"They were saying, 'Don't let us perish, your worship!' At first he said, 'Don't try to break loose, don't beg, I won't let anyone perish.' The water reached the lower bunks. The Christian folk were pleading and struggling to get away. The master said, 'Well, boys, I'll let you out, but don't riot or I'll shoot all of you!' They let us out. We prayed to God that He would make the sea quiet and not permit us to perish. We prayed on our knees. After we prayed, they issued biscuits and sugar, and the sea grew quiet. The next day they began taking the people to shore on barges. We again prayed on the shore. Later they transferred us to another ship of the Voluntary Fleet, a Turkish ship,2 and brought us here to Alexandrovsk.
"They took us to the dock before nightfall, but kept us there a long time and we left the pier in pitch dark. The Christian folk staggered out one after another, and to make matters worse, some suffered from night blindness. We clung to one another. Some could see, others could not— and so we held on to one another. I had dozens of Christian folk following me. They brought us to the prison yard and began to assign us to the barracks. They placed us in any old order, and we ate the food we had with us before go- ing to sleep, and the next day they gave us our due. We rested two days, had a bath on the third, and on the fourth they marched us off to work.
"The very first thing, we dug ditches for a building where the hospital now stands. We rooted out stumps, dragged them away, dug holes, and so it went on for a week or two, or maybe a month. Then we carried logs from near Mikhailovka. We dragged them for maybe three versts and dumped them in piles at the bridge. Then they sent us into the kitchen gardens to dig for water. When hay-cutting time came, they began gathering the Christian folk, asking who knew how to mow hay; whoever admitted he could do it would be sent out to mow. They issued bread, groats and meat to the whole group, and sent us with a guard to mow hay at Armudan. I was Jiving all right, God gave me health and I mowed well. The guards thrashed some of the fellows, but I didn't get one bad word. The fellows kept arguing with me, asking why I was walking so briskly; so, what's the difference!
"During my free time or when it rained I wove bast sandals for myself. Folks would lie down and sleep, while I sat over my weaving. I sold the sandals for two rations of beef a pair, worth four kopecks. When the mowing was over, we went home. On reaching home we were put in jail again. Later I was sent to work for the settler Sashka in Mikhailovka. There I did all kinds of farm work: I sowed, reaped, threshed, dug potatoes, and in return Sashka hauled the logs for making traps. We ate everything we trapped. I worked two months and four days. Sashka prom- ised to pay me, but gave me nothing. He did give me 40 pounds of potatoes. Sashka brought me back to the prison. They gave me an ax and a rope for hauling firewood. I took care of seven stoves. I lived in a yurt and did the jailer's work, carrying the water and sweeping. I guarded the maidan for the Tatar called Magzy.-1
"When I returned from work he turned his maidan over to me. I was the salesman and he paid me 1 5 kopecks a day. In the spring, when the days were longer, I started to weave bast sandals. I charged 10 kopecks. In the sum- mer I fished out of the river. I amassed a large pile
and sold it to the Jewish bathhouse keeper. I also cut up logs and sold them at 15 kopecks each. And so I've lived tolerably well, with Gods help. But, your worship, I have no time to talk with you. I must fetch some water." "Will you become a settler soon?" "In five years." "Do you miss your home?"
"No! I'm only sorry for the children. They are stupid children."
"Tell me, Yegor, what were you thinking about when they were taking you to the ship in Odessa?" "I was praying to God." "For what?"
"That He should put sense in the children's heads." "Why didn't you bring your wife and children to Sa- khalin?"
"Because they're well off at home."
The reference is to the shipwreck of the Kostroma on the western coast of Sakhalin in 1886.
The steamer Vladivostok of the Voluntary Fleet.
In Chinese, Manza.
VII The Lighthouse - Korsakovskoye - The Collection of Dr. P. I. Suprunenko - The Meteorological Station - The Climate of the Alexandrovsk Region - Novo-Mikhaylovka - Potemkin - Ex-executioner Tersky - Krasny Yar - Butakovo
my strolls around Alexandrovsk and its environs with the postmaster, the author of "Sakhalino," left a pleasant impression.
Our favorite stroll was up to the lighthouse which stands high above the valley on Cape Zhonkiyer. \'\'hen you gaze up at the lighthouse during the day, you see a tiny white house with a mast and lantern. In the dark of night it shines brilliantly, and it seems then that penal servitude peers at the world with its beautiful eye. The road to the lighthouse is steep, running in a spiral around the mountain amid ancient larches and firs. The higher you climb, the freer you breath. The sea spreads out before your eyes, and slowly thoughts come into your mind which have nothing in common with the prison, nor with penal servi- tude, nor with the exile colony, and only here do you recog- nize how boring and difficult is life below.
The convicts and settlers bear their punishment from day to day while free people talk from morning to night about who was flogged, who escaped, who was caught and who will be flogged. And it is strange that in a week one grows accustomed to these conversations and preoccupa- tions, and on waking in the morning the first thing you do is to read avidly the general orders—the local daily news- paper—and then all day long you listen to and speak about who escaped, who was shot, etc. But on the mountain, in sight of the sea and the beautiful ravines, all this becomes utterly trivial and vulgar, as indeed it is.
They say that at one time there were benches on the road to the lighthouse, but they had to remove them be- cause convicts and settlers wandering along the path took to writing on them or carving lampoons and obscenities. There are many fanciers of smut living in freedom, but the cynicism of people sentenced to penal servirude is incom- parable. There are disgusting scribbles on benches and backyard walls, and there are also love letters. It is remark- able that a man should write and carve all kinds of nasty things on benches while feeling that he is abandoned by the world, an outcast, and extremely unfortunate. An old man declares that he is tired of the world and it is time for him to die, he has severe rheumatism and cannot see very well, but with what gusto he employs endless gutter talk with long strings of choice invectives and highfalutin nonsense, including incantations against fevers. If he is literate and living in an isolated place, he has difficulty in stifling the urge or resisting the temptation to scratch dirty words with his fingernails.