"Oh, don"t ask!" Buza said, shaking his head. "I will tell you afterwards; let"s go now!"
"At once--in a wind like this and at night?"
"What"s to be done? At least it gives us a chance."
They hastily descended. Buza kept his eyes fixed straight in front of him, and dropped them when obliged to turn his head in the direction from which he came. They halted under the rock for a moment, in order to feed the dogs.
"Be sure to keep the wind on your left--always on your left--then wherever you go you will find land. There--round the coast by Pawal--is the easiest. We shall meet there, if only we can hold out till morning. But don"t leave the sledge, or the storm will carry you and it away. And don"t look behind you--Heaven defend it! For "They"
don"t like it, and will come after you," he added significantly.
Once more they plunged into the blizzard. Once more the snow encircled their feet like hissing adders, the smarting sensation began again, and they drew their breath with difficulty. To complete the misfortune, twilight set in with the gale. The evening glow rested lower and lower on the rocks, while dark clouds rose steadily from the "open sea," where the country lies whence "no one has ever come back."
The tired dogs went unwillingly. Stefan was continually obliged to jump up and urge them on with his heavy ice-spear. When the evening glow had disappeared and the stars shone out, the gale, which seemed to have been only waiting for the signal, rose with such violence that, heedless of everything, the poor animals turned and ran before it. For a long way Stefan ploughed the snow with the sharp ice-spear, leaning his full weight against it, and hanging to the sledge, which rushed along, rocking and b.u.mping. At last, when they lighted on softer ground, he succeeded in stopping it. The dogs lay down at once.
Without letting the reins go out of his hand, he stood up and looked round. Before him rose a white, jagged ice-wall, and the light of the stars showed the clouds from the "open sea" hanging over it. The coast had disappeared somewhere, and on all sides the country was white and flat.
"We have come a long way!... Jzef, are you cold? How you are shivering! Get up; can you eat something?"
"I am cold. Is it still far?"
"I don"t know; the wind carried us away. Can you get up?"
Jzef was silent and did not stir.
Stefan shook the snow off him, turned the sledge and put the dogs in readiness, rousing them by his voice and by blows of the ice-spear. He skilfully did all this crawling on his knees, for when he stood up the wind blew him over. At last the dogs got up and limped on. He remembered that he ought to keep the wind on his left, but the sh.o.r.e along which he had been driving was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but the white plain, the fury of the gale, and the stars in the sky. This wind seemed at times like some powerful winnowing-fan, violently driving them into the sea. When it struck the bed of the sledge, it lifted it up like a sheet of paper, and whatever it tore from it instantly disappeared. First they lost their bag of biscuits, then the cushions; finally Jzef fell out and the storm carried him off like a bag of down. Stefan was horror-struck as he watched him helplessly waving his arms and trying in vain to stand upright.
Shouting despairingly, he turned the dogs in pursuit of his companion.
They rushed madly after the object rolling before them, and, fearing that they would tear him to pieces if they caught him up, Stefan cried:
"Face the wind! Flat against the ground!"
The wind carried his words, and Jzef evidently heard them, for he began to twist round until he gained a foothold in the snow. Stefan instantly struck the ice-spear into the ice with his full strength, so that the sledge shook.
"Crawl! I can"t leave the dogs!" he called to Jzef.
The latter answered something and tried to get up, but the wind blew him over. In the end he managed to turn and face it.
"Crawl--crawl!" His companion"s voice was borne to him in a whisper in the blasts of the snowstorm.
"Leave me--never mind me--I can"t----" he answered, but almost before they had left his lips the gale blew his words in the opposite direction.
Finally, by a great effort, he began to crawl. All this took some time, and meanwhile a rumbling sound deeper than the storm was added to the roar of the wind. This came from the pack ice in the direction of the clouds hanging over the "open sea." Stefan heard it, but did not realize what it was until the ice was struck with a crash like thunder.
"The sea!" he cried.
Jzef was now near the sledge.
"Make haste!" he exclaimed, helping him into the sledge and strapping him to it. "Do you hear? That"s the sea! The storm is breaking up the ice behind us."
They plodded on once more. Stefan walked nearly all the time, pushing the sledge, but tied to it by the waist for safety. He forgot that he was cold or that his limbs might become frostbitten. The dogs exerted all their strength, scenting the danger. Every minute the roar came nearer; it sounded like a cannonade above the noise of the wind.
Driven by despair, they fled ever faster. Yet at last the ice rocked under them, and in imagination they saw the water bubbling under their feet. It was close behind them; but the ice on which they were driving was still dry.
"Throw out everything--clothes as well as food! Throw them all out of the sledge!" Stefan shouted, scarcely able to keep pace with the terrified dogs. Bags, implements of all kinds, and furs flew away into the darkness. The lightened sledge sped forward rapidly, and Stefan was only just in time to throw himself on to it beside Jzef; the dogs needed no rein or guiding.
"You will die through my fault, Stefan; forgive me," Jzef said. "When I think of that, I want to jump out of the sledge and go back into the storm; but I expect you would not let me, would you?"
"What"s the use of talking nonsense! We shall die together as we have lived together. A year sooner or later...! But we shall be buried in graves--never fear, we shall get back all right! Besides, the wind is going down. Can that be the coast?" he exclaimed, as he looked up.
Close above them rose a dark belt of rocks. Quickly they climbed up on to this firm ground, and while sheltering there, half dead with exhaustion, they watched the white ice-floes below packing with a loud roar. Stefan went to look for wood, and found a tree trunk not far away, from which he broke off a few splinters and lighted a small fire. The wind soon changed this into a bonfire, and for the rest of the night they slept beside it.
Buza found them there at daybreak.
"Are you alive? Thank G.o.d! It"s a good thing that I didn"t allow you to take anything away with you from there, or we should never have come off safe and sound. For this is just their "bad weather." It"s the crime that made it bad. We didn"t even make a fire, for I am afraid of the Chukchee. Didn"t you light one? We saw a fire in this direction."
"We lighted one, for we haven"t any of our things left, and nothing to eat. We should have been frozen."
They related how they had lost everything, and how the sea had chased them.
"Ah! that was not the sea--it wasn"t the sea!" Buza sighed. "If only we get home safely...."
Sadly they returned along the cliffs. They were obliged to make a wide circle, for the wind had blown them far beyond Pawal. They were unable to light fires, and drove on without resting as long as the dogs"
strength held out. Buza continually cast anxious looks about him.
Suddenly the dogs growled fiercely, and ran so fast towards the rocks that Buza was scarcely able to hold them.
"It only needed this!" he cried with pale lips. "A rock-spirit!"
A dark brown, unmoving face looked through a crevice in the rock.
"Make the sign of the Cross over him, Father!"
With trembling hands the missionary made the sign of the Cross; but the head did not disappear. Stefan held in his dogs, which were straining at their harness. He looked fixedly at the head.
"Otowaka! is that you?" he cried at last, when an old Chukchee, thin and pale, came out, leading a little boy by the hand.
"It is I ... Otowaka ... Kituwia...." he said; but his lips were too parched to continue, and he merely waved his hand towards the distant Peweka. "The Great Spirit would not allow my family to perish without an avenger. I will go with you and be baptized, and bring him up."
He laid his hand on the head of the boy, whose face suddenly took a disdainful expression, reminding Stefan strikingly of Kituwia"s stony face.
THE RETURNING WAVE
BY BOLESLAW PRUS (ALEXSANDER GLOWACKI)
CHAPTER I
If Pastor Boehme"s worthiness could have been weighed on a pair of scales, the reverend gentleman would have been obliged to travel on a goods truck. But as worthiness cannot be cla.s.sified under any of the three mathematical dimensions, but comes under the fourth, which does not belong to the world of realities, he travelled in a little one-horse britzka instead.