pressed him for an
explanation, but Kaleshnikoff, with a vacant stare, waved him aside, and
with a despairing gesture disappeared into his hut, only a few yards
distant. A few minutes later a pistol-shot was heard, and Ergin,
instinctively fearing the worst, rushed to his friend's assistance, only
to find that the latter had taken his life. Beside the dead man was a
sheet of paper bearing the words, hastily scrawled in pencil:
"Farewell! I go to a happier land."[44]

[Footnote 44: I was told that the majority of the suicides amongst the
exiles here occur towards the end of their term of banishment, a fact
which seemed incredible until I learned that sentences are frequently
prolonged for an indefinite period, just at the time when the exile is
expecting release. The suspense and uncertainty attending the last
months of captivity are thus a frequent cause of self-destruction,
especially amongst women and the younger men.]

An inquiry followed, and Ivanoff was placed under temporary arrest.
Unfortunately for the Chief of Police, this order did not entail
confinement to the house, or he might have escaped the tragic fate which
overtook him on the afternoon of the very day that his victim was laid
to rest in a lonely grave in the suicides' graveyard[45] on the banks of
the river. As luck would have it, the hated official was lounging
outside his doorway, smoking a cigarette, as Ergin, a gun on his
shoulder, strolled homeward from the marshes. The latter asserts that
the act was unpremeditated, for at the time his thoughts were far away.
But Ergin adds: "The sudden appearance of that evil face and the
recollection of its owner's foul and inhuman cruelty suddenly inspired
me with uncontrollable fury, and I raised my fowling-piece and shot the
man dead, just as he had divined my purpose and turned to rush indoors."
Ergin has ere this been tried for murder at Yakutsk, but I was assured
that he would be acquitted, for Ivanoff's conduct would in any case have
met with severe punishment at the hands of the authorities in St.
Petersburg. Physical brutality is, as regards Russian political exiles,
a thing of the past, and an official guilty of it now lays himself open
to instant dismissal, or even to a term of imprisonment.

[Footnote 45: Only suicides are buried in this plot of ground, which
contains over a score of graves.]

Such is a plain and unvarnished account of the penal settlement of
Sredni-Kolymsk, an accursed spot wh