Escapes are sometimes sheer speculation. I shall describe one kind of speculative venture which combines greed with the basest treachery. A vagrant, grown old with his many escapes and subsequent imprisonments and chains, seeks out a more affluent convict among some newly arrived prisoners (the new ones always have money) and suggests that they should escape together. He has no great difficulty in con- vincing him. The novice escapes and the vagrant kills him somewhere in the taiga and then returns to the prison.
A more prevalent kind of speculation is based on the three rubles which the govcrnment pays for capturing a fugitive. After making a preliminary agreement with a sol- dier or a Gilyak, several convicts escape from the prison and meet with their escort at an appointed place in the taiga or by the seashore. The escort returns them to the prison as capwred convicts and obtains three rubles for each. Later, naturally, there is a division of the spoils. It was sometimes ludicrous to see a small, puny Gilyak, armed with only a stick, leading back six or seven broad-shoul- dered, impressive-looking vagrants. One day I saw the soldier L., who was not particularly well built, leading back i i men.
Prison statistics scarcely touch on the question of es- capees. It may be said that the convicts who escape most frequently are those who feel the difference in climate between Sakhalin and their homeland most keenly. They are primarily natives of the Caucasus, the Crimea, Bes- sarabia and the Ukraine. Lists of escapees or of men cap- tured sometimes contain the names of 50 or 60 men with not a single Russian surname among them;they arc all Oglis, Suleymans and Hasans. There is no doubt that con- victs with long or indefinite sentences escape more fre- quently than convicts of the third category, while those liv- ing in prison escape more frequently than those quartered outside. Young men and novices escape more frequemly than older men.
Women escape incomparably less frequemly than men, and this is explained by the hardships which accompany escape for a woman and partially because in servitude she soon becomes preoccupied with a lasting attachment. Re- sponsibilities toward wife and children restrain men from escaping, but there arc instances when married men have escaped. Legally married wives escape less often than illegal spouses. Whcn I was making the rounds of the huts and asked women convicts the whereabouts of their cohabitants, they often answered, '\Vho knows? Go and find him!"
Convicts of the privileged class escape side by side with convicts of the common class. Leafing through the alpha- betical list at the Korsakov Police Department I came across a former nobleman who had escaped, had been tried for a murder committed during his escape, and received 8o or 90 lashes. The notorious Lagiyev, sent to Sakhalin for murdering the rector of the Titlis Seminary, was a former Korsakov teacher and escaped on Easter night in 1890 with the convict Nikolsky, a priests son, together with three vagrants. Not long afterward there came the rumor that three vagrants in "civilian" clothing had been seen making their way along the shore toward the Murav- )'C\sky Post, but Lagiyev and Nikolsky were no longer with them. The vagrants had probably convinced young Lagiycv and his friend ro escape with them and had murdered them for their money and clothing.
Archpriest K.'s son, who was sentenced for murder, succeeded in escaping to Russia, committed another murder and was sent back to Sakhalin. I saw him one morning in a crowd of convicts near a mine. Extraordinarily emaciated, round-shouldered, with lackluster eyes, wearing an old sum- mer coat and hopelessly ragged trousers, still sleepy-eyed and shivering in the morning frost, he approached a guard who was standing beside me, took off his cap and, baring his bald hcad, began ro beg.
Here are a few figures I was able to find which have some bearing on the time of year when escapes most fre- quently take place. In 1877, 1878, 1885, 1887, 1888 and 1889, 1,501 convicts escaped. The monthly distribution follows:
January
117
July
283
February .
64
August
231
March
20
September
150
Apri l
20
October
44
May
147
November .
35
June
290
December
ioo
If a graph is drawn, its highest points indicate the summer and winter months, with the months of sharpest frosts being the most popular. Obviously the most auspicious con- ditions for escaping are warm weather, when they work outside the prison and the migratory fish run and the berries ripen in the taiga and the settlers have their potato crop; and in winter when the sea is covered with ice and Sakhalin ceases to be an island. The arrival of new convict groups in spring and autumn also present favorable con- ditions of escape. Escapes are least frequent in March and April, for these arc the months when the rivers thaw and it is impossible to obtain fool either in the taiga or from the settlers, who arc usually without bread in the spring.
At Alexandrovsk in 1889, 15.33 percent of the average number of inmates escaped. In the same year 6-4 percent escaped from the Due and Voycvodsk prisons, where prisoners are guarded by armed sentries as well as by guards, and 9 percent escaped from the prisons of Tymovsk district. 1licsc figures represent escapes in a single year, but if we consider the total number of convicts from the very beginning of their arrival on the island, then the ratio of escapes to the total would be less than percent—i.e., of every five persons you see in prison, three have already at- tempted to escape. From conversations with convicts I derived the impression that everyone tried to escape. It was a very rare convict who did not take a holiday during his term of penal servitude.2
An escape is usually planned when the convicts are still in the ship's hold or on an Amur barge while being trans- ported to Sakhalin. During the journey old vagrants who have already attempted to escape from penal servitude tell young convicts about the geography of the island, about regulations and surveillance, and all the other blessings and misfortunes to be expected in escaping from Sakhalin. If they kept vagrants separated from new convicts in tempo- rary prisons and ships" holds, perhaps they would not be in such a hurry to escape. Novices usually escape quite early, not long after they have disembarked. In i 879, Go men escaped shortly after their arrival, first killing their guards.
There is absolutely no need for escapees to take those careful precautions which have been described so well by Vladimir Korolenko in his collection of stories called Sokoli>;eii.:' Escapes are strictly forbidden, and they are no longer encouraged by the administration, but the condi- tions of local prison life, surveillance and penal servitude, and even the very nature of the land, are such that an over- whelming majority of escapes cannot be prevented. If it were impossible to leave the prison today through the open gates, then tomorrow it would be possible to escape while working in the taiga, where 20 or 30 men go out to work with only one soldier guarding them. A man who has failed to escape while working in the taiga waits for a month or two until he is assigned to work as some official's servant or as a laborer working for a settler. Careful precautions, deliberately deceiving officials, breakouts, the digging of tunnels, etc., are needed only by the few who are in chains, in cells and the Voyevodsk prison, and by those who work in the mines, where the sentries stand guard and are on the march along the entire prison line from Voyevodsk prison to Due. Here an escape attempt is fraught with danger; nevertheless, opportunities present themselves al- most daily. Trackers and adventure-lovers offer assistance in the form of changes of clothing and every kind of sub- terfuge, and sometimes these subterfuges go too far, as in the case of Zolota Ruchka, who changed into a soldier's uniform in order to escape.
In most cases the escapees head north to the narrows which lie between Capes Pogobi and Lazarev, or a little farther north. The land is uninhabited, it is easy to hide from the cordon of guard posts and a boat may be obtained from the Gilyaks or a raft may be built by the convict and a crossing made to the other side. If it is already winter, it takes only two hours to walk across in good weather. The farther north the crossing, the closer it is to the mouth of the Amur, which means Jess danger of perishing from hunger and cold. There are many Gilyak hamlets at the mouth of the Amur, the city of Nikolayevsk is close by, then come Mariinsk, Sofiysk and the Cossack villages, where a man can hire himself out for work during the winter and where, as they say, even among the officials there are people who will give shelter and a piece of bread to the miserable. Since they have no way of knowing the true north, escapees sometimes make a full circle and return to the place they started from.4