I remember how bright and sultry the sun was; how it burnt up the dry, crumbling earth beneath our feet; how it played on the surface of the pond; how gigantic carp were hurrying and scurrying near the banks; how the smoothness of the centre of the pond was disturbed by shoals of fishes; how high in the sky a vulture was wheeling right above some ducks, who, quacking and splashing, were making for the middle of the pond through the reeds; how threatening, white, curly clouds were collecting on the horizon; how the mud, dragged ashore by the net, was gradually being trampled into the ground; and how, walking along the dyke, I again heard the stroke of a paddle resounding over the pond.
But this paddle was now ringing just as if the sound of the paddles was blending together into a tierce; and this sound tormented and wearied me all the more because I knew that this paddle was a bell and Theodor Filipovich could not make it keep quiet. And this paddle, like an instrument of torture, was pressing my leg, which was freezing, and I awoke.
It seemed to me as if I had been awakened by a sudden jolt and by two voices speaking close beside me.
“Hillo! Ignat! Ignat, I say!” cried the voice of my driver, “take a passenger ! It’s all one to you, and it’s no use my trying to keep up. Take one, I say!”
The voice of Ignat answered close beside me:
“Why should I be responsible for a passenger? You’ve got half a stoop yet, haven’t you?”
“Half a stoop, indeed ! There’s a quarter of a stoop, already!”
“A quarter of a stoop! What an idea!” screeched the other voice. “Fancy plaguing a horse for the sake of a quarter of a stoop!”
I opened my eyes. Always the same unendurable, quivering snow blizzard in one’s eyes, and the selfsame drivers and horses, but close beside me I saw a sledge. My driver had caught up Ignat, and we had been going on side by side for some timie. Notwithstanding that the voice from the other sledges had advised my driver not to take in less weight than a half stoop, Ignat had suddenly stopped the troika.
“Let us change about then! A good job for you! Put in a quarter stoop, as we shall arrive to-morrow. How much do you make it, eh?”
My driver, with unusual vivacity, leaped out into the snow, bowed down before me, and begged me to transfer myself to Ignat. I was quite willing to do so, but it was clear that the God-fearing little muzhik was so satisfied with the new arrangement that he must needs pour forth his joy and gratitude on some one or other; he bowed down before me and thanked me and Alec and Ignashka.
“Well, there you are now, thank God. And I tell you what it is, my little master, we have been wandering about half the night, without knowing whither. That chap there will bring us in all right, my little master, and my horses are done up already.”
And he transferred my things with energetic officiousness.
While they were transferring the things I, following the direction of the wind, which carried me along, as it were, went to the second sledge. The sledge, especially on that side on which the armyak was hung up over the heads of the two drivers, was a quarter covered with snow, but behind the armyak it was quiet and comfortable. The little old man was lying there with his legs stretched wide aPart, and the tale-teller was going on with his tale: “At the very time when the general, in the King’s name, you know, came, you know, to Mary in the dungeon, at that very time Mary said to him: General, I have no need of you and I cannot love you and, you know, you cannot be my lover, but my lover is the Prince himself.
“At that very time,” he was going on, but perceiving me, he was silent for a moment and began to puff away at his pipe.
“What, sir, come to listen to the tale too?” said the other, whom I have called the Counsellor.
“You are having a rare fine time of it,” said I. “It passes the time anyhow and prevents one from brooding.”
“But tell me, do you know where we are now?”
This question did not appear to please the drivers.
“Where? Who can make that out? We may be going right away to the Calmucks,” answered the Counsellor.
“But what shall we do then?”
“Do? We must go on, and perhaps we shall get through,” said he surlily.
“And what if we don’t get through, and the horses stop in the snow? What then?”
“What then? Why, nothing.”
“We might be frozen.”
“It’s possible, certainly, for we cannot see any ricks, which means that we’re going right into the Calmuck country. The first thing to do is to look at the snow.”
“And aren’t you at all afraid of being frozen?” asked the old man, with a tremulous voice.
Notwithstanding that he was making merry with me, it was plain that he was all of a tremble to the very last bone.
“Well, it’s pretty cold,” I said.
“Alas, for you, sir! If you were only like me; no, no, run along, that will make you warm.”
“First of all, we ought to show him how to run after the sledge,” said the Counsellor.
VII.
“Ready if you please,” bawled Alec to me from the sledge in front.
The snowstorm was so violent that only with the utmost exertion, bending right forward and grasping with both hands the folds of my mantle, was I able to traverse the few yards which separated me from the sledge, through the shifting snow, which the wind carried away from under my very feet. My former driver was already on his knees in the midst of the empty sledge, but seeing me, he took off his large hat, whereupon the wind furiously lifted his long locks on high, and he began asking me for vodka. He evidently didn’t expect to get it, for he was not a bit offended at my refusal. He even thanked me, put on his hat, and said to me: “ Well, God be with you, sir, and seizing the reins and smacking his lips, he deParted from us immediately afterwards, Ignashka meanwhile waving his arms with all his might and shouting at his horses. Again the crunching of hoofs and the jangling of the little sledge bells superseded the whining of the wind, which was Particularly audible whenever we stopped short.
For a quarter of an hour after the transfer I did not sleep, and amused myself by studying the figures of the new driver and the horses. Ignashka had all the ways of a young man; he was perpetually springing up, waving his arms, with his whip dangling over the horses, shouting at them, shifting from one foot to the other, bending forward from time to time, and readjusting the reins of the thill horse, which had a tendency perpetually to shift to the right. He was not big, but well put together apparently.
Above his short pelisse he wore an ungirdled artnyak, the collar of which was almost entirely thrown back, leaving the neck quite bare; his boots were not of felt but of leather, and his hat, which he was incessantly doffing and setting right, was a smallish one. In all his movements was observable not merely energy, but, as it seemed to me, the longing to stimulate this energy. But the further we went and the more frequently he pulled himself together, and bounded on to the box-seat and fidgeted about with his feet and conversed with me and Alec, the more it seemed to me that at the bottom of his soul he was sore afraid.
And the reason was this: his horses were good, but at every step the road became more and more difficult, and it was obvious that the horses were running unwillingly; already it was necessary to whip them up a bit, and the thill horse, a good, big, shaggy beast, had stumbled once or twice, although, immediately afterwards, terror-stricken, it tore on ahead again, bowing its shaggy head almost lower than the very sledge bell.
The right-hand-side horse, which I watched involuntarily, together with the long leather cluster of the reins, jolting and plunging on the field-side, was visibly breaking away from the traces and required a touch of the whip, but, as is the way with good horses, even when excited, as if sorry for his weakness, he angrily lowered and raised his head, again readjusting the bridle. It was really terrible to see how the snowstorm and the cold were increasing; how the horses were getting weaker. The road was become worse and worse, and we absolutely did not know where we were or whither we were going.
We were no longer sure of reaching, I will not say a posting station, but even a place of refuge — and it was ridiculous and terrible to hear how the sledge-bell
