st part, carried ship supplies--cordage,
tackling, iron--for vessels to be built on the Pacific to sail for
America.

Then there rode in at furious pace, from the northern steppes of
Siberia, the Cossack tribute collectors--four hundred of them centred
here--who gathered one-tenth of the furs for the Czar, nine-tenths for
themselves: drunken brawlers they were, lawless as Arabs; and the only
law they knew was the law they wielded. Tartar hordes came with horses
to sell, freebooters of the boundless desert, banditti in league with
the Cossacks to smuggle across the {108} borders of the Chinese. And
Chinese smugglers, splendid in silk attire, hobnobbed with exiles, who
included every class from courtiers banished for political offences to
criminals with ears cut off and faces slit open. What with drink and
play and free fights--if the Czar did not hear, it was because he was
far away.

On this August night half a dozen new exiles had come in with the St.
Petersburg cavalcade. The prisoners were set free on parole to see the
sights, while their Cossack guard went on a spree. The new-comers
seemed above the common run of criminals sent to Siberia, better
clothed, of the air born to command, and in possession of money. The
leading spirit among them was a young Pole, twenty-eight years or
thereabouts, of noble rank, Mauritius Benyowsky, very lame from a
battle wound, but plainly a soldier of fortune who could trump every
trick fate played him, and give as good knocks as he got. Four others
were officers of the army in St. Petersburg, exiled for political
reasons. Only one, Hippolite Stephanow, was a criminal in the sense of
having broken law.

Hoffman, a German surgeon, welcomed them to his quarters at Yakutsk.
Where were they going?--To the Pacific?--"Ah; a long journey from St.
Petersburg; seven thousand miles!" That was where he was to go when he
had finished surgical duties on the Lena. By that they knew he, too,
was an exile, practising his profession on parole. He would advise
{109} them--cautiously feeling his ground--to get transferred as soon
as they could from the Pacific coast to the Peninsula of Kamchatka;
that was safer for an exile--fewer guards, farther from the Cossacks of
the mainland; in fact, nearer America, where exiles might make a
fortune in the fur trade. Had they heard of schemes in the air among
Russians for ships to plunder furs in America "with powder and hatchets
and the help of God,