G. A. Henty

“ 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. ”

“ The wide-spreading woods broke the force of the winds, and while they could sometimes see the tops of the trees swaying beneath its force they scarcely felt a breath below. Luka knew nothing of the Esquimaux fashion of making snow-huts, and said he had never heard of it among the Ostjaks or Samoyedes. At each of the halts, however, Godfrey piled the snow high over the low tent of reindeer-skin which he had got the women to make for him according to his own plan. ”

“ Why, man, the difficulties are nothing in comparison to the reward. A journey across Asia is as nothing to the journeys many of my countrymen have made across Africa. Here there is no fear of fever, of savage tribes, or savage beasts. It is in comparison a mere pleasure excursion. I may not succeed next time, just as I did not succeed last year, but succeed in the end I will."
"I believe you," Mikail said earnestly, infected by Godfrey's enthusiasm. "Did you not overthrow, as if he were a babe, Kobylin, whom everyone else feared? ”

“ Mikail said kindly, "I don't suppose there is ever a prisoner comes here who does not say to himself, I will escape. Every spring there are thousands who take to the woods, and scarce one of these but hopes never to see the inside of a prison again, and yet they come back, every one of them."
"But there have been escapes, Mikail, therefore there is nothing impossible in it."
"There are twenty thousand convicts cross the frontier every year, lad. There is not one man makes his escape in five years." ”

“ Stick to the business, lad. You will find Petrovytch himself a thoroughly good fellow. Of course he has Russian ways and prejudices, but he is less narrow than most of his countrymen of that class. Above all things, don't express any opinion you may feel about public affairs—at any rate outside the walls of the house. The secret police are everywhere, and a chance word might get you into a very serious scrape. As you get on you will find a good deal that you do not like. Even in business there is no getting a government contract, or indeed a contract at all, without bribing right and left. ”

“ Luka, who was always ready to work, set to cheerfully, but the short twilight had faded into deep darkness before the work was completed.
"If we had had a couple of good shovels with us, Luka, we should have made short work of this," Godfrey said as they retired below into their tent. "We could do as much work in an hour as one can in five with these tools. It is heart-breaking to shovel out snow with a hatchet. I am as tired as a dog. This is harder work than the gold-mines at Kara by a long way."
"Yes," Luka said, "but there is no man with a gun." ”

“ You know I make light of it, but I know very well that there will be some danger and a tremendous lot of hardship to be gone through."
"I don't think I am afraid of that, Godfrey," Alexis said seriously. "It is not that I have been thinking of ever since you began to talk to me of getting away. I consider it is a hundred to one against success; but, as you say, if we fail and get brought back no great harm is done. If we get killed or die of hunger and thirst, again no harm is done, for certainly life is not a thing to cling to when one is a prisoner in Siberia ”

“ Godfrey did not hear a single word of pity for Koshkin, or of regret at his death. Indifference for others was one of the leading characteristics of the prisoners. Although living so long together they seldom appeared to form a friendship of any kind; each man lived for and thought only of his own lot. Godfrey observed that it was very seldom that a prisoner shared any dainty he had purchased with another, and it was only when three or four had clubbed together to get in a ham, a young sucking pig, or some vodka that they were seen to partake of it together. ”

“ Every man can go where he likes, and live where he likes, and do anything he likes, providing that it does not interfere with the rights of other people."
"Ah! shall we ever come to this in Russia, Akim?" Petroff said.
Akim made no answer, but Godfrey replied for him. "No doubt you will in time, Petroff; but you see liberties like these do not grow up in a day. We had serfs and vassals in England at one time, and feudal barons who could do pretty much what they chose, and it was only in the course of centuries that these things got done away with." ”

“ One does not know whether to call it dinner or supper when there is no night and we sleep just when we are tired."
They had caught eight or ten fish as they came across, passing through a great shoal of herrings. In half an hour the kettle was boiling over the fire, the fish were hissing and crackling in the frying-pan over it, and a strip of deer's flesh, with the ramrod run through it, was frizzling. It was pronounced excellent. There was a slight aromatic bitterness that gave a zest and flavour to it, and the flesh inside was by no means so tough as Godfrey had expected to find it. ”

“ Petersburg by day as well as by night. He was delighted with the scene on the Nevski Prospekt, the principal street of St. Petersburg. The footways were crowded with people: the wealthy in high boots, coats lined with sable, and caps to match; the poorer in equally ample coats, but with linings of sheep, fox, or rabbit skins, with the national Russian cap of fur with velvet top, and with fur-lined hoods, which were often drawn up over the head.
The shops were excellent, reminding Godfrey rather of Paris than London. But the chief interest of the scene lay in the roadway. ”

“ Godfrey said warmly. "Men must be mad who could counsel such abominable plans. The French Revolution was terrible, although it began peacefully, and was at first supported by all the best spirits of France; but at last it became a hideous butchery. But here in Russia it seems to me that it would be infinitely worse, for it is only in the towns that there are men with any education; and if it began with the murder of the Czar, what would it grow to?"
"What, indeed!" Ivan Petrovytch repeated. ”

“ Godfrey said in surprise.
"Yes, the Ostjaks told me in our old camp that many of the Samoyedes had five hundred, and some of them a thousand reindeer. They keep them just as we do cattle. Their wealth is counted by their reindeer. They make their clothes of its skin; its milk and flesh are their chief food. It draws their sledges, and when they want money they can sell some of them." ”

“ Being in the thick of every conspiracy they are the life and soul of the movement, and they are of all classes. There are a score of women for whose arrest the authorities would pay any money, and yet they elude every effort. It is horrible. [67] This is what comes of women going to Switzerland and learning to look upon religion as a myth and all authority as hateful, and to have wild dreams of an impossible state of affairs such as never has existed in this world. It is horrible, but it is pitiable. The prisons in the land are full of victims; trains of prisoners set off monthly for Siberia. ”

“ There are no fevers in summer, but in winter, from so many men being shut up together, the air gets bad and sometimes we have outbreaks of fever."
"But where do you buy your tobacco?"
"People come to the prison gates and sell it as we come back from work. You can buy anything except vodka, and you can buy that, though not openly; it gets smuggled in."
"How many hours do you work a day?"
"Thirteen; but of course it is only for five months in the year. In winter the ground is too hard."
"Too hard!" Godfrey repeated. "Why, it never gets cold in mines." ”

“ Nothing could be more monotonous than the journey, and yet the air and light that came down through the port-hole rendered it far more pleasant than existence in a prison cell. He knew, too, that, dull as it was in the cabin, there would be little to see on deck, for the shores of the rivers were everywhere flat and low.
After twenty-four hours' travel the steamer stopped. Since Godfrey had been in Russia he had naturally studied the geography of the empire, and knew a good deal about the routes. He guessed, therefore, that the halt was at Kasan, the capital of the old Tartar kingdom. ”

“ I am more likely to see you working in a chain-gang at Portsmouth, Wilkinson, when I come back, than I am to form part of a convict gang in Siberia—at any rate for being a Nihilist. I won't say about other things, for I suppose there is no saying what a fellow may come to. I don't suppose any of the men who get penal servitude for forgery, and swindling, and so on, ever have any idea, when they are sixteen, that that is what they are coming to. ”

“ In a moment he sat upright with a paddle in his hand, and a couple of sharp strokes sent the boat out into the centre of the current. At this moment they heard a series of yells and splashes. "Lucky for them," Luka laughed, "I made the slits so big. If they had got out farther they would all have been drowned: these people are not able to swim."
"No, I should think not," Godfrey said. "They don't look as if water had ever touched them from the day they were born. We are safe now, in ten minutes we shall be clear of the river, and have only got to paddle back and fetch our canoe." ”

“ Godfrey said, and leaping up they ran to collect the fallen birds. There were five of them. "That is grand," he exclaimed in delight.
"Will you shoot some more?" Luka asked.
"No, we have as many as we can eat, Luka, for the next three days at least. It would be a waste of powder and shot to kill more, and worse still, it would be a waste of life. It is right to kill what we require as food, but to my mind there is nothing more wicked than taking life merely for amusement. ”

“ Is it likely such people as these would cut a stranger's throat on the chance of finding a few roubles in his pocket?"
"Well, one would think not, Godfrey; but of course they are not all rich."
"No; they may not be rich, but you say they are always nomads. Well, people who are nomads must always have some sort of animals to carry their tents, and a certain amount, anyhow, of cattle, horses, or sheep. No, I don't at all believe in cutting throats without a motive." ”

“ Don't you be fool enough to tell any one what your real name is. There are sneaks here as well as elsewhere who are glad enough to curry favour so as to get easy jobs, or to be let out sooner than they otherwise would be, by acting as spies; so you keep your real name to yourself. If it got to the ears of the governor he might find out what prison you escaped from and what you were in for, and if you were a political you would either be sent back there, or put with the politicals here, so keep it to yourself. ”

“ The snow has begun earlier than usual, has it not?"
"It won't last," the Isvostchik said. "Sometimes we have a week at this time of year, but it is not till December that it sets in in earnest. We may have droskies out again to-morrow instead of the sledges."
"The sledges are the pleasantest," Godfrey said.
"Yes, your excellency, for those that travel, but not for us. At night when we are waiting we can get into the drosky and sleep, while it is terrible without shelter. There are many of us frozen to death every winter." ”

“ It is not likely that the colonel will ever make any more inquiries about it, but if he does, some of Presnovich's friends will be ready to declare that he never left Moscow."
"But can't he manage to leave his mask and cloak in the box and to slip away without them?"
"No, that would never do. It is necessary that the colonel should see for himself that the man in the cloak, with the white and red bow pinned to it, is not the captain."
"Very well, then, I will do it," Godfrey said. "It will be fun to see the colonel's face when he finds out his mistake; but mind I am doing it to oblige you." ”

“ Godfrey said.
"And the Tartar?"
"Yes, the Tartar and the dog."
"Very well. Stay here for ten minutes," he said to Luka, "I will send a man down to help you up with the canoe. We may as well put it in my yard," he went on as he started back with Godfrey. "The people are as honest as the day, but they might be pulling it about and examining it, and it is just as well to stow it away safe. Well, this is a wonderful escape of yours! During the twenty years I have been here, it has never happened before." ”

“ Mikail strolled up while he was so engaged. Godfrey had already given him money for the various purchases, and he now pressed a hundred-rouble note into his hand, and said:
"Now, Mikail, you must take this from me; it is not a present to you, but to your brave wife. When you get out you will want to do your share towards making the house she has got for you comfortable. Till you get your free ticket you will still be working in the mines like the others; and though you will get the same pay as free labourers then, it will be some time before you can lay much by. ”

“ 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. ”