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"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.
Only three or four who had turned tail at once were left alive; and these, without daring to look behind them, drove their spurs into their horses' flanks and galloped back to Tiumen, half mad with terror, to tell how a demon had come down from the skies, annihilated their comrades, and carried the fugitives away into the clouds upon its back.
"Such of the prisoners, that is to say the politicals, who can afford to pay for the privilege, may, by the new regulations, be lodged in the houses of approved persons during their sojourn in Tiumen, if it be only for a night, and so escape the common prison.
The cables had carried the news to America and India; and when the evening of the same day brought the telegraphic account of the extraordinary occurrence at Tiumen in the grey dusk of the early morning, proving almost conclusively that the rescue had been effected by the same agency that had destroyed Kronstadt, and that, worse than all, the air-vessel was at the command of Natas, the unknown Chief of the mysterious Terrorists, excitement rose almost to frenzy, and everywhere the wildest rumours were accepted as truth.
"Not at all, it will be known at Tiumen; that is where these things are settled generally, but people like you are under special orders. You don't look very wicked;" and he smiled in a friendly way as he looked at the lad beside him. "I am not wicked at all, not in the way you think," Godfrey said.
Before you go you will pin this with a dagger to your sitting-room table." The official took the little piece of paper which Colston held out to him as he spoke. It read thus Dmitri Soudeikin, sub-commissioner of police at Tiumen, has been removed for over-zeal in the service of the Tsar.
Until they reach Tiumen they will be safe from anything worse than what the Russians are pleased to call 'discipline, but once they disappear into the wilderness of Siberia they will be lost to the world, and far from all law but the will of their official slave-drivers.
From Tiumen to the Tobol is about twenty-five miles by road. The railway, which was then finished as far as Tomsk, ran to Tobolsk by a more northerly and direct route than the road, but convicts were still marched on foot along the great post road after the gangs had been divided at Tiumen according to their destinations.
"To be in the air again is glorious," Godfrey said, "I should not mind how long the journey lasted if it were like this. How far do we travel in carriages?" "To Tiumen, 300 versts; then we take steamer again, that is if you go farther." "You don't know where we are going to then?"
This man, although he occupied a post of very considerable responsibility and authority under the Russian Government, was only a member of the Outer Circle of the Terrorists, as most of the officials were, and therefore he knew nothing of the existence of the Ariel, and Colston purposely mystified him with the apparent miracle of his presence in Tiumen after so short an absence from London, in order to command his more complete obedience in the momentous work that was on hand.
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