“Hie, hie! What a throat you’ve got, Ignat!” sounded the voice of the Counsellor; “do stop for a bit.”
“What?”
“Sto-o-o-op!”
Ignat stopped. Again all was silent, and the wind howled and whined, and the whirling snow began to fall more thickly into the sledge. The Counsellor came to us.
“Well, what is it?”
“What, indeed! Whither are we going?”
“Who knows!”
“Our feet are frozen, eh! why are you clapping your hands?”
“We are quite benumbed.”
“And as for you,” this to Ignat, “just turn out and stir your stumps and see if there isn’t a Calmuck encampment about here: it will warm up your feet a bit!”
“All right! hold the horses. Now for it.”
And Ignat ran off in the direction indicated.
“One always ought to look out and pick one’s way, you’ll find it’s all right; and, besides, there’s such a thing as foolish driving,” said the Counsellor to me. “Just see how the horses are steaming.”
All this time Ignat was gone, and this lasted so long that I was beginning to be afraid that he would lose himself altogether. The Counsellor, in the calmest, most self-confident tone of voice, explained to me how people ought to act in a snowstorm; he said that the best thing of all was to outspan the horse and let her go right on, God only knows where, or sometimes it was possible to see and go by the stars, and he added that if he had gone on before as a pioneer, we should long ago have reached the station.
“Well, how is it?” he asked Ignat, who could now be seen returning, walking with the utmost difficulty, being up to his knees in snow.
“Yes, it’s there right enough. I can make out a Calmuck encampment,” answered Ignat, puffing and blowing, “but which it is I don’t know. We ought, my brother, to be going straight towards the Prolgovsky Manor House. We ought to go more to the left”
“But why this delay? It must be those encampments of ours which are behind the post-station!” exclaimed the Counsellor. “But I say it is not !”
“What I’ve seen I know: it’ll be what I say and not the Tomushenko lot. We must keep going more to the right all along. We shall be out on the great bridge presently; it is only eight versts off.”
“But I say it is not I tell you I’ve just seen it” answered Ignat angrily.
“Ah, my brother, and you a driver too!”
“Driver be hanged! Go yourself! “
“Why should I go when I know already?”
It was plain that Ignat was very angry. Without answering, he leaped upon the box-seat and drove on further.
“You see how your feet grow numb if you don’t warm them a bit,” he said to Alec, continuing to hug his arms more and more frequently and wipe and shake off the snow which kept pouring into the leg of his boot.
I had a frightful desire to go to sleep.
VIII.
“Can it be possible that I am already freezing to death?” I thought in the midst of my slumbers. Freezing to death always begins during slumber, they say. Why, it would be better to be drowned than to freeze and let myself be drawn out in a net, yet ’tis all one whether I drown or freeze if only this stick — it seems to be a stick — were not beating against my back and I could lose consciousness.
And for a second or so I did lose consciousness.
“Yet, how will all this end?” I suddenly said within my mind, opening my eyes for a moment and glancing at the white expanse; “how will all this end if we do not find the ricks and the horses stop, which will happen pretty soon? We shall all be frozen.” I confess that although a little afraid, the wish that something extraordinary, something tragical, might happen to us was stronger within me than my tiny bit of fear. It seemed to me that it would not be half bad if, by the morning, the horses were to drag us into some distant, unknown village half frozen; or, better still, some of us perhaps might be frozen to death outright.
And in this mood a vision presented itself before me, with extraordinary rapidity and vividness. The horses stopped; the snow heaps grew bigger, and bigger, and now only the shaft-bow and the ears of the horses were visible; but suddenly Ignashka appeared on the surface with his troika and drove past us. We implored him with shrieks and yells to take us, but our cries were carried away by the wind, and there were no voices at all. Ignashka smoked slightly; shouted at his horses; whistled a bit, and vanished from our eyes into some deep abyss of drifted snow. Then the little old man leaped to the surface and began waving his arms, and wanted to spring off, but could not move from the spot; my old driver, with the large hat, flung himself upon him, dragged him to the ground, and trampled him in the snow. “You old sorcerer,” he shrieked, “you curser; we’ll sink or swim together.” But the little old man burrowed in the snow drift with his head; he was not so much a little old man as a hare, and he slipped away from us.
All the dogs came leaping after him. The counsellor, who was Theodor Filipovich, said that we should all sit round in a circle, and that it didn’t matter a bit if the snow covered us, it would make us warm. And, indeed, we were very warm and comfortable, only we wanted something to drink. I got a case bottle, served out rum and sugar to them all, and drank myself with great satisfaction. The tale-teller was telling some tale about the rainbow — and above us, indeed, was a ceiling of snow and rainbow. “And now let each of us take his aPartment in the snow and go to sleep,” said I. The snow was warm and soft like fur.
I made a room for myself, and was about to go into it, but Theodor Filipovich, who saw some money in my case bottle, said: “Stop, give me the money; it’s all one if we die!” and caught me by the leg. I gave him the money, merely asking them to let me out; but they would not believe it was all the money I had, and wanted to kill me. I caught the arm of the old man and, with unspeakable delight, began to kiss it. The arm of the little old man was fresh and smooth.
At first he tore it away from me, but afterwards he let me have it, and even began caressing me with the other arm. But Theodor Filipovich drew near and threatened me. I ran into my room, but it was not a room, but a long white corridor, and something held me by the leg. I tore myself away, but in the hands of him who held me remained my clothing and Part of my skin; but I only felt cold and bashful, and all the more bashful because my aunt, with her sunshade, and with her homoeopathic pharmacopoeia under her arm, was coming towards me with the drowned man. They were laughing, and did not understand the signs I was making to them.
I threw myself into the sledge, and my feet were dragging along the snow; but the little old man pursued me, waving his arms. The little old man was already close to me when I heard two little bells, and knew that I was safe if I could get to them. The little bells sounded more and more violently, but the little old man caught me up, and fell like a beast on my face, so that the bells were scarce audible. I again seized his arm and began to kiss it, but the little old man was not the little, old man, but the man who had been drowned, and he cried out: “Stop, Ignashka, these are the Akhmetkin ricks, I think; go and see!”
This was too terrible; far better to wake up! I opened my eyes. The wind had flapped my face with the corner of Alec’s mantle; my knee was uncovered; we were going over a bare, frozen crest of snow, and the tierce of the little bells was very faintly audible in the air, along with the jangling quinte.
I looked to see where the rick was, but instead of the ricks, I saw with my wide-open eyes a house with a balcony and the crenelated wall of a fortress. It interested me very little to look at this house and fortress; my chief desire was to see again the white corridor along which I had run to hear the sound of the church bell, and to kiss the hand of the old man. I again closed my eyes and went to sleep.
IX.
I slept deeply; but the tierce of the bell was audible the whole time, and there
