Knight Without Armour

Yakutsk was almost pleasant after the barges, and the remaining weeks of the summer passed without incident. Prison regulations, owing to the remoteness of the settlement, were lax enough, and A.J. made several acquaintances. One of them, an educated exile who had been allowed to set up as a boot-repairer, had even heard of Russkoe Yansk. It was on the Indigirka river, he thought, well beyond the Arctic Circle. It could only be a very small settlement and it was years since he had heard of anyone being sent there. “Perhaps they have made a mistake,” he hazarded, with dispassionate cheerfulness. “Or perhaps the place does not exist at all and they will have to bring you back. That has happened, you know. There was a man sent to one place last year and the Cossacks themselves couldn’t find it. They looked for it all winter and then had to hurry back before the thaw began.” He laughed heartily. “I’m not inventing the story, I assure you. Some of those Petersburg officials don’t know their own country—they just stare at a map and say—’Oh, we’ll send him here—or there’—and maybe the map is wrong all the time!”