Sons of Freedom, or, The Fugitives from Siberia, etc

Front matter

SONS OF FREEDOM JBg tbe same author. HAROLD THE NORSEMAN. Price 3s. 6d. A LOST ARMY. Price 3s. 6d. BORIS THE BEAR-HUNTER. Price 3s. 6d. .!>-0_!V*_S- OF FREEDOM; or, The Fugitives fro,,, Siberia Price 2s 6d. T. Nelson and Sons, London, Edinburgh, and New York. AT THE GATE OF DEATH. Page 28. Sons of Freedom OR THE FUGITIVES FROM SIBERIA BY FRED. WHISH AW AUTHOR OF "HAROLD THE NORSEMJ^" UA LOST ARMY," "BORIS THE BEAR-HUNTER," etc. etc. WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS THOMAS NELSON AND SONS London, Edinburgh, and New York CONTENTS. I. THE EAGLETS, .... .... .... .... 9 II. AT THE GATE OP DEATH. .... .... .... 21 III. TO SIBERIA FOR LIFE, .... .... .... 30 IV. IN PRISON, .... .... .... .... 39 V. THE FIFTEENTH OF MAY .... .... 50 VI. ON THE FRINGE OF FREEDOM, .... .... GI VII. FREE, .... .... .... .... .... 71 VIII.

A SCARE, .... .... .... .... 81 IX. A DANGEROUS OASIS, .... .... .... 93 X. THE RANGERS, .... .... .... .... 102 XI. IN THE FOREST, .... .... .... .... 113 XII. A PITCHED BATTLE, .... .... .... 121 XIII. FAMINE, .... .... .... .... 133 XIV. A GOAT-HUNT, .... .... .... .... 142 XV. NEW DANGERS, .... .... .... .... 154 XVI. BLOOD-HOUNDS AND RANGERS, .... .... 1G3 XVII. FAREWELL TO KOZLOF, .... .... .... 173 XVIII. HONOURED GUESTS, .... .... .... 182 XIX. THE COUNT AND THE BARON, .... .... 193 XX. CHECK! .... .... .... .... 203 XXI. OVER THE AMOOR, .... .... .... 212 XXIT. AMONG THE MANCHUS, .... .... .... 222 XXIII. THE GATE OF PARADISE, .... .... .... 234 XXIV. HOME AT LAST, .... .... .... .... LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. AT THE GATE OF DEATH, .... .... Frontispiece. " WE WERE STARTLED BY A LOUD SHOUT FROM THE FAR SIDE OF THE RIVER," .... .... ....

S3 " THEN VAINKA BADE US FOLLOW HIM SOFTLY DOWN STAIRS," .... .... .... .... Ill "AT THIS MOMENT THE WHOLE BODY BORE SUDDENLY DOWN UPON US," .... .... .... 124 " KOZLOF CROUCHED BEHIND A ROCK, AND MOTIONED TO US TO DO THE SAME," .... .... 145 " IT SEEMED TO PAUSE FOR AN INSTANT AND RAISE ITS HEAD FROM THE GROUND," .... .... 164 "THE HORSES ARE THERE ALREADY, AND YOU ARE EX PECTED ALSO," .... .... .... .... 185 "I SAW SHURIN GLARE AT ME MORE THAN ONCE," .. 197 " HE CREPT MOST CAUTIOUSLY TOWARDS THE DIVAN," 227 •'SUDDENLY A LARGE STONE HIT VAINKA ON THE HEAD," SONS OF FREEDOM.

Chapter I. The Eaglets

SOME of my good friends in the country of my adoption have begged me to write down for their entertainment the story of my adventurous youth ; and as the dear British people have ever shown themselves towards me and mine the truest and most sympathetic of friends, and since at one time of my life the hospitable British soil offered me the most needful and sufficing sanctuary, I think it would be an ill return if I were to refuse to do what little I can in the way of showing my gratitude for all the kindness I have received in this country. Perhaps it may really be within my power to interest the younger members at least of the community by a description of my adventures and escapes in the old days. I should like to think so. At all events, English readers of all ages shall have the chance of learning how a Russian boy — for I was little more at the time — passed through many and great tribulations, and came eventually to reside in their own free and beautiful country ; and how that boy has learned to love the people of his adoption because he has recognized in them many qualities which, alas, the great majority of Russians do not recognize.

If they did, there would be no two nations in this world more truly united than the great Russian people and the generous and noble inhabitants of Great Britain. Well, then, I am an elderly man now ; but forty five years ago, more or less, I was young and active and ardent — something of a poet, certainly, and some thing of a politician, too, unfortunately. Indeed, it is to this last circumstance (my taste for politics) that I attribute the whole of the misfortunes and miseries which I endured at the hands of my country men, and which I am now about to describe. My father, a colonel in the lancer regiment of the Guards, was dead before I passed out of the cadet corps in St. Petersburg in which I received my education. I was destined, of course, for the army ; every young Rus sian of any position was at that time.

You could not very well be anything but a soldier, with the Emperor Nicholas at the head of affairs. As a mat ter of fact, I was a cornet of hussars when the events happened which form the starting-point of my his tory. But, though an ardent patriot, and as fond of outdoor pursuits and as chivalrous in my under standing of that singular word " honour " as most youths of my age, yet I did not really love my call ing as a military man ; for I felt that there was that in me which was wasted on the parade-ground and among the common herd of younkers and officers in the hussar barracks at Tsarskoe Selo. In a word, I felt myself to be a poet, and to have in me the faculty, if I were allowed the chance, to mount my country men upon squadrons of winged words, and to set them soaring into ideals and hopes of freedom and constitutional emancipation such as my own soul, in the fine frenzy of its poetical elevation, aspired to.

Well, no one is infallible, not even the youngest of us ; and I am pretty certain that I was an extremely foolish young man. Russia was not then in its pres ent enlightened condition. To-day, improvement is stalking with wide-open hands from end to end of the country ; every day witnesses bonds loosened, burdens lightened, education and freedom gaining ground — freedom of speech and of literary comment, and so on. But forty-five years ago matters were very different. In those dark days a man might, if he liked, enter tain liberal ideas for his own private gratification ; but woe to that man if he dared to communicate such " revolutionary" notions to another ! The government, might act as it pleased ; there was to be no criticism of its actions. The governed were not supposed to be capable of judging how they should be governed.

The office of the authorities was to command ; theirs to obey, and to obey silently. All this appeared very wrong to me. I chafed and fretted. I was a slave ; the entire community were slaves also — ignorant, docile, patient slaves to a despotic and tyrannical government. This would not do, I felt. It was the sacred duty of those to whom nature had given wings, the wings of literary genius, to instruct the community ; it was my own duty to do so. I would write a poem which should open the eyes of the nation to its own degradation, and teach my country men to aspire to better things. My countrymen were grovelling on the earth ; I should teach them to soar like other nations. I had, unfortunately, made friends with other kin dred spirits — young Gregorief, the poet ; Katkof, the novelist ; Zimine, the journalist ; and the great Dos toiefsky; with a number of others.

We had bound ourselves together in a kind of brotherhood, and called ourselves the " Eaglets." We were all ardent, young, rather talented fellows of from twenty to twenty-five years of age. I was about the youngest, being scarcely out of my teens. One or two of us have since made some little name for ourselves as writers, but I do not think many of us were quite the geniuses we all believed one another to be. We had a printing-press of our own, an exceedingly dangerous possession ; and it was through the medium of this machine that my great and patriotic poem first saw the light, and was distributed among those who, we believed, sympathized with the ideas and sentiments which we endeavoured to express in our various lucubrations. How well I remember the night on which my poem was issued ' indeed, I have good cause to remember it, and so have my fellow Eaglets, such of them as are still alive, for it was an eventful night for us.

My dear brother Vainka was an Eaglet — an honorary member, for he was not a writer ; and he was present with me that evening when Gregorief, our president, came rushing in with the first copy of my poem, hot from the press. Gregorief, with the enthusiasm of our race — you English would have done it quite dif ferently — came straight to me with the little book let in his hand, and flung his arms round my neck and kissed me repeatedly. " It is simply splendid, Volodya," he said (my name is Vladimir Tarakanof ; Volodya being familiar for Vladimir, just as Vainka is for Ivan); "it is the very heaven-inspired expression of the soul aspirations of our poor down-trodden nation. You are a genius, Volodya ; all the world shall ring with the glory of your name ; you shall be known as our national poet and patriot, par excellence, with Gogol and Poushkine — happy Volodya !

" Happy Volodya, indeed ! I remember we impro vised a little supper, Vainka and Gregorief and I, and that I read aloud the poem as we munched our chicken-salad and sipped our English beer, which was the fashionable drink among the better classes in St. Petersburg at that day, and that several of our Eaglet friends dropped in to this " feast of reason and flow of soul," and listened and ate with the rest. It was the supreme moment of my life, up to then. I stood on winged feet, and read my lines with an intensity of feeling and expression which quite carried my sympathetic audience with me, and caused me to feel an exalted conviction that this was a historic moment, and would be described in after-ages by every writer, when the lives and works of myself, and of these other great geniuses now present in the room, came to be spoken of by historians as the chiefest glory of the age in which we lived.

Dear old Vainka was as excited as I was myself. He was as loud as any one in his applause, and, like the rest, he frequently left his place at the table to come and wring my hand, or kiss my cheek, with effusion, and say kind but exaggerated things about my poem and the grand sentiments of true patriotism which were embodied in the heroics to which I was so lavishly treating the company. The sentiments were not really very exalted. I was not a revolu tionist, as we should understand the word in these days ; I was not even approximately allied in opinions to that terrible set of people the Nihilists. On the contrary, I was a good churchman and a firm be liever ; I have always been so, and shall be so to my dying day. Moreover, I had no sentiments of hostility or animosity towards the person of His Imperial Majesty ; I would have regarded such a thing as foul treason towards my sovereign, whom I loved and respected as the head of the realm.

My aspirations were for the enlightenment and freedom of the people, for the representation of the popular element in the councils of the state. In a word, if my poem had been written to-day, it would scarcely have been considered even moderately liberal. Most of the reforms I suggested have been already granted. Yet forty-five years ago the booklet was a most ad vanced and dangerous publication, from the point of view of the powers that be — a work to be printed and read in secret, and circulated in fear and trembling. After the reading of my magnum opus there was much talk and mild plotting. We were all in a con dition of mental elevation, and felt that the destiny of our beloved country rested upon our shoulders, and that we were the true inner circle from whose resolutions all needful reforms should spring, and that it behoved us to-night to be circumspect in our behaviour and speech, since not a word spoken, or a noble idea expressed, would be lost in the records which future ages would read and re-read concerning the doings of this historic evening.

In the midst of all this joyful and eager discussion and mutual admiration, in rushed Fedia Rozinsky of a sudden, with the terrible news that the police had descended upon our little printing establishment, (920; and had carried away press and printers, together with all the printed copies of my poem, and a great many other incriminatory documents and publications, with a list of the members of the brotherhood and the addresses of the Eaglets. Away went exultation, and the pride and joy of the poet and reformer ; away went the sanguine con fidence of a moment before. Away, too, went Gre gorief and the rest, pale and agitated, not without reason, and within two minutes Vainka and I were left alone with the mangled remains of the supper, and a great many dirty plates, and my copy of the immortal poem, and not much else, excepting a black end sickly fear that sat on the heart of each and gnawed thereat ; for, of a truth, there was much to alarm us in Rozinsky 's communication, and though we knew there were many things to be done, yet we could not, in our agitation, fix upon the best way to set about doing them.

Vainka sat and trembled over his empty plate, and I fingered the poem and trembled also. Neither spoke for full three minutes. Then Vainka got up and began hastily to remove all the evidence of our late gathering. He hustled the plates and dishes into a cupboard, and carried the food and things into the kitchen ; he awoke our old servant (920) and got him to help to clear the room. As for me, I sat and fooled with the poem, unable to offer help to the others, or to say a word of any kind, or even to move from my seat. The sudden fright had para lyzed me completely. Vainka was the first to speak. " Volodya, old fellow," he said, and it was wonderful how tremu lous his voice sounded, " I'm afraid the poem must go." Go ! " I muttered hoarsely ; " where to ? " Into the fire, lad," replied Vainka.

" It is an in criminatory document, and the police may be in at any moment." I burst into a passion of tears : you may judg3 of the state of my nerves from this confession of weakness. " Oh, I can't, I really can't do it, Vainka ! " I sobbed. " It is a bit of my very heart, and has cost me so much, and I have expected such great results from it. Let us hide it, or even bury it — not burn it." Vainka came round and put his arm about my neck. " Dear, clever old Volodya," he said, " be wise and brave, and burn it. The words will not be lost ; we others and you yourself will carry them in our hearts. I can quote the greater part of it at this moment, and I shall never forget a single word. Carry it in your memory, my brother, like another Homer, and when a happier day dawns for Russia we shall print it again word for word.

What one cannot remember, another will ; it will all come back to you. But for the sake of those who love you — nay, for the sake of our dear country itself — let me burn it now. Say yes ; the police may be here directly — they are sure to be ! " Weeping bitterly, I allowed Vainka to take the precious booklet from my hands and place it in the stove, where other papers of ours were already fiercely blazing. Almost immediately after he had done so there was a heavy knock at the outer door, a short parley with the porter on the stairs, and then the unmistakable tramp of the gendarmes coming up. Vainka hastily closed the stove door, and seating himself in an arm chair by the table, pretended to be busy over a volume of Poushkine. I looked as unconcerned as I could, while our old servant Alexey went to the door and admitted the unwelcome visitors.

A moment later, there strode into the room an officer of police, followed by no less than six goro dovoys, or ordinary street constables. The officer sent a keen glance around the room. " Vladimir Tarakanof and Ivan Tarakanof ? " he said, politely enough. Vainka bowed, with a face which expressed the blankest astonishment, an expression I vainly at tempted to imitate. " Petrof and Kuzma, you will attend to the stove and the escritoire," continued the officer ; " the rest of you stand by the prisoners." " The prisoners ! " repeated my brother. " What is the meaning of this, Mr. Police Officer ? Do you know whom you address ? " " Perfectly," said the official. " Here is my war rant ; you will find it is in order. — Well, Petrof, documents burning ? I thought so ; take out what is still intact, and extinguish the flames — so.

Any papers in the desk, Kuzma ? No ? We were a little late. Make a thorough search, however." It was useless to say anything. Silently we watched the men turn our belongings upside down and ransack everything. Silently we obeyed when we were courteously requested to accompany our captors downstairs and away. It was useless to speak. We were arrested — lost !

Chapter II. At The Gate Of Death

I DO not think I need dwell very long upon the description of what followed for the next week or two. We were placed in cells in the fortress prison, four or five of us in each, and Gregorief, and I, together with my brother Vainka and another " conspirator," Maslof, found ourselves fellow-occu pants of a large, bare room overlooking the Neva, through a window which was too high to be of any use for seeing out of, and too hopelessly barred and narrow to afford any prospect whatever of escape. We were treated as criminals ; our food was scanty and nauseous, and the beds we were expected to sleep upon reeked with damp and were infested with vermin. The warder was rude and disobliging, and would do nothing to ameliorate our lot ; and, taking one thing with another, we were about as miserable and uncomfortable as men accustomed to the comforts and refinements of civilized existence could well be.

But it was a great consolation to me to have Vainka with me ; and Gregorief and Maslof were splendid company also, brave and sanguine, and full of en couragement and good hope. We spent much time in consultation as to what would be our probable fate. Vainka had certainly done nothing whatever to de serve punishment ; he was not even an active, but only an honorary, member of the Eaglets. They could not very well convict him of conspiring against the state. My case and Gregorief's were different ; both of us had written and printed what would be considered seditious literature. Gregorief was the president of our society ; my poem was enough to convict me. If any members of the brotherhood were destined to suffer severely, this would assuredly be our fate — Siberia, possibly ; certainly imprisonment for months, perhaps for years.

Dear old Vainka, what a comfort his society was at that time ! He would recite page after page of my work, patching together what he remembered himself and what I could recall of it, with occasional help from Gregorief and Maslof. In this way we re membered the greater part of the poem, and we both committed it to memory in so thorough a fashion that I, for one, am still able to quote it after forty odd years. The authorities were presumably sifting the docu mentary and other evidence against us which they had collected. The tribunal before which such cases as ours were examined was, we knew, a military one. There were twenty-four of us in all, and the work of making up the formal indictment would occupy, we expected, at least a month, after which the trial would come on. This was what we imagined.

As a matter of fact, the trial, so called, was held without us ; we never heard what was said for or against us on that occasion. It must have been a species of court-martial — short, severe, pitiless — but with no one to plead for us, our guilt taken for granted. All that our judges had to do was to pass judgment upon us, and to apportion the due degrees of punish ment. This appears to have been an easy task for them, as the reader will presently see, for they drew no distinctions between the comparatively innocent and the deeply guilty, but made one batch of the entire set of us, and condemned us en masse, a fortnight after the date of our arrest. It was a bitter day towards the end of November that the so-called trial came to an abrupt termination by the conviction of all, and we were informed that we should be made acquainted with our several des tinations by the proper officials on the following morning.

The morrow broke raw and cold, with a thin snow on the ground and a misty frost, and it was about ten o'clock when the jailers entered and bound each of us hand and foot, and conveyed us in carts to the great square known as the Simeonofsky Plain. On reaching this place we ..were arranged in parties of three, and made to stand and wait, stripped to our shirts in spite of the intense cold, until the officials should arrive upon the scene to read to us our sentence. Some workmen were busy in a corner of the square erecting, apparently, strong wooden posts, whose use we could not imagine, nor, indeed, did we connect them in any way with ourselves. Vainka and I and Maslof formed one of the batches of three ; and though we had been forbidden to converse, we never theless did so as well as we could for shiverinoand for the chattering of our teeth.

All we had to say was, of course, merely the frequent repetition of the longing to know our fate. There was a great rumbling of wheels presently, and Vainka said, " Three cheers, lads ! here come the officials at last. Now we shall know the worst, and they will give us our coats again. Courage, Volodya ! you are trembling, old boy." " It's only the cold, Vainka," I said ; and this was quite true, for I did not feel frightened at this time, though intensely excited to know our fate. But the rumbling of wheels was not, we found, the herald of our judge's arrival upon the scene. A huge van came lumbering into the square — an enormous open cart drawn by three horses abreast, and piled with what appeared to be large deal boxes. As the vehicle drew nearer to the spot where we stood and shivered, we made a very horrible discovery.

The white wooden boxes with which the van was laden were coffins, twenty-four of them ; and the cart with its dismal cargo was driven past us, and pulled up at that corner of the square in which the workmen were busy over the posts or piles which they were driving into the ground. " Heaven help us, Vainka !" I ejaculated, almost auto matically, " they are surely not going to execute us ! " Vainka was deadly pale. I could see a cold sweat forming upon his forehead as he stared at the van and its contents for a moment or two without speaking. Nevertheless he turned to me with a smile. " God knows, Volodya," he said, quite cheerfully. " It does not much matter, dear brother, whether we die now or later ; we have done our best for Russia. It would be well if you at least were spared to do more yet for our dear country.

But God will not suffer your good work to be lost. Never fear ; our death will be accounted good service to the cause when Russians come to count up their patriots ! " And Vainka ended the brave speech by making a stirring quotation from my poem. " God bless you, Vainka ! " was all I could say. I understood it all now. Those uprights were the shooting-posts. We should be lashed in turn to these and shot down like dogs. A squad of soldiers would arrive presently to do the killing ; I could hear the tramp of their approach even now. Maslof went down upon his knees and prayed aloud. I heard the words of his prayer quite distinctly, and remember them to this day. Poor Maslof ! he was a mere boy of twenty, if that ; and I can see him plainly now kneeling there in the snow, shivering in his shirt and trousers, and crying out upon his Creator as one having a grievance.

" Merciful God ! " he said, " what have we poor Russian youths done to deserve this dreadful end ? We are not the enemies of our country nor of Thee. Why is Thy hand against us, O God ? " As for Vainka and me, we said no more words just then, but we got as close to each other as we could, so that our bodies touched as we stood, and I think we both silently prayed. Very soon the soldiers marched up, and formed in double line close to the posts. The judge arrived immediately after, and our sentence was read out to us. It was short and simple and comprehensive, and merely stated that, as members of a revolutionary society, and enemies, ipso facto, of the state, our lives were forfeit, one and all. And we were to be shot in batches of three, beginning with Gregorief, Katkof, and Zimine. I am proud to say that of all our society, whatever may have been the feelings of surprise and horror animating each one of us, not a single member showed signs of fear or emotion as this iniquitous sentence was read out.

We kept our feelings to ourselves, and received the verdict in silence and dignity, unmoved. After this a priest came among us, exhorting us to confess our treason to sovereign and state ; but though most of us were glad to kiss the cross he offered us for this purpose, not one disgraced himself by confess ing the lie we were invited to pronounce. " I am a patriot, and loyal alike to my country and sovereign," said Gregorief proudly ; " I am no traitor." And each one of us said the same thing. Then Gregorief and his two companions were marched off to the posts and lashed tightly to them. A double line of soldiers with loaded rifles took their stand at twenty yards' distance, and the officer in com mand (I knew the young fellow, and I knew also how he must hate the job ; he was pale, and his eyes glis tened with tears) prepared to give the signal for firing.

There was a deathlike silence over the densely crowded square, broken only at intervals by the loud sob of some sympathizing spectator. " Shoulder arms ' " shouted the officer. " Ready ! — Present ! " A man on the skirt of the crowd fainted, and I heard a woman shriek. In another instant Gregorief and his two companions would hang lifeless in the thongs which bound them to their posts. The young officer seemed to be spending an eternity between the words of command. Was he hoping against hope that something might still come to avert the bar barity he had been told off to commit ? Perhaps he was — perhaps he had heard something. I had. In the silence between his words of command I heard the clattering of a galloping horse.

Chapter III. To Siberia For Life

THE }7oung officer paused so long between the last word of command and the fatal order to fire that the judge, or " procurator-general," as he was called, whom I had not suspected of so much sympathy for us, actually groaned aloud in the anguish of suspense from which, I should think, every one must have suffered at that moment, and muttered, " For pity's sake, officer, give the word ; this is cruelty ! " His ears, being less young and acute, had not caught the sound which some of us had heard. The officer merely held up his hand, but said nothing. One of the soldiers took this for the signal to fire, and discharged his piece ; but luckily, in his agitation — or perhaps the discharge was altogether an accident — he missed the three bound men at the posts. Almost at the same instant a plumed officer of the Chevalier Garde galloped into the square, scattering the people right and left, and rode straight for the spot where we delinquents stood with our judge, our priest, and our executioners — a complete picture.