You see I was on the road when his sledge came along. The snow was fresh and soft, and I did not hear it coming. The horses swerved, nearly upsetting the sledge, and knocking me down in the snow. Then I got up and swore at the driver, and then the Russian, who was angry because the sledge had nearly been upset, jumped out, caught the whip from the driver and struck me across the face. It hurt me badly, for my face was cold. I had been in the wood shooting squirrels, and I hardly know how it was, but I fitted an arrow to the string and shot. It was all over in a moment, and there he lay on the snow with the arrow through his throat. I was so frightened that I did not even try to run away, and was stupid enough to let the driver hold me till some people came up and carried me off to prison; so you see my shooting did me harm. But it was hard to be sent here for life for a thing like that. He was a bad man that Russian. He was an officer in one of the regiments there, and a soldier who was in prison with me afterwards told me that there was great joy among the soldiers when he was killed."

"But it was very wrong, Luka, to kill a man like that."

"Yes; but then you see I hadn't time to think. I was almost mad with pain, and it was all done in a minute. I think it is very hard that I should be punished as much as I am when there are many here who have killed five or six people, or more, and some of them women, and they have no worse punishment than I have. Look at Kobylin; he was a bandit first of all, as I have heard him say over and over again. He beat his wife to death, because she scolded him for being drunk, then he took to the woods. The first he killed was a Jew pedlar, then he burnt down the house of the head-man of a village because he had put the police on his track. He killed him as he rushed out from the door, and his wife and children were burnt alive. He killed four or five others on the road, and when he was betrayed, as he was asleep in the hut, he cut down with an axe two of the policemen who came to arrest him. He is in for life, but he is a great deal worse than I am, is he not?

"Then there is that little Koshkin, the man who is always walking about smiling to himself. He was a clerk to a notary, and he murdered his master and mistress and two servant women, and got away with the money and lived on it for a year; then he went into another family and did the same, but this time the police got on his track and caught him. Nine lives he took altogether, not in a pa.s.sion or because they were cruel to him. I heard him say that he was quite a favourite, and how he used to sing to them and was trusted in every way. No, I say it isn't fair that I, who did nothing but just pay a man for a blow, should get as much as those two."

"It does seem rather hard on you, but you see there cannot be a great variety of punishments. You killed a man, and so you had sentence for life. They can't give more than that, and if they were to give less there would be more murders than there are, for every one would think that they could kill at least one person without being punished very heavily for it."

"I don't call mine murder at all," Luka said. "I would not kill a man for his money; but this was just a fight. Whiz went his whip across my face, and then whiz went my arrow."

"Oh, it is not so bad, Luka, I grant. If you had killed a man in cold blood I would have had nothing to do with you. I could not be friends with a man who was a cold-blooded murderer. I could never give him my hand, or travel with him, or sleep by his side. I don't feel that with you. In the eye of the law you committed a murder, and the law does not ask why it was done, or care in what way it was done. The law only says you killed the man, and the punishment for that is imprisonment for life. But I, as a man, can see that there is a great difference in the moral guilt, and that, acting as you did in a fit of pa.s.sion, suddenly and without premeditation, and smarting under an a.s.sault, it was what we should in England call manslaughter. Before I asked you to teach me, when Osip first said that he should recommend me to try you, I saw by the badge on your coat that you were in for murder, and if it had not been that he knew how it came about, I would not have had anything to do with you, even if I had been obliged to give up altogether my idea of learning your language."

The starosta continued a steady friend to G.o.dfrey. The lad acted as a sort of deputy to him, and helped him to keep the accounts of the money he spent for the convicts, and the balance due to them, and once did him real service. As Mikail's office was due to the vote of the prisoners, his authority over them was but slight, and although he was supported by a considerable majority of them there were some who constantly opposed him, and at times openly defied his authority. Had Mikail reported their conduct they would have been severely punished; but they knew he was very averse to getting any one into trouble, and that he preferred to settle things for himself. He was undoubtedly the most powerful man in the ward, and even the roughest characters feared to provoke him singly.

On one occasion, however, after he had knocked down a man who had refused to obey his orders, six or seven of his fellow convicts sprung on him. G.o.dfrey, Osip, and three or four of the better cla.s.s of convicts rushed to his a.s.sistance, and for a few minutes there was a fierce fight, the rest of the prisoners looking on at the struggle but taking no active part one way or the other. The a.s.sailants were eventually overpowered, and nothing might have been said about the matter had it not been that one of Mikail's party was seriously injured, having an arm broken and being severely kicked. Mikail was therefore obliged to report the matter, and the whole of the men concerned in the attack upon him received a severe flogging.

"I should look out for those fellows, Mikail," G.o.dfrey said, "or they may injure you if they have a chance."

Mikail, however, scoffed at the idea of danger.

"They have got it pretty severely now," he said, "and the colonel told them that if there was any more insubordination he would give them the _plete_; and they have a good deal too much regard for their lives to risk that. You won't hear any more of it. They know well enough that I would not have reported them if I had not been obliged to do so, owing to Boulkin's arm being broken; therefore it isn't fair having any grudge against me. They have been flogged before most of them, and by the time the soreness has pa.s.sed off they will have forgotten it."

G.o.dfrey did not feel so sure of that, and determined to keep his eye upon the men. He did not think they would openly a.s.sault the starosta, but at night one of them might do him an injury, relying upon the difficulty of proving under such circ.u.mstances who had been the a.s.sailant.

The solitary candle that burned in the ward at night was placed well out of reach and protected by a wire frame. It could not, therefore, be extinguished, but the light it gave was so faint that, except when pa.s.sing just under the beam from which it hung, it would be impossible to identify any one even at arm's-length. Two of those concerned in the attack on Mikail were the men of whom Luka had been speaking. Kobylin the bandit muttered and scowled whenever the starosta came near him, and there could be little doubt that had he met him outside the prison walls he would have shown him no mercy. Koshkin on the other hand appeared to cherish no enmity.

"I have done wrong, Mikail," he said half an hour after he had had his flogging, "and I have been punished for it. It was not your fault; it was mine. These things will happen, you know, and there is no need for malice;" and he went about the ward smiling and rubbing his hands as usual and occasionally singing softly to himself. As G.o.dfrey knew how submissive the Russians are under punishment he would have thought this perfectly natural had he not heard from Luka the man's history. That was how, he thought to himself, the scoundrel smiled upon the master and mistress he had resolved to murder. "Of the two I think there is more to be feared from him than from that villain Kobylin, who has certainly been civil enough to me since I gave him that thras.h.i.+ng. I will keep my eye on the little fellow."

Of necessity the ward became quiet very soon after night set in. The men talked and smoked for a short time, but in an hour after the candle was lit the ward was generally perfectly quiet. G.o.dfrey, working as he did indoors, was far less inclined for sleep than either the men who had been working in the forest or those who had been listlessly pa.s.sing the day in enforced idleness, and he generally lay awake for a long time, either thinking of home and school-days, or in meditating over his plans for escape as soon as spring arrived, and he now determined to keep awake still longer. "They are almost all asleep by seven o'clock," he said to himself. "If any of those fellows intend to do any harm to Mikail they will probably do it by ten or eleven, there will be no motive in putting it off longer; and indeed the ward is quieter then than it is later, for some of them when they wake light a pipe and have a smoke, and many do so early in the morning so as to have their smoke before going to work."

Five evenings pa.s.sed without anything happening, and G.o.dfrey began to think that he had been needlessly anxious, and that Mikail must understand the ways of his own people better than he did. The sixth evening had also pa.s.sed off quietly, and when G.o.dfrey thought that it must be nearly twelve o'clock he was about to pull his blanket up over his ear and settle himself for sleep when he suddenly caught sight of a stooping figure coming along. It was pa.s.sing under the candle when he caught sight of it. He did not feel quite sure that his eyes had not deceived him, for it was but a momentary glance he caught of a dark object an inch or two above the level of the feet of the sleepers.

G.o.dfrey noiselessly pushed down his blanket, gathered his feet up in readiness for a spring, and grasped one of his shoes, which as usual he had placed behind the clothes-bag that served as his pillow. Several of the sleepers were snoring loudly, and intently as he listened he heard no footfall. In a few seconds, however, a dark figure arose against the wall at the foot of the bench; it stood there immovable for half a minute and then leaned over Mikail, placing one hand on the wall as if to enable him to stretch as far over as possible without touching the sleeper. G.o.dfrey waited no longer but brought the shoe down with all his force on the man's head, and then threw himself upon him pinning him down for a moment upon the top of Mikail. The latter woke with a shout of surprise followed by a sharp cry of pain. G.o.dfrey clung to the man, who, as with a great effort he rose, dragged him from the bed, and the two rolled on the ground together. Mikail's shout had awakened the whole ward and a sudden din arose. Mikail leapt from the bench and as he did so fell over the struggling figures on the ground.

"Get hold of his hands, Mikail," G.o.dfrey shouted, "he has got a knife and I can't hold him."