The Crimson Tide Part 4

"That other prisoner can't be found----"

"What! That Swedish girl!" yelled the officer.

Several soldiers began speaking excitedly:

"While we were in the cellar, they say she ran away----"

"Yes, Captain, while we were about that business in the crypt, Kaledines' hors.e.m.e.n rode up outside----"

"Who saw them?" demanded the officer hoa.r.s.ely. "G.o.d curse you, who saw them?"

Some peasants had now come up. One of them began:

"Your _honour_, I saw Prince Kaledines' riders----"

"_Whose!_"

"The Hetman's----"

"Your _honour_! _Prince_ Kaledines! The Hetman! d.a.m.nation! Who do you think you are! Who do you think I am!" burst out the Red officer in a fury. "Get out of my way!----" He pushed the peasants right and left and strode away toward the convent. His soldiers began to straggle after him. One of them winked at the wood-cutters with his tongue in his cheek, and slung the rifle he carried over his right shoulder _en bandouliere_, muzzle downward.

"The Tavarish is in a temper," he said with a jerk of his thumb toward the officer. "We arrested that Swedish girl in the uniform of the woman's battalion. One shoots that breed on sight, you know.

But we were in such a hurry to finish with the Romanoffs----" He shrugged: "You see, comrades, we should have taken her into the crypt and shot her along with the Romanoffs. That's how one loses these birds--they're off if you turn your back to light a cigarette in the wind."

One of the wood-cutters said: "Among Kaledines' hors.e.m.e.n were two women. One was crop-headed like a boy, and half naked."

"A White Nun?"

"G.o.d knows. She had some white rags hanging to her body, and dark hair clipped like a boy's."

"That--was--she!" said the soldier with slow conviction. He turned and looked down the long perspective of the forest road. Only a raven stalked there all alone over the fallen leaves.

"Certainly," he said, "that was our White Nun. The Cossacks took her with them. They must have ridden fast, the hors.e.m.e.n of Kaledines."

"Like a swift storm. Like the souls of the d.a.m.ned," replied a peasant.

The soldier shrugged: "If there's still a Romanoff loose in the world, G.o.d save the world!... And that big heifer of a Swedish wench!--she was a bad one, I tell you!--Took six of us to catch her and ten to hold her by her ten fingers and toes! Hey! G.o.d bless me, but she stands six feet and is made of steel cased in silk--all white, smooth and iron-hard--the blond young snow-tiger that she is!--the yellow-haired, six-foot, slippery beastess! G.o.d bless me--G.o.d bless me!" he muttered, staring down the wood-road to its vanishing point against the grey horizon.

Then he hitched his slung rifle to a more comfortable position, turned, gazed at the convent across the fields, which his distant comrades were now approaching.

"A German nest," he said aloud to himself, "full of their d.a.m.ned Deaconesses! Hey! I'll be going along to see what's to be done with them, also!"

He nodded to the wood-cutters:

"Vermin-killing time," he remarked cheerily. "After the dirty work is done, peace, land enough for everybody, ease and plenty and a full gla.s.s always at one's elbows--eh, comrades?"

He strode away across the fields.

It had begun to snow.

ARGUMENT

The Cossacks sang as they rode:

I

"Life is against us We are born crying: Life that commenced us Leaves us all dying.

We were born crying; We shall die sighing.

"Shall we sit idle?

Follow Death's dance!

Pick up your bridle, Saddle and lance!

Cossacks, advance!"

They were from the Urals: they sat their s.h.a.ggy little grey horses, lance in hand, stirrup deep in saddle paraphernalia--kit-bags, tents, blankets, trusses of straw, a dead fowl or two or a quarter of beef.

And from every saddle dangled a balalaika and the terrible Cossack whip.

The steel of their lances flashed red in the setting sun; snow whirled before the wind in blinding pinkish clouds, powdering horse and rider from head to heel.

Again one rider unslung his balalaika, struck it, looking skyward as he rode:

"Stars in your courses, This is our answer; Women and horses, Singer and dancer Fall to the lancer!

That is your answer!

"Though the Dark Raider Rob us of joy---- Death, the Invader, Come to destroy---- _Nichevo! Stoi!_"

They rode into a forest, slowly, filing among the silver birches, then trotting out amid the pines.

The Swedish girl towered in her saddle, dwarfing the s.h.a.ggy pony. She wore her grey wool cap, overcoat, and boots. Pistols bulged in the saddle holsters; sacks of grain and a bag of camp tins lay across pommel and cantle.

Beside her rode the novice, swathed to the eyes in a sheepskin greatcoat, and a fur cap sheltering her shorn head.

Her lethargy--a week's reaction from the horrors of the convent--had vanished; and a feverish, restless alertness had taken its place.

Nothing of the still, white novice was visible now in her brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks.

Her tragic silence had given place to an unnatural loquacity; her grief to easily aroused mirth; and the dark sorrow in her haunted eyes was gone, and they grew brown and sunny and vivacious.

She talked freely with her comrade, Ilse Westgard; she exchanged gossip and banter with the Cossacks, argued with them, laughed with them, sang with them.

At night she slept in her sheepskin in Ilse Westgard's vigorous arms; morning, noon and evening she filled the samovar with snow beside Cossack fires, or in the rare cantonments afforded in wretched villages, where whiskered and filthy mujiks cringed to the Cossacks, whispering to one another: "There is no end to death; there is no end to the fighting and the dying, G.o.d bless us all. There is no end."

In the glare of great fires in muddy streets she stood, swathed in her greatcoat, her cap pushed back, looking like some beautiful, impudent boy, while the Cossacks sang "Lada oy Lada!"--and let their slanting eyes wander sideways toward her, till her frank laughter set the singers grinning and the _gusli_ was laid aside.

And once, after a swift gallop to cross a railroad and an exchange of shots with the Red guards at long range, the sotnia of the Wild Division rode at evening into a little hamlet of one short, miserable street, and shouted for a fire that could be seen as far as Moscow.