One idea, however, was never absent from his mind—­that of escape.  At the moment of receiving his sentence at Kiow he had resolved to be free, and his resolution had not faltered.  He had neglected no means of acquiring information about Siberia and the adjacent countries.  For this he had listened to the revolting confidences of the malefactors at the barracks—­for this he heard with unflagging attention, yet with no sign of interest, the long stories of the traders who came to the distillery from all parts of the empire to sell grain or buy spirits.  The office in which he passed his time from eight in the morning until ten or eleven at night was their rendezvous, and by a concentration of his mental powers he acquired a thorough and accurate knowledge of the country from the Frozen Ocean to the frontiers of Persia and China, and of all its manners and customs.  The prisoner who meditates escape, he says, is absorbed in an infinitude of details and calculations, of which it is only possible to give the final result.  Slowly and painfully, little by little, he accumulated the indispensable articles—­disguise, money, food, a weapon, passports.  The last were the most essential and the most difficult:  two were required, both upon paper with the government stamp—­one a simple pass for short distances and absences, useless beyond a certain limit and date; the other, the plakatny, or real passport, a document of vital importance.  He was able to abstract the paper from the office, and a counterfeiter in the community forged the formula and signatures.  His appearance he had gradually changed by allowing his hair and beard to grow, and he had studied the tone of thought and peculiar phraseology of the born Siberian, that he might the better pass for a native.  More than six months went by in preparations:  then he made two false starts.  He had placed much hope on a little boat, which was often forgotten at evening, moored in the Irtish.  One dark night he quietly loosed it and began to row away:  suddenly the moon broke through the clouds, and at the same instant the voices of the inspector and some of his subordinates were heard on the banks.  Piotrowski was fortunate enough to get back unperceived.  On the second attempt a dense fog rose and shut him in:  he could not see a yard before him.  All night long he pushed the boat hither and thither, trying at least to regain the shore; at daybreak the vapor began to disperse, but it was too late to go on; he again had the good luck to land undiscovered.  Five routes were open to him—­all long, and each beset with its own perils.  He decided to go northward, recross the Uralian Mountains, and make his way to Archangel, nearly a thousand miles off, where, among the hundreds of foreign ships constantly in the docks, he trusted to find one which would bring him to America.  Nobody knew his secret:  he had vowed to perish rather than ever again involve others in his fate.  He reckoned on getting over the first danger of pursuit by mingling with the crowds of people then traveling from every quarter to the annual fair at Irbite at the foot of the Urals.