Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/315

Rh who, he said, would show us all that there was to be seen. Meanwhile he himself would attend to some matters of business and await our reappearance. Our guide gave to each of us an unsheltered tallow candle, with a piece of paper wrapped around it, provided himself with a similar light, thrust half a dozen dynamite cartridges about as big as cannon firecrackers into the breast of his sheepskin coat in such a manner as to leave the long white fuses hanging out, and said that he was ready. We followed him out of the tool-house, ascended the mountain-side about a hundred yards, and entered through a narrow wooden door a low horizontal gallery, the sides of which were timbered, and upon whose inclined floor had been laid a rude wooden tramway. Stopping for a moment just inside the door to light our candles, we groped our way in a half-crouching attitude along the low gallery, our convict guide stumbling now and then over the loose planks in such a way as to suggest to my mind the idea that he would eventually fall down, bring the flame of his light into contact with the dangling fuses of his dynamite cartridges, and blow us all out of the tunnel like wads from a Fourth-of-July cannon. About 150 feet from the entrance we came to the black, unguarded mouth of the main shaft, out of which projected the end of a worn, icy ladder. Down this our guide climbed with practised ease, shouting back at us a warning to be careful where we stepped, since some of the rungs were missing and the ladders were set diagonally parallel with one another at such an angle as to necessitate a long stride across the shaft from the bottom of one to the top of the next. We were not half as much afraid, however, of losing our foothold as we were of being blown into fragments by an accidental explosion of his dynamite cartridges. I still had a vivid remembrance of the ghastly forms lying under the bloody sheets in the prison hospital, and every time I looked down and saw the guide's candle swaying back and forth in close proximity to the white fuses that hung out of the breast of his sheepskin coat I could not help imagining