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Colston had never been in Tiumen before, but Ivan had, for ten years before he had voluntarily accompanied his father, who had been condemned to five years' forced labour on the new railway works from Tiumen to Tobolsk, for giving a political fugitive shelter in his house.
From Perm a railway runs up to the Pass of the Ural mountains to Ekaterinenburg, probably to be in course of time continued to Tiumen, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk, the Baikal Lake, the Chinese frontier at Kiakhta, the banks of the Amoor, and the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
From the Pillar of Farewells to Tiumen, from thence to Tomsk, where they met the first of the released political exiles returning in a joyous band to their beloved Russia, and thence to Irkutsk, and then over the ice of Lake Baikal, and through the awful frozen desert of the Trans-Baikal Provinces, they had been driven like cattle until the remnant that had survived the horrors of the awful journey reached the desolate valley of the Kara and were finally halted at the Lower Diggings.
Godfrey and his companion were dashed against each other or against the sides with such force that Godfrey several times thought his skull was fractured, and he was indeed thankful when, after forty hours on the road, they drove into Tiumen.
We sold our sleigh, fur bag, pillows, tea-equipment, and the provisions we had left, for what they would bring a beggarly sum; took a train the same day for St. Petersburg; and reached the Russian capital on the 9th of January, eleven weeks from the Okhotsk Sea by way of Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Tiumen, Ekaterineburg, and Nizhni Novgorod.
"It has, therefore, been decided that the rescue shall be attempted before the chain-gang leaves Tiumen, if it can be reached in time. As nearly as we can calculate, the march will begin on the morning of Friday the 9th, that is to say, in three nights and one day from now. Happily we possess the means of making the rescue, if it can be accomplished by human means.
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.
"It was winter time, and from Ekaterinenburg, where the rail ended in those days, the journey would have to be performed by sledge. She, therefore, took with her only one servant and a courier, that she might travel as rapidly as possible. "She reached Tiumen, and there all trace was lost of her and her attendants.
"Do not talk about that," the soldier interrupted, "I must not know anything about you; talk about other things, but not why you are here." Godfrey nodded. "If we go on beyond Tiumen we go by steamer, do we not?" "Yes, through Tobolsk to Tomsk, beyond that we shall drive. You are lucky, you people, that you drive, the others walk; it is long work, but not so long as it used to be, they say.
They sat in the window and began whispering to one another; then they opened an atlas and looked carefully at a map. "First to Perm . . ." Lentilov said, in an undertone, "from there to Tiumen, then Tomsk . . . then . . . then . . . Kamchatka. There the Samoyedes take one over Behring's Straits in boats . . . . And then we are in America. . . . There are lots of furry animals there. . . ."
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