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"Whatever you do, my lad," the doctor said, "if you have been a political prisoner mind, I don't ask the question, and don't want to know but if you have been, don't let it out. It is better to have been a murderer than a Nihilist out here. I dare say the colonel would send you to Nertchinsk if your friend here asks him, but it is a good deal further and a more expensive journey."
"About a month. I know nothing as to what will be done with you beyond that. You may, for anything I know, go to the mines at Nertchinsk, which are a long distance east beyond Irkoutsk; or you may go to Verkhoyansk, a Yakout settlement 3000 miles from Irkutsk, within the Arctic Circle. There are lots of these penal settlements scattered over the country.
At a town named Verchne Udinsk they regained the main road and turned east and continued their journey through Chita, a town of three thousand inhabitants, to Nertchinsk, a distance of six hundred miles. The country was hilly, and for the most part wooded, but varied at times by rolling prairies on which large herds of cattle were grazing.
"I want to be sent to Nertchinsk instead of to Irkutsk. I would rather work in the mines or anywhere else than be shut up in prison." "And besides, you would not be known?" the doctor laughed. "That is the principal thing, sir."
"A proper Russian driver that. Saint or devil, night or day is all one to Ziemianitch when his heart is free from sorrow. 'I don't ask who you are, but where you want to go, he says. He would drive Satan himself to his own abode and come back chirruping to his horses. Many a one he has driven who is clanking his chains in the Nertchinsk mines by this time." Razumov shuddered.
"We cannot be very far from Nertchinsk," he said. "We must be careful here, for there are lots of mines in the neighbourhood." After walking for another three or four hours several large buildings were seen among the trees in the valley, and these it was certain belonged to one or other of the mines. When it became dark they descended still farther, and kept down until they came upon a road.
The foreign policy of the Czarevna was marked by another display of weakness. By the Treaty of Nertchinsk she restored to the Chinese empire the fertile regions of the Amur, which had been conquered by a handful of Cossacks, and razed the fortress of Albazine, where those adventurers had braved all the forces of the East. On all sides Russia seemed to retreat before the barbarians.
On the contrary, it deprives the serfs of all legal protection, and expressly commands that if any serf shall dare to present a petition against his master, he shall be punished with the knout and transported for life to the mines of Nertchinsk. * These words are taken from an Imperial ukaz of April 15th, 1721. Polnoye Sobranye Zakonov, No. 3,770.
There are no prisons here, and I am most anxious to be sent to Nertchinsk and not to Irkutsk, because it was from there we escaped." The Buriat's wife and sister were sorry when they heard Godfrey's determination, but they were too much occupied with Alexis to try and dispute it. "When will you go?" the Buriat said. "At once, if you will take me.
He was glad, however, when he arrived at Nertchinsk, for the jolting of the springless vehicle was very trying. He did not see the governor of the prison, but was at once assigned to a cell there on the guard handing to the authorities the official report of the governor at Kiakhta. "You are to go on again to-morrow," the warder said to him that evening.
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