Previous - next
crashing and rolling down the mountain towards the tarantass.
The iemschik uttered a cry.
Michael Strogoff in vain brought his whip down on the team,
they refused to move.
A few feet farther on, and the mass would pass behind them!
Michael saw the tarantass struck, his companion crushed;
he saw there was no time to drag her from the vehicle.
Then, possessed in this hour of peril with superhuman strength,
he threw himself behind it, and planting his feet on the ground,
by main force placed it out of danger.
The enormous mass as it passed grazed his chest, taking away his breath
as though it had been a cannon-ball, then crushing to powder the flints
on the road, it bounded into the abyss below.
"Oh, brother!" cried Nadia, who had seen it all by the light
of the flashes.
"Nadia!" replied Michael, "fear nothing!"
"It is not on my own account that I fear!"
"God is with us, sister!"
"With me truly, brother, since He has sent thee in my way!"
murmured the young girl.
The impetus the tarantass had received was not to be lost, and the tired
horses once more moved forward. Dragged, so to speak, by Michael and
the iemschik, they toiled on towards a narrow pass, lying north and south,
where they would be protected from the direct sweep of the tempest.
At one end a huge rock jutted out, round the summit of which whirled
an eddy. Behind the shelter of the rock there was a comparative calm;
yet once within the circumference of the cyclone, neither man nor beast
could resist its power.
Indeed, some firs which towered above this protection were in a trice
shorn of their tops, as though a gigantic scythe had swept across them.
The storm was now at its height. The lightning filled the defile,
and the thunderclaps had become one continued peal. The ground,
struck by the concussion, trembled as though the whole Ural chain
was shaken to its foundations.
Happily, the tarantass could be so placed that the storm might strike
it obliquely. But the counter-currents, directed towards it by the slope,
could not be so well avoided, and so violent were they that every
instant it seemed as though it would be dashed to pieces.
Nadia was obliged to leave her seat, and Michael, by the light
of one of the lanterns, discovered an excavation bearing the marks
of a miner's pick, where the young girl could rest in safety until
they could once more start.
Just then--it was one o'clock in the morning--the rain began to fall
in torrents, and this in addition to the wind and lightning,
made the storm truly frightful. To continue the journey at present
was utterly impossible. Besides, having reached this pass,
they had only to descend the slopes of the Ural Mountains, and to
descend now, with the road torn up by a thousand mountain torrents,
in these eddies of wind and rain, was utter madness.
"To wait is indeed serious," said Michael, "but it must certainly
be done, to avoid still longer detentions. The very violence
Previous - next
