distillery from all parts of the empire to sell grain or buy spirits.
The office in which he passed his time from eight in the morning
until ten or eleven at night was their _rendezvous_, and by a
concentration of his mental powers he acquired a thorough and accurate
knowledge of the country from the Frozen Ocean to the frontiers of
Persia and China, and of all its manners and customs. The prisoner who
meditates escape, he says, is absorbed in an infinitude of details and
calculations, of which it is only possible to give the final result.
Slowly and painfully, little by little, he accumulated the
indispensable articles--disguise, money, food, a weapon, passports.
The last were the most essential and the most difficult: two were
required, both upon paper with the government stamp--one a simple pass
for short distances and absences, useless beyond a certain limit and
date; the other, the _plakatny_, or real passport, a document of vital
importance. He was able to abstract the paper from the office, and a
counterfeiter in the community forged the formula and signatures. His
appearance he had gradually changed by allowing his hair and beard to
grow, and he had studied the tone of thought and peculiar phraseology
of the born Siberian, that he might the better pass for a native. More
than six months went by in preparations: then he made two false
starts. He had placed much hope on a little boat, which was often
forgotten at evening, moored in the Irtish. One dark night he quietly
loosed it and began to row away: suddenly the moon broke through the
clouds, and at the same instant the voices of the inspector and some
of his subordinates were heard on the banks. Piotrowski was fortunate
enough to get back unperceived. On the second attempt a dense fog rose
and shut him in: he could not see a yard before him. All night long he
pushed the boat hither and thither, trying at least to regain the
shore; at daybreak the vapor began to disperse, but it was too late to
go on; he again had the good luck to land undiscovered. Five routes