really. We have had the telegraph here for some little time."

Godfrey rushed down-stairs, and sent off a telegram as follows:--

"_Have just arrived here. Made my escape from prison at Kara, in
Siberia. Seventeen months on the way. Am in first-rate health. Start
to-morrow by steamer to Hamburg. Hope all are well. Have plenty of
money._"

He directed it to his father's office, so that the news might be broken
gradually to his mother. In the afternoon the answer came:--

"_Thank God for His mercies. All well. I shall cross to Hamburg to meet
you._"

While Godfrey was being made much of by the merchant and his family,
and, indeed, by many of their acquaintances, who, upon hearing the news,
came in to see him and inquire into the wonderful voyage, Luka was no
less a centre of attraction to the fishermen, and was so generously
treated that long before it became dark he was obliged to be assisted,
in a state of inebriation, to a pallet that had been prepared for him.
Godfrey was annoyed when he heard it; "but," as his host said, "after
being eighteen months, and, for aught I know, eighteen months before
that, without touching liquor, very little would be likely to produce an
effect upon him. I daresay it is his talking as much as the spirit that
has turned his head; besides, you know, the lower class of Russians and
Tartars are all fond of spirits."

"I shall not be angry with him in the morning," Godfrey said, "because I
do think that it is pardonable; but I shall talk seriously to him about
it, and tell him that if he is coming home to England with me he must
give up spirits. He has done without them so long that it can't be any
hardship."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"I have not the most remote idea," Godfrey laughed. "If he likes to
return to his people I daresay my father would be able, through the
Russian embassy, to get a pardon for him and permission to go back; but
I don't think he has any notion of that. He lost his parents when he was
a child, and I never heard him express the slightest desire to go back
again. He has attached himself to me heart and soul, and I think looks
upon it as a settled thing that he will be always with me. I don't know
in what capacity, still, I suppose, something will be found for him."

The steamer was to start at nine o'clock on the following morning, and
by that hour Godfrey, Luka, and Jack were on board and the canoe
carefully stowed on deck. Both had obtained a