Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/431

Rh from a Berdan rifle is always the first messenger sent after a fugitive who tries to escape "with a hurrah." Now and then, when the party happens to be passing through a dense forest, the flying convicts get under cover so quickly that the soldiers can only fire into the bushes at random, and in such cases the runaways make good their escape. As soon as they reach a hiding-place they free themselves from their leg-fetters by pounding the circular bands into long ellipses with a stone and slipping them over their heels, and then join some detachment of the great army of brodyágs which is constantly marching westward through the woods in the direction of the Uráls.

The life of exiles on the road, which I have tried to roughly sketch, continues, with little to break its monotony, for many months. In sunshine and in storm, through dust and through mud, the convicts march slowly but steadily eastward, crossing the great Siberian rivers on pendulum ferry-boats; toiling up the sides of forest-clad mountains in drenching rains; wading through mire in swampy valleys; sleeping every night in the heavy mephitic atmosphere of overcrowded étapes, and drawing nearer, day by day, to the dreaded mines of the Trans-Baikál.