On the third day their clothed were stripped off, and they were given in place of them, coarse linen shirts and trousers, long grey overcoats with yellow, diamond-shaped patched sewn between the shoulders, and visorless caps of the same material.
Attired in these coarse garments, they were conveyed in the dusk of the evening to the railway-station in company with a dozen other poor wretches, and placed in a huge, dreary car with narrow-grated windows and rough board seats.
As the train rattled off into the night, Maurice turned to the burly Cossack at his side.
"Where are we going?" he asked, imploringly; "won't you tell us?"
The Russian understood the gestures, if not the words.
"Siberia," he replied gruffly, and the sentence of their doom fell like a death-knell on the boys' ears.
* * *
CHAPTER V
On the banks of the River Tura, in front of the gloomy palisades of the great forwarding prison of Tiumen, there were grouped one morning, late in the month of May a band of Russian exiles, four or five hundred in number.
A cordon of soldiers hemmed them in on all sides, and close by a railed platform zigzagged down the steep bank to the water's edge, where lay a long low vessel with black hull and yellow deckwork—a convict barge waiting to receive its cargo.
The wretched convicts represented all sorts of types and contrasts—fierce mountaineers from Circassia and Daghostan, sunburnt Tartars from the lower Volga, Turks from the Crimea with their scarlet fezes, and Jews from Podolia.
A little apart from the rest stood two youthful figures with haggard faces in whom we find it difficult to recognise Maurice Hammond and Philip Danvers.
Partly by rail, partly by water they had journeyed with many delays along the vast exile route.
Passing through the great Fair City, of Nijni Novgorod, the populous towns of Kazan and Perm, they crossed the dreary range of the Ural Mountains, passed the boundary line between Russia and Siberia; and now broken by hardship and suffering, still ignorant of their destination, they have reached Tiumen, seventeen hundred miles from St. Petersburg.
The past seems almost a dream. Hope has fled long ago, and they have learned to suffer in silence, thankful at least that they had not been separated from each other.
In their character of political prisoners they have been treated with some slight consideration to distinguish them from the coarser class of criminals, but all attempts to obtain audience with any official, in hope of convincing them of the fearful mistake that has been made, have been fruitless.
Vladimir Saradoff's triumph is complete. The net was woven tightly about his victims, and there is no escape from the living death to which he has consigned them.
"Come on, they are going now," said Maurice, and, as he spoke, commotion was visible among the exiles, and the commanding officer shouted.
"Forward now! Get on board!
In groups of twos and threes the wretched prisoners filed down the platform past the armed guards, who stood twenty feet apart, and crossed the floating wharf to the barge.
This vessel was about a hundred feet long. At each extremity was built a deckhouse painted yellow, and the space between these was roofed over with timber and faced with heavy iron screens. In these pens the prisoners were placed.
Beneath the deck were dark, gloom holes, with tiers of narrow bunks where they were to sleep.
The boys sat down on the bare floor in one corner of the pen, and watched for an hour or two the strange scene that was taking place before them.
The prisoners crowding up against the screen were carrying on a brisk business with the pedlars and peasant women who had come on board the barge with bread, cakes, salted cucumbers, strings of dried mushrooms, and fish pies.
The chaffing and buying kept up briskly until a little past noon.
Then a steamer backed up to the vessel with a great blowing of whistles, and in a few minutes the convict barge was speeding through the black current of the river on its long voyage to Tomsk.
It was evident that Captain Sasha, the commandant of the Moscow prison, had received special instructions concerning the two boys. They were guarded more closely it is true, than the common prisoners. but as yet they had not suffered the indignity of being chained, and they were supplied with reasonably good food.
Moreover—although they did not know it themselves—they were being transported across Siberia with a rapidity that is seldom granted to Russian exiles. Instead of marching hundreds of miles on foot, they had journeyed entirely by rail and by water.
With their fellow-passengers they had little or nothing to do. They were all low-grade convicts—thieves, murderers, bandits—a fact which Maurice was not slow to recognise.
In the past two months the boys had picked up a slight smattering of the Russian language, and were now able to understand the commands of the soldiers and officers.
Day after day the barge moved slowly on its course, first up the sluggish current of the River Tobol, and then down the more impetuous waters of the Ob.
For hours at a time the boys gazed wearily on the ever-changing landscape, the forest clad hills and mountains; the pretty villages with their golden spires, and the waving fields of grain, for such was Siberian scenery at this season of the year. This vast continent is not always the barren, snow-clad desert that many believe it to be perpetually.
Among their fellow-prisoners the boys had made one acquaintance, a middle-aged Russian, who appeared to be of a higher class than his associates, though he possessed a cast of features by no means prepossessing. He had scraped acquaintance with Maurice by addressing him in French, a language which the lad happened to have acquired at college, and in his delight at finding someone from whom he could ob[t]ain information, Maurice gladly overlooked all other considerations
The Russian's name was Grodno, and he very freely confessed to Maurice that his offence was smuggling contraband goods over the Russian border.
If he expected a like return of confidence he was disappointed. Maurice was clever enough to see that it would be unwise to make a confidant of such a man. Instead, he allowed himself to pose as a political prisoner. However, in regard to that matter of which he was most anxious, he could learn nothing. Grodno, disappointed, perhaps, to find that his friend was neither a cutthroat nor a robber, disclaimed all knowledge of what was usually done with "politicals" as he rather scornfully termed them.
The Russian possessed another friend on board the barge, a most villainous-looking Turk, with sunburnt face and a stubby black beard. He wore a greasy red fez, and was continually smoking a short clay-pipe.
Grodno, and Hamid—for that was the Turk's name—held long and whispered conversations in Russian, day after day, always keeping apart in a corner by themselves, and separating whenever any of the guards approached. These secret palavers Maurice observed with suspicion and distrust, for their actions on many occasions showed that the boys had something to do with the subject of their discussion.
Meanwhile the barge was drawing nearer its destination, and the dreary two-thousand-mile ride would soon be over.
All day they had been drifting through a wild and picturesque bit of country, and now at sunset the air was sultry and oppressive.
Maurice and Phil, their heads resting on their coats, were lying close up against the grating. The hot atmosphere below deck was intolerable, and the indulgent guards had allowed a great many of the convicts to remain out, instead of driving them all below, as was the usual rule.
It was remarkably quiet, so still indeed that the splash of the paddles was heard distinctly from the steamer, some distance ahead.
The guards paced slowly up and down the deck, glancing watchfully at the prisoners from time to time. Off against the railing, the commanding officer, Captain Stanisla, was smoking his evening cigar, and its fumes drifting in through the grating mingled with the villainous odour of Hamid's pipe.
Suddenly, when the guard's back was turned, Grodno slunk up to the boys, and threw himself carelessly at their side.
"Want to escape?" he whispered. "Want to leave the vessel; hide in woods, go back to Russia?"
"What do you mean?" asked Maurice, sharply.
"Hush!" said the Russian; "don't talk, don't say a word. Do you want to go?"
"Yes," replied Maurice, incautiously, "of course we want to go. But tell me, Grodno, what do you mean?"
"Hush, not now," replied Grodno, and slipping off in the gloom he disappeared, leaving the boys in a state of great excitement.
"I'd like to know what he means," said Maurice. "I don't see how escape can be possible from a place like this."
"It's a plot of some kind," replied Phil, "that's what Grodno and Hamid have been discussing for the last week. I don't like the looks of either of those fellows, Maurice, and in a matter of escape, I am afraid they would only use us to serve their own ends."
"I believe all that," rejoined Maurice, "but a chance of escape is not to be neglected under any circumstances, Phil. If only we could find some influential person to listen to our story he might be induced to investigate it, and prove our innocence. If we escape and are recaptured it will hardly make our position worse than it is now. But what became of Grodno? Did you see?"
"No, he and Hamid have disappeared," replied Phil.
"I saw them going towards the hatchway a moment ago."
The twilight had now merged into darkness, and the dim outline of the shores had vanished. A slight breeze sprang up, and the prisoners pressed close against the grating to enjoy its invigorating effect.
"Hamid can't be very far away," said Phil, suddenly. "I can smell that villainous pipe of his plainly; don't you notice it?
"I can smell something," said Maurice, "but I don't believe it's Hamid s pipe. It seems a very different kind of an odour."
An armed soldier strolled slowly past the grating at that moment and the conversation ceased.
As soon as he was gone Maurice began to sniff the air uneasily.
"That's not tobacco smoke, Phil," he said, finally. "I half believe something is burning. The odour is getting stronger every instant."
Before Phil could reply a sudden commotion was heard behind them, and turning quickly, the boys saw a confused mass of convicts struggling up the hatchway, their dark forms outlined against a dull red glow.
Then the silence was broken by a sharp cry of "Fire! fire! fire!" and instantly an uproar arose that made the boys' hair fairly stand on end.
Shrieking, swearing, and shouting the panic-stricken wretches surged up the hatchway, and flung themselves against the grating until it trembled and creaked, the guards ran up and down the deck, the officers shouted fiercely, and through the open hatchway the angry flames were already visible. "We'll be burnt alive," cried Maurice, and he tore desperately at the grating. The hatchway was now one mass of flames, volumes of smoke were pouring out, and the deck planks were getting hot.
Suddenly a shrill whistle was heard from the steamer, and then the barge seemed to lie motionless on the water.
The guards, apparently stupefied at this appalling calamity, ran helplessly about the deck, while the officers seemed to have disappeared.
Maurice and Phil joined with the rest in their desperate against the grating, but as the stout iron refused to yield and the smoke and heat became almost unendurable, they lost all hope of escaping the flames.
At this moment of despair a hand clutched Maurice arm, and a voice whispered in his ear. "Follow me! Come this way."
Grodno—-for it was he—had already vanished, but the hoys turned in the direction he had taken, and fought their way through the frenzied crowd.
The opposite side of the pen, strangely enough, was almost deserted, and here they found Grodno and Hamid fumbling at the grating.
"All right," the Russian whispered, triumphantly, and to their amazement the boys saw that he had opened one of the little sliding doors.
He darted quickly through, followed by Hamid. Maurice, horror- stricken at the thought of abandoning all these poor wretches to a shocking death, was about to attract general attention to the open doorway, when with a terrific crash the entire grating on the opposite side of the pen gave way before the desperate efforts of the mob and toppled over on the astounded guards.
"Come quick!" shouted the Russian, and without further delay, the boys darted out on the open deck. Not a soldier was in sight. They were all on the other side.
Grodno had laid his plans well.
On the edge of the barge lay a rude boat, belonging to a pedlar who had come on board with provisions a few days before.
Grodno and Hamid seized this by the bow and stern, and dropped it with a light splash into the water. It landed fairly on its keel, and turning to the boy, Grodno shouted: "Jump in now quick! Don't delay"
* * *
CHAPTER VI
With a hasty glance at the sluggish black water, Maurice and Phil jumped together, landing fairly in the boat. Hamid followed instantly, but Grodno in the very act of leaping was confronted by a soldier, who presented his rifle at the convict's head and pulled the trigger. The weapon missed fire, and before the guard could recover from his surprise, Grodno sprang furiously upon him and bore him to the deck.
From the boat the boys witnessed the whole affair. It was a very brief struggle, for the desperate convict, endowed with more than ordinary strength, choked his antagonist into a state of helplessness, and hastily plundering him of his sword and revolver sprang to his feet. He tossed these weapons down to Hamid, following them with the soldier's gun, and then made a desperate leap for the boat, just as half a dozen guards rounded the corner of the nearest deck-house.
Had the fire made sufficient progress to throw any light on the scene, escape would have been impossible, but the water was shrouded in darkness, and by a skilful use of a paddle which was lying in the boat, Grodno drove it some distance out in the river before the soldiers reached the spot.
"Stoop down," he whispered, and, as all obeyed, half a dozen rifles cracked from the deck of the barge, and a storm of bullets pattered around the boat. A straggling fire was kept up for two or three minutes, but the guards were shooting wildly, and none of the bullets struck the boat.
