Michael Strogoff.

FROM MOSCOW TO IRKOUTSK.

by JULES VERNE.

CHAPTER II.

If the Czar so abruptly withdrew from the saloons of the New Palace at a moment when the ball he had given to the civil and military authorities and leading notables of Moscow was at its height, it was only because a serious state of affairs was announced as existing beyond the Ural frontier. Beyond all doubt a well-concerted invasion threatened to wrest from the Russian realm its Siberian provinces.

Asiatic Russia, or Siberia, covers a superficial area of 4,826,329 square mile, and contains about three and a half millions of inhabitants. It extends from the Ural Mountains, which separate it from European Russia, to the shores of the Pacific. To the south lie Turkestan and the Chinese Empire. which skirt it with a vaguely determined frontier. Northward lies the Arctic Ocean, from the Sea of Kara to Behring’s Straits. It is divided into the governments or provinces of Tobolsk, Yeniseisk, Irkoutsk, Omsk, Jakoutsk. It comprises two districts —Okhotsk and Kamtschatka—and possesses two countries now reduced to the Muscovite sway, the Kirghis country, and country of the Tchouktches.

This immense extent of steppes comprising more than 110° from west to east, is at once a land for transporting criminals and a land of exile for all on whom a ukase of expulsion falls.

Two governors-general represent the supreme authority of the Czar in this vast country. One resides at Irkoutsk,. capital of Western Siberia. which is separated from the eastern division by the Tchouna, a branch of the Yenisei.

No railroad yet furrows these immense plains— some of which are really extremely fertile. No iron road taps the precious mines, which in vast beds render the Siberian soil richer below the surface than above it. In Summer you travel by tarentass or telega; in winter by sleigh.

A single mode of communication, but a telegraphic one, unites the eastern and western frontiers of Siberia, by means of a cable more than 8,000 versts long. On leaving the Ural it passes by Ekaterineburg, Kassimow, Tioumen, Ichim, Omsk, Elamsk, Kolyvan, Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, Nijni-Oudinsk, Irkoutsk, Verkne-Nertschinck, Strelink, Albazine, Blagowstenks, Radde, Orlomskaya, Alexandrowskoe, Nikolaevsk, and takes six roubles nineteen kopeks (about $5) for every word sent to its further limit. From Irkoutsk a branch runs to Kiatka, on the Mongol frontier, and thence for thirty kopeks (25 cents) a word, the post bears the dispatches to Pekin in a fortnight.

This wire running from Ekaterineburg to Nikolaevsk had been cut first before Tomsk, and some hours later between Tomsk and Kolyvan. After General Kissoff’s second report, the Czar had replied only by these words:

“A courier instantly!”

The Czar stood some moments motionless at the window of his cabinet, when the usher again opened the door. The grand-master of the Russian police appeared at the threshold.

“Enter, general.” said the Czar, in a curt tone, “and tell me what you know of Ivan Ogareff”

“An extremely dangerous man, sire,” replied the grand-master of the police.

“He held the rank of colonel?”

“Yes, sire.”

“He was a capable officer?”

“He was, but he was beyond control, and his boundless ambition shrunk from nothing. He soon plunged into secret- intrigues, and he was then deprived of his rank, and exiled to Siberia by his highness the grand duke.”

When?”

“Two years ago. Pardoned after six months’ exile, through your majesty’s favor, he returned to Russia. He has not since revisited Siberia?” Yes, sire; he returned, but this time voluntarily,” replied the grandmaster of the police; and he added, dropping his voice, “There was a time, sire, when men who went to Siberia did not return !“

“Well, as long as I live, Siberia is and shall be a country from which men do return.”

The Czar might justly utter these words proudly, for he had frequently shown by his clemency that Russian justice can pardon.

The grand-master of police made no reply, but he was evidently not a man of half measures. To his way of thinking, every man who crossed the Ural Mountains between his gendarmes ought never to recross them. Now it was not so under the new reign, and the head of the Police deplored this sincerely.

What! no more condemnations for life except for brutal crime! Political exiles returning from Tobolsk, Jakoutsk and Irkoutsk! In that, the grand-master of police, habituated to the decisions of ukases which in the old time did not pardon, could not accept this new style of governing. But he kept silence, awaiting the Czar’s further command.

“Did not Ivan Ogareff enter Russia a second time after his visit to the Siberian provinces—a visit the object of which is unknown?”

‘He did return.”

“And since then the police has lost all trace of him?“

“No, sire; for a condemned man becomes really dangerous only from the moment mercy is shown him.”

The Czar’s brow gathered for a moment. The director of the police may have thought he had gone too far, although his obstinate adherence to old views was at least equaled by his unbounded dcvotedness to his master: but the Czar, disdaining this indirect reproach on his system of administration, continued briefly his series of interrogatories.

Where was Ivan Ogareff last reported ?“

In the government of Perm.

‘‘In what city?”

Perm itself.”

“What was he doing?”

He seemed disengaged and his conduct excited no suspicion.

Then he was not under the eye of the higher police

No, sire.”

“When did he leave Perm ?“

‘‘About the month of March.”

“To go where?”

“No one knew.

“And since then no one knows where he is?”

No one.”

Well, I know !replied the Czar.

“Anonymous intelligence, which did not  pass through the police bureaux, and in face of the facts now going on beyond the frontier, I have every reason to believe it correct.

“Do you mean to say, sire, that Ivan Ogareff is implicated in this Tartar invasion?” cried the grand-master.

“Yes, general; and I will tell you more that you do not know. After leaving the government of Perm, Ivan Ogareff crossed the Ural Mountains, pushed on into Siberia, to the Kirghis Steppes, and there has endeavored, and not in vain, to rouse those wandering hordes. He then struck south into Independent Turkestan. Then in the Khanates of Boukhara, Khokhand and Koundouze, he found chiefs ready to hurl their Tartar hordes upon the Siberian provinces and provoke a general invasion of the Russian Empire in Asia. The movement was secretly fomented, but it has burst like a clap of thunder, and now all communication between Eastern and Western Siberia is cut off! Besides all that, Ivan Ogareff, thirsting for vengeance, has designs on my brother’s life.”

The Czar became excited as he spoke, and strode rapidly up and down.

The grand-master made no reply, but he said to himself that in the times when the Russian emperors never pardoned an exile, no such plot as Ivan Ogareff’s could have been carried out.

Some moments elapsed, during which he remained silent. Then, approaching the Czar, who had thrown himself into an armchair, he said:

“Your majesty has doubtless ordered this invasion to be repelled at once ?”

“Yes,” replied the Czar. “The last telegram which could get beyond Nijni-Oudinsk must have set in motion the troops in the government of Yenieisk, Irkoutsk, Jakoutsk, as well as those of the Amour province and Lake Baikal. At the same time the regiments of Perm and Nijni-Novgorod, and the Cossacks of the frontier, are pressing on by forced marches to the Ural Mountains: but, unfortunately, it will take weeks before they can confront the Tartar columns”

“And your majesty’s brother, his highness the grand duke, is at this moment isolated in the government of Irkoutsk, and no longer in direct communication with Moscow?”

“No.”

But he must know by the last dispatches the steps taken by your majesty, and the reinforcements he may expect from the governments nearest to Irkoutsk ?“

“He knows that,’ replied the Czar; “but he does not know that Ivan Ogareff, while acting the part of a rebel, is to play that of a traitor also, and that he must look upon that man as his personal and deadly enemy. Ivan Ogareff owes his first disgrace to the grand duke, and it is a serious fact that my brother does not actually know the man by sight. Ivan Ogareff’s project is to penetrate to Irkoutsk, and there, under a feigned name, offer his services to the grand duke, Then, when he gains his confidence and Irkoutsk is invested by the Tartars, he will betray the city into their hands, with my brother, whose life is directly menaced. This I know by my reports; but the grand duke does not, and know it he must.”

Well, sire, an intelligent, courageous courier—”

I am expecting one.’

‘‘And let him make haste,” added the grand-master of police ; ‘‘ for. permit me to observe, sire, that this Siberia is a land where rebellion flourishes.”

“Do you mean, general, that the exiles will make common cause with the invaders?’’ exclaimed the Czar, who was unable to control himself  before this insinuation of the grand-master of police.

“Excuse me, your majesty,’’ murmured the grand-master of police in reply, for that was really the very thought which, had suggested itself to his own anxious and distrustful mind.

“I believe the exiles have more patriotism,” continued the Czar.

“There are other convicts besides political exiles in Siberia,” answered the grand-master of police.

“The criminals ! Oh, general, those I abandon to you. They are the scum of the human race. They are of no country. But the rebellion, or, rather, invasion, is not made against the Emperor, it is against Russia, against the country to which these exiles have not lost all hope of returning—and let thorn return! No, never will a Russian league himself with a Tartar, to weaken, were it only for an hour, the Muscovite power.”

The Czar was right in believing in the patriotism of those whom, for the moment, political offenses kept at a distance. The kindness which was the foundation of his justice, when he himself could direct its operation, the merciful policy he had adopted in the enforcement of the ukases, formerly so terrible, assured him he could not be mistaken. But even with this powerful element of success against the invasion of the Tartars, matters were none the less serious; for it was to be feared that a large portion of the Kirghis population would join the invaders.

(To be continued.)