The Great White Army Part 14

It was a bold stroke and worthy of the woman. The man himself seemed quite taken aback at her hardihood, and, acting in the same spirit, he now made us a most profound bow and then handed his cloak and sword to the servant.

"Gentlemen," said he, in pa.s.sable French, "I will not say 'Welcome to my board!' for that is obviously too late. Let me trust that you have enjoyed a good dinner, an occupation in which I hope to imitate you with madame's permission."

He looked at her, and she immediately gave her orders for food to be brought. I think she had expected a different turn to the adventure, and was as perplexed as we ourselves at the colonel's att.i.tude. Here was a man who should have been raging against us as spies, sitting by us in the most affable mood and eating and drinking as though he were in our house and not we in his. For all that I doubted him even in his most condescending moments, and whispering a word to Leon, I suggested that we should go. This brought suspicion to a head. The Russian became sullen in an instant.

"You will stay," he said, and he banged the table with his fist as though he had leapt suddenly to the command. "You will stay, messieurs. Are you not madame's guests? This is no time of night to be in the woods. There are dangers abroad, messieurs--and wolves.

Upon my word, I am surprised at you--to mention such a thing."

We resumed our seats, and he fell to smiling again; yet it was with the snarl of one of those very wolves he had mentioned. A low cunning laugh, the like of which I have never heard, betrayed a deeper purpose than that of hospitality. We, in our turn, understood then the whole peril of the situation. The man was playing with us as a cat with mice; he had but begun the role he meant to undertake.

"You are foolish, messieurs," he went on presently; "indeed most foolish. Consider what would happen to you if you left this house against my will. The sentries would detain you, and there would be an inquiry at head-quarters. We are very unkind to traitors when they visit our camps, and we have our own way of dealing with them. Do you remember Major Royate, of the Engineers, whom the Cossacks took at Plavno? They tied him to a tree, I think, and the wolves ate him at sundown. Then there was your Lieutenant de Duras, whom they burned on a fire of logs at Letizka; and another, I think, was hacked to pieces with sabres on the eve of Borodino. All this is very terrible, but in your words, _a la guerre comme a la guerre_. You say that you fight with barbarians, and you will not quarrel with their customs. Are they not poor savages whom you have come here to correct? Messieurs, I do not know what would happen to you if I gave the alarm from that window at this minute. It would not be the water, for the river is frozen; but it might very well be the wolves, as your ears will bear witness if you will be good enough to listen."

With this he opened the rude window of the barn, and far away in the thick of the forest we could hear the dismal howling of the famished brutes. What was the man's intention, or why he talked in this way, I could not imagine; but presently, as he drank deeper, his reserve became less and his true meaning more apparent. Not for a moment had he been deceived by the tale which madame told him. One of us, he knew, was her lover, and that man he meant to discover and to kill.

"Frenchmen," he said presently, pa.s.sion growing upon him as he spoke, "I will let two of you leave this house if the third remains. Cast lots amongst yourselves, if you please; it is a matter of indifference to me. But one man I will give to my Cossacks, so help me Heaven!"

And with that he laughed savagely, as though this sudden humour pleased him mightily.

To this it was impossible to make any answer. We held our tongues, while Madame Pauline crossed over to the man's side and began to speak rapidly in Russian. It was plain, however, that she both appealed and commanded in vain. An Eastern pa.s.sion for revenge suffered no woman's entreaty. He knew that none of us would betray the others, and he believed that he had us all in the net of a devilish vengeance.

"Two of you shall go," he kept saying--"two. I will give you five minutes by the clock. If you do not make a choice then, it is for my Cossacks to deal with you. As you please, messieurs; that is my last word."

We had no response to make. The man's anger and the woman's despair were both very dreadful things to hear and see, and we turned aside from them to argue the question in quick whispers. Plain was it that our hope of life hung upon a thread, and, all our fighting instinct returning, we began to say that we must deal with Tcharnhoff ourselves.

Should we make a dash from the house, or should we seize the man where he stood? The latter seemed the wiser thing. We risked all by doing so, and yet might win all. No sooner was the course determined upon than, s.n.a.t.c.hing his sword from the chair where it lay, Payard made a dash for the Cossack. Alas! that was the last thing he ever did in his life, for a pistol-shot rang out at the very instant, and our friend fell dead across the table. Tcharnhoff had shot him; and the smoke had not lifted when Pauline herself stabbed her lover to the heart, and he rolled headlong on the floor, almost at my feet.

"Go!" she cried, her face white as with the pallor of death. "I will say that you killed him. Go and leave me."

We waited for no other word. In the distance we heard the report of a musket and the alarm spreading through the camp. We had an instant between us and eternity, and be sure we made the best of it.

VI

It was a glorious night when we reached the open, a full moon shining upon us and the snow glistening as though dusted with diamonds.

We could see the bivouac fires of the camp still burning brightly and the figures of the awakened Cossacks moving about them. You may imagine how the spectacle quickened our steps, and with what wild hope of life we crossed the frozen ground to the horses which stood for our salvation.

For myself I do not think I have ever run so fast in my life, and never shall run again, as upon that amazing night. Already my heated fancy would have it that I could hear the thunder of hoofs upon the snow and the savage cries of the men whose sabres would cut us down. The stillness all about us, the silent majesty of the frozen woods, the utter solitude of the steppes enhanced this impression and all the gloom of it. What fools we had been to come on such an errand at all!

And how dearly we had paid for it already! It now remained to prove that we could become men even in the face of death most revolting.

I say that we ran, but that is hardly the word for it. So difficult was the ground, so slippery, that sometimes we would be on our feet and sometimes sliding like lads at a school. The clamour behind us was now unmistakable, but plainly it converged upon the house we had left, and we doubted not that Pauline's wit would give us grace. When we at last came up to the horses, neither of us could speak for sheer exhaustion of the chase, but we clambered headlong into our saddles, and, letting poor Payard's charger go whither it would, we galloped across the open steppes, and entered the first of the woods beyond them. It seemed now that we were safe, yet what men have ever suffered a greater delusion?

Hardly had we gone three hundred paces when we came face to face with a party of hors.e.m.e.n, and, reining back in confusion, we discovered them to be Cossacks returning to the camp.

The rencontre was swift and a surprise upon both parties. We, being on the look-out, were naturally the first to draw rein; but the Cossacks, upon their side hardly less watchful, were quickly at the halt and eyeing us wonderingly. Such a droll state of affairs would have amused any man who read an account of it in a book, but it was serious enough to us.

For a brief instant it appeared that we were lost beyond hope, and had nothing to do but to kneel in the snow before these brigands. There were some eighty of them as I could see, and every man now whipped his sword from his scabbard. We were but two against them, and not fifty paces from the place where they were halted, and you will judge of our astonishment when they did not fire upon us. This very interval of silence was to be our salvation, for suddenly my nephew wheeled his horse about, and crying to me to follow him, he spurred wildly from the wood. Be sure that I imitated him with all my blood afire and a wild hope of life leaping suddenly to my heart. Their horses had been long afoot, said I, while ours had rested. We might outride them yet, and were madmen if we did not put the matter to an issue.

VII

So behold us galloping headlong from that fearsome place, the snow flying beneath our horses' hoofs, our heads bent and our swords drawn.

For a time I knew not whether we were gaining or losing upon the savage horde which followed us. Wild cries echoed in my ears; the night was black about me; I heard the stertorous breathing of the willing horses, the thunder of their hoofs upon the cruel ground. Then a great silence fell. Leon hailed me, and I could hear his voice distinctly.

"They are done with," he said; and upon that, "What do you make of it?"

"How?" cried I. "They are not following us!" And then I reined back to listen.

We must have travelled a league by this time, but the face of the bleak country was unchanged. Dense woods and gigantic lakes of snow were the outstanding features, and over all the paralysing silence of a Russian night. Good G.o.d! what a solitude, and yet we had won freedom in it!

"They did not think us worth powder and shot," says Leon presently.

"Perhaps they were hungry, or"--and here he pointed grimly over his shoulder--"they may have preferred the camp to that."

I looked at him curiously.

"Of what are you speaking?" I asked him, and at that he shrugged his shoulders.

"Listen," he cried, "and then answer for yourself, mon oncle."

I took a pull upon the rein again, and bent my ear towards the wood. A weird sound, like to nothing but the howling of the doomed, broke the silence all about and made its meaning clear. We had lost the Cossacks, but the wolves were on our track; aye, thousands of them--leaping, barking, snarling from their fastnesses, and bending their heads to the chase like hounds that follow a scent. Good G.o.d, what a sight that was to see! With what terror the spectacle filled us as we let the maddened horses go and rode again from an enemy more terrible than man!

I had heard of the wolves of Russia, but had seen but few of them during the terrible days of the retreat.

Perchance the fact that we had rarely left our comrades might have had something to do with it, for naturally the fret and stir of an army in retreat would scare such beasts even at such a season; but here the story was otherwise. They had scented the horses, and nothing now would stop them. Gallop as we would, they gained upon us, and presently were leaping at the throats of the terrified brutes we rode.

In vain we discharged our pistols, struck at them with our swords, and cried for aid to any that might be near us. They came again, with jaws distended and dripping fangs, and we had not gone the third of a league when one caught Leon's horse by the throat and, hanging there, dragged the brute shrieking to the ground.

Surely any man might now have believed that the end had come, and that, whatever else befell, the regiment would see us no more.

There was the horse being torn to pieces before our eyes; there was my nephew striking at the wolves with his sword while I endeavoured maladroitly to lift him to my saddle. The latter task was soon rendered impossible by the ferocity of the savage beasts who now swarmed about us. They had my own horse down before a man could have counted ten, and, leaping from it as it fell, I ran headlong towards the woods for any shelter that could be found.

Our lives now did not seem worth a scudo. There must have been thousands of wolves about the horses; a black wood was upon our left hand, a wide, boundless plain before us. Nevertheless, that dim hope which sustains men in all emergencies remained, and, crying to one another to take courage, we entered the wood. There, to our wonder and amazement, we discerned immediately the haven of our salvation. It was a woodlander's hut, not twenty yards from the open, and hardly had we espied it before we were locked and barred within and laughing at the very magnitude of our misfortune.

VIII

It must have been about three o'clock of the morning by this time.

The hut itself had one window looking over the plain, but was as bare of furniture as any room in a madhouse. Leon's tinder-box revealed a floor of baked earth and a stove which lacked fuel, and this, with a shelf upon which there stood empty jars, was all the ornament this fortress possessed. To us, however, it was more beautiful than any palace, and, taking a drain of brandy from our flasks, we climbed up to the window and looked out over the snows.

Our poor horses were but bones by this time, and there were hundreds of the wolves fighting about the carca.s.ses. Less to our liking were the slinking forms about the hut itself and the savage howling which a.s.sailed our ears. It was clear that the brutes had scented us out, and would stand sentinel until their courage was screwed up to something more. We could count them by the hundred as they prowled round and round the hut, leaping often at the window, and snarling when the b.u.t.ts of our pistols drove them back. Some, indeed, went so far as to spring upon the roof, and there yapped and howled most dismally; while, as for ourselves, we could but keep guard and wonder what the day would bring. Would it send aid to us, or must we be prisoners there until we perished of hunger and cold? This was a question neither dared answer. The minutes became as hours while we waited for the dawn. The horror of the snow paralysed our faculties and almost forbade speech between us.

I cannot tell you truly of all that happened during that appalling vigil. It is odd to look back to it now and to remember the light words with which Leon and I would endeavour to cheer each other; how we laughed and jested when our nerves were at a tension and it seemed that any minute the cold might overcome us and the door be left open to death in its most revolting aspect. But an instant of carelessness, and there would have been a dozen brutes at our throats, and we should have shared the fate of the wretched horses whose very bones were now vanished from the plain.

All this was in our minds, yet our lips made no mention of it.

"Courage," we said; "the day will help us." It seemed a vain hope, for who should be in this wild place when the sun rose again? You answer the Cossacks. Aye, true enough, it was the Cossacks who came just as the day had dawned, and the red light of the morning sun shimmered upon that frozen sea.

Leon heard them sooner than I, but the brutes were quicker than he. I had taken my turn at the window, and had just crashed my pistol into a gaping mouth which menaced me, when the wolves around suddenly p.r.i.c.ked their ears and turned their heads towards the east.

"There are hors.e.m.e.n at the gallop," said Leon at the same moment; and, listening, I heard the m.u.f.fled thunder of hoofs upon the snow.