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"Whenever you tell me."

"Have confidence in me, Nadia."

"I have, indeed!"

The Tartar boats were now only a hundred feet distant.
They carried a detachment of Bokharian soldiers, on their way
to reconnoiter around Omsk.

The ferryboat was still two lengths from the shore.
The boatmen redoubled their efforts. Michael himself
seized a pole and wielded it with superhuman strength.
If he could land the tarantass and horses, and dash off
with them, there was some chance of escaping the Tartars,
who were not mounted.

But all their efforts were in vain. "Saryn na kitchou!"
shouted the soldiers from the first boat.

Michael recognized the Tartar war-cry, which is usually answered
by lying flat on the ground. As neither he nor the boatmen obeyed
a volley was let fly, and two of the horses were mortally wounded.

At the next moment a violent blow was felt. The boats had run
into the ferryboat.

"Come, Nadia!" cried Michael, ready to jump overboard.

The girl was about to follow him, when a blow from a lance struck him,
and he was thrown into the water. The current swept him away, his hand
raised for an instant above the waves, and then he disappeared.

Nadia uttered a cry, but before she had time to throw herself
after him she was seized and dragged into one of the boats.
The boatmen were killed, the ferryboat left to drift away,
and the Tartars continued to descend the Irtych.


CHAPTER XIV MOTHER AND SON

OMSK is the official capital of Western Siberia. It is not
the most important city of the government of that name, for Tomsk
has more inhabitants and is larger. But it is at Omsk that the
Governor-General of this the first half of Asiatic Russia resides.
Omsk, properly so called, is composed of two distinct towns:
one which is exclusively inhabited by the authorities and officials;
the other more especially devoted to the Siberian merchants,
although, indeed, the trade of the town is of small importance.

This city has about 12,000 to 13,000 inhabitants.
It is defended by walls, but these are merely of earth,
and could afford only insufficient protection. The Tartars,
who were well aware of this fact, consequently tried at this
period to carry it by main force, and in this they succeeded,
after an investment of a few days.

The garrison of Omsk, reduced to two thousand men, resisted valiantly.
But driven back, little by little, from the mercantile portion
of the place, they were compelled to take refuge in the upper town.

It was there that the Governor-General, his officers, and soldiers
had entrenched themselves. They had made the upper quarter of Omsk
a kind of citadel, and hitherto they held out well in this species
of improvised "kreml," but without much hope of the promised succor.
The Tartar troops, who were descending the Irtych, received every
day fresh reinforcements, and, what was more serious,
they were led by an officer, a traitor to his country, but a man
of much note, and of an audacity equal to any emergency.

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