Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/406

384 belief, no provision whatever has been made in them for ventilation.

When our convicts, after their toilsome march of twenty-nine versts from Tomsk, reached at last the red-roofed polu-étape of Semilúzhnaya, they were marshaled in rows in front of the palisade and again carefully counted by the under-officers in order to make sure that none had escaped, and then the wooden gate of the courtyard was thrown wide open. With a wild, mad rush and a furious clashing of chains, more than three hundred men made a sudden break for the narrow gateway, struggled, fought, and crowded through it, and then burst into the kámeras, in order to secure, by preoccupation, places on the sleeping platforms. Every man knew that if he did not succeed in preëmpting a section of the nári he would have to lie on the dirty floor, in one of the cold corridors, or out-of-doors; and many prisoners who did not care particularly where they slept sought to secure good places in order to sell them afterward for a few kopéks to less fortunate but more fastidious comrades.

At last the tumult subsided, and the convicts began their preparations for supper. Hot water was furnished by the soldiers of the convoy at an average price of about a cent a teakettleful; brick" tea was made by the prisoners who were wealthy enough to afford such a luxury; soup was obtained by a few from the soldiers' kitchen; and the tired exiles, sitting on the sleeping-platforms or on the floor, ate