he prisoners must come
back again. But he was not silent long. With the buoyancy of youth he
put the question aside for the present with the reflection, "Where there
is a will there is a way; anyhow some fellows have got away, and if they
have done it, I can."

Godfrey had not as yet realized his situation; the sentence "for life"
had fallen upon his ears but not upon his mind; he still viewed the
matter as he might have viewed some desperate scrape at school. He had,
as he would have said, put his foot in it horribly; but that he should
really have to pass his whole life in these wilds, should never see
England again, his father, mother, or sisters, was a thing that his mind
absolutely refused to grasp. "Of course I shall get away somehow." This
had been the refrain that was constantly running through his mind, and
even now a satisfactory reply to the assertion that not a dozen men had
made their escape at once occurred to him. There was no motive to induce
them to make their escape. They could not return to Russia, and in any
other country they would be even more in exile than here, where everyone
spoke their language, and where, as far as he had seen, the climate was
as good as that of Russia, and the country no more flat and ugly.

"There is nothing they can want to escape for," he repeated to himself.
"I have everything to escape for, and I mean to do it." Having once
re-established that view to his satisfaction, he began to chat away
cheerfully again to his companion. "It is not everyone," he said, "who
possesses my advantages, or who can travel five or six thousand miles by
rail, steamer, and carriage, without ever having to put his hand in his
pocket for a single kopec. The only objection to it is that they don't
give me a return ticket."

"That is an objection," the policeman agreed, smiling.

"We are not going to travel night and day, as we did between
Ekaterinburg and Tiumen, I hope?"

"Oh, no; we shall only travel while it is light."

"Well, that is a comfort. It was bad enough for that short distance. It
would be something awful if it had to be kept up for a fortnight. How
long shall we be before we get to Irkoutsk?"

"About a month. I know nothing as to what will be done with you beyond
that. You may, for anything I know, go to the mines at Nertchinsk, which
are a long distance east beyond Irkoutsk; or you may go to Verkhoyansk,
a Yakout settlement 3000 miles from Irkutsk, within the Arctic Circle.