Officer and prisoners lighted a fire to dry
clothes. Soldiers rummaged out the brandy casks, and were presently so
deep in drunken sleep not a man of the guard was on his feet.
Benyowsky waited till the commander, too, slept. Then the Pole limped,
careful as a cat over cut glass, to the coat drying before the fire,
drew out the packet of documents, and found what the exiles had
feared--Hoffman's papers in German, with orders to the commander on the
Pacific to keep the conspirators fettered till instructions came the
next year from St. Petersburg.
The prisoners realized that all must be risked in one desperate cast of
the dice. "I and time against all men," says the proverb. No fresh
caravan would be likely to come till spring. Meanwhile they must play
against time. Burning the packet to ashes, they replaced it with a
forged order instructing the commander on the Pacific to treat the
exiles with all {113} freedom and liberality, and to forward them by
the first boat outward bound for Kamchatka.
The governor at Okhotsk did precisely as the packet instructed.
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