“Well, we shall hear if we live long enough.”
“Why, do you think they’ll catch them?”
“I don’t believe they’ll ever catch them!” another of the enthusiasts pronounces, banging the table with his fist.
“H’m! That’s all a matter of luck.”
“And I tell you what I think, lads,” Skuratov breaks in, “if I were a tramp, they’d never catch me.”
“You!”
There is laughter, though some pretend not to want to listen. But there is no stopping Skuratov.
“Not if I know it!” he goes on vigorously. “I often think about it and wonder at myself, lads. I believe I’d creep through any chink before they catch me.”
“No fear! You’d get hungry and go to a peasant for bread.”
General laughter.
“For bread? Nonsense!”
“But why are you wagging your tongue? Uncle Vasya and you killed the cow plague.11 That’s why you came here.”
The laughter was louder than ever. The serious ones looked on with even greater indignation.
“That’s nonsense!” shouted Skuratov. “That’s a fib of Mikita’s, and it’s not about me, but Vaska, and they’ve mixed me up in it. I’m a Moscow man and I was brought up to tramping from a child. When the deacon was teaching me to read, he used to pull me by the ear and make me repeat, ‘Lead me not into temptation in Thy infinite mercy,’ and soon I used to repeat, ‘lead me to the police station in Thy infinite mercy,’ and so on. So that’s how I used to go on from my childhood up.”
Everyone burst out laughing again. But that was all Skuratov wanted. He could not resist playing the fool. Soon the convicts left him and fell to serious conversation again. It was mainly the old men, authorities on such affairs, who gave their opinions. The younger and humbler prisoners looked on in silent enjoyment and craned their heads forward to listen. A great crowd gathered in the kitchen; there were, of course, no sergeants present. They would not have spoken freely before them.
Among those who were particularly delighted, I noticed a Tatar, called Mametka, a short man with high cheek bones, an extremely comic figure. He could hardly speak Russian at all and could hardly understand anything of what was said, but he, too, was craning his head forward out of the crowd and listening, listening with relish.
“Well, Mametka, yakshee?”12 Skuratov, abandoned by all and not knowing what to do with himself, fastened upon him. “Yakshee, oh, yakshee!” Mametka muttered in great animation, nodding his ridiculous head to Skuratov. “Yakshee!”
“They won’t catch them, yok?”
“Yok, yok!” and Mametka began babbling, gesticulating as well.
“So you lie, me not understand, eh?”
“Yes, yes, yakshee,” Mametka assented, nodding.
“Yakshee to be sure!” and Skuratov, giving the Tatar’s cap a tweak that sent it over his eyes, went out of the kitchen in the best of spirits, leaving Mametka somewhat perplexed.
For a whole week there was strict discipline in the prison, and search and pursuit were kept up vigorously in the neighbourhood. I don’t know how, but the convicts got immediate and accurate information of the manoeuvres of the police outside the prison. The first few days the news was all favourable to the fugitives; there was no sight or sound of them, every trace was lost. The convicts only laughed. All anxiety as to the fate of the runaways was over. “They won’t find anything, they won’t catch anyone,” was repeated in prison with complacency.
“Nothing. They’ve gone like a shot.”
“Goodbye, don’t cry, back by-and-by.” It was known in prison that all the peasants in the neighbourhood had been roused. All suspicious places, all the woods and ravines were being watched.
“Foolishness!” said the convicts, laughing. “They must have some friend they are staying with now.”
“No doubt they have,” said the others. “They are not fools; they would have got everything ready beforehand.”
They went further than this in their suppositions; they began to say that the runaways were still perhaps in the outskirts of the town, living somewhere in a cellar till the excitement was over and their hair had grown, that they would stay there six months or a year and then go on.
Everyone, in fact, was inclined to romance. But, suddenly, eight days after the escape there was a rumour that a clue had been found. This absurd rumour was, of course, rejected at once with contempt. But the same evening the rumour was confirmed. The convicts began to be uneasy. The next morning it was said in the town that they had been caught and were being brought back. In the afternoon further details were learnt; they had been caught about fifty miles away, at a certain village. At last a definite piece of news was received. A corporal returning from the major stated positively that they would be brought that evening straight to the guardhouse. There was no possibility of doubt. It is hard to describe the effect this news had on the convicts. At first they all seemed angry, then they were depressed. Then attempts at irony were apparent. There were jeers, not now at the pursuers, but at the captives, at first from a few, then from almost all, except some earnest and resolute men who thought for themselves and who could not be turned by taunts. They looked with contempt at the shallowness of the majority and said nothing.
In fact they ran Kulikov and A. down now, enjoyed running them down as much as they had crying them up before. It was as though the runaways had done them all some injury. The convicts, with a contemptuous air, repeated that the fugitives had been very hungry, that they had not been able to stand, and had gone to a village to ask for bread from the peasants. This is the lowest depth of ignominy for a tramp. These stories were not true, however. The fugitives had
