A gang of convicts were sent to the mine from the Voevodsky prison,
the grimmest and most forbidding of all the prisons in Sahalin. The
coal had to be loaded upon barges, and then they had to be towed
by a steam-cutter alongside the steamer which was anchored more
than a quarter of a mile from the coast, and then the unloading and
reloading had to begin--an exhausting task when the barge kept
rocking against the steamer and the men could scarcely keep on their
legs for sea-sickness. The convicts, only just roused from their
sleep, still drowsy, went along the shore, stumbling in the darkness
and clanking their fetters. On the left, scarcely visible, was a
tall, steep, extremely gloomy-looking cliff, while on the right
there was a thick impenetrable mist, in which the sea moaned with
a prolonged monotonous sound, "Ah! . . . ah! . . . ah! . . . ah!
. . ." And it was only when the overseer was lighting his pipe,
casting as he did so a passing ray of light on the escort with a
gun and on the coarse faces of two or three of the nearest convicts,
or when he went with his lantern close to the water that the white
crests of the foremost waves could be discerned.

One of this gang was Yakov Ivanitch, nicknamed among the convicts
the "Brush," on account of his long beard. No one had addressed him
by his name or his father's name for a long time now; they called
him simply Yashka.

He was here in disgrace, as, three months after coming to Siberia,
feeling an intense irresistible longing for home, he had succumbed
to temptation and run away; he had soon been caught, had been
sentenced to penal servitude for life and given forty lashes. Then
he was punished by flogging twice again for losing his prison