Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/66

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SIBERIA

gerous condition; that he would very likely die on the road; and that he himself (the convoy officer) might then be held to serious accountability for violation of law in taking charge of him. The isprávnik, determined not to be thwarted in his attempt to get rid of a man whom he hated, obtained a peasant's cart, detailed two or three of his own police officers to act as a convoy, and went with them to the young surgeon's house. Dr. Dólgopólof was lying in bed and was so weak that he could not stand. His wife resisted forcibly the attempt to remove him, whereupon she was tied hand and foot, and her husband, clothed only in a night-shirt, was carried out in a sheet and put into the cart. This transaction occurred on the 24th of October, 1883. The weather was cold and raw, and Dr. Dólgopólof would almost certainly have perished from exposure had not a sympathetic bystander taken off and thrown over him his own fur "shuba," or overcoat. In this condition the sick prisoner was carried to the circuit town of Ishím, a distance of 126 miles. In Ishím there were at that time eleven political exiles, including the well-known Russian novelist Máchtet. Many of them knew Dr. Dólgopólof personally, all of them knew his history, and as soon as they discovered his condition they went to the Ishím isprávnik and declared that they would resist to the uttermost, with force, any attempt to carry the young surgeon on. They had him examined by the local medical officer; they induced the isprávnik to draw up a "protocol," or statement of the circumstances of the case; and they telegraphed Governor Lisogórski at Tobólsk, asking whether he had authorized the isprávnik of Tiukalínsk to send a dying man out on the road, at that season of the year, with no other covering than a night-shirt. As soon as the governor learned that Dr. Dólgopólof was sick he telegraphed the isprávnik at Ishím to have the young surgeon taken to the hospital and properly cared for, and suspended the order for his removal to Surgút. It was currently reported in Ishím that his Excel-