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The last entry reads: "It has been a habit with me for many years to never be surprised.... When I appeared on deck to give the code to the commander of that vessel this habit was unmoored.... A tall, square-jawed man approached me with a twinkle in his clear blue eyes.... I looked at him inquiringly and a little reminiscently until I heard him speak.... 'I see the loaf of bread came in handy, he said, extending me his bony hand.... 'I thought I left you at Ekaterinburg, I exclaimed, recalling the moments we spent after our escape from the abandoned tunnel.... 'Oh, he laughed, 'YOURS was not a one-man job; there are others in the world besides yourself intrusted with state secrets.... 'But what do you know about the bread, you just spoke of it?
We returned to Ekaterinburg on April 29, and were surprised to find that General Knox and the Headquarters Staff had removed from Omsk and taken up position there. The Hampshires were about to move up; barrack and other accommodation had already been secured. The first echelon arrived the following morning.
On November 4 I received a telegram from Mr. Preston, British Consul at Ekaterinburg, asking that a detachment might be sent to attend on November 9 at the inauguration of Czech national life and the ceremonial presentation of colours to four Czech battalions of the Czech National Army.
"You will soon be across the line into Eastern Siberia, and you will no longer meet people through whom you might send messages or letters. As to escape, that would be out of the question since you left Ekaterinburg, for none can travel either by steamer or post without a permit, or even enter an inn, and the document must be shown at every village."
The situation is very precarious: there is a decided tendency on the side of the Bolsheviki to take the family away some say, to Ekaterinburg, others to Berezov; deputies from Petrograd and Ekaterinburg, arrived in Tobolsk asking the local soviet to give up the family.
"That Anna Ornovski and Fedora Darrel, the English girl who was taken with her, be released as soon as may be," replied Colston. "Is the train from Ekaterinburg in yet?" "Not yet. The snow is still deep between here and the mountains. The winter has been very severe and long. We have almost starved in Tiumen in spite of the railway.
We arrived at Ekaterinburg at the same time as General Knox arrived from Chilliyabinsk. His first words were congratulations on my C.B., news of which had just arrived. I visited Consul Preston, and read the evidence he and his French colleague had collected relative to Bolshevik outrages on the workmen of the district. It was too sad to think about.
They put me, the servant of God, into a basketwork chaise and drove me with two horses; one sits in the basket like a goldfinch, looking at God's world and thinking of nothing.... The plain of Siberia begins, I think, from Ekaterinburg, and ends goodness knows where; I should say it is very like our South Russian Steppe, except for the little birch copses here and there and the cold wind that stings one's cheeks.
There are about 50,000 in each of the Siberian towns of Tomsk, Irkutsk and Ekaterinburg. There has been no census since 1897, but in 1900 the population of St. Petersburg was 1,439,739; Moscow, 1,035,664; and Riga, 282,943. The mortality in the towns is so great that the deaths exceed the births.
Tiumen is a town of over 15,000 inhabitants, and is the first town arrived at in Siberia proper, the frontier between Russia and that country running between Ekaterinburg and that town. Here the prisoners were at once placed on board a steamer, and Godfrey was glad indeed to throw himself down upon the bed, where he slept without waking until the steamer got under way in the morning.
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