Podstrony
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
companion that he should cross first, embarking in the ferryboat with the
tarantass and horses, as he feared that the weight of this load would render
it less safe.
After landing the carriage he would return and fetch Nadia.
The girl refused. It would be the delay of an hour, and she would not, for her
safety alone, be the cause of it.
The embarkation was made not without difficulty, for the banks were partly
flooded and the boat could not get in near enough. However, after half an
hour's exertion, the boatmen got the tarantass and the three horses on board.
The passengers embarked also, and they shoved off.
For a few minutes all went well. A little way up the river the current was
broken by a long point projecting from the bank, and forming an eddy easily
crossed by the boat. The two boatmen propelled their barge with long poles,
which they handled cleverly; but as they gained the middle of the stream it
grew deeper and deeper, until at last they could only just reach the bottom.
The ends of the poles were only a foot above the water, which rendered their
use difficult. Michael and Nadia, seated in the stern of the boat, and always
in dread of a delay, watched the boatmen with some uneasiness.
"Look out!" cried one of them to his comrade.
The shout was occasioned by the new direction the boat was rapidly taking. It
had got into the direct current and was being swept down the river. By
diligent use of the poles, putting the ends in a series of notches cut below
the gunwale, the boatmen managed to keep the craft against the stream, and
slowly urged it in a slanting direction towards the right bank.
They calculated on reaching it some five or six versts below the landing
place; but, after all, that would not matter so long as men and beasts could
disembark without accident. The two stout boatmen, stimulated moreover by the
promise of double fare, did not doubt of succeeding in this difficult passage
of the Irtych.
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
But they reckoned without an accident which they were powerless to prevent,
and neither their zeal nor their skillfulness could, under the circumstances,
have done more.
The boat was in the middle of the current, at nearly equal distances from
either shore, and being carried down at the rate of two versts an hour, when
Michael, springing to his feet, bent his gaze up the river.
Several boats, aided by oars as well as by the current, were coming swiftly
down upon them.
Michael's brow contracted, and a cry escaped him.
"What is the matter?" asked the girl.
But before Michael had time to reply one of the boatmen exclaimed in an accent
of terror:
"The Tartars! the Tartars!"
There were indeed boats full of soldiers, and in a few minutes they must reach
the ferryboat, it being too heavily laden to escape from them.
The terrified boatmen uttered exclamations of despair and dropped their poles.
Michael Strogoff
CHAPTER XIII DUTY BEFORE EVERYTHING
68
"Courage, my friends!" cried Michael; "courage! Fifty roubles for you if we
reach the right bank before the boats overtake us."
Incited by these words, the boatmen again worked manfully but it soon become
evident that they could not escape the Tartars.
It was scarcely probable that they would pass without attacking them. On the
contrary, there was everything to be feared from robbers such as these.
"Do not be afraid, Nadia," said Michael; "but be ready for anything."
"I am ready," replied Nadia.
"Even to leap into the water when I tell you?"
"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 warcry, 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 GovernorGeneral of this the first half of
Asiatic Russia resides. Omsk, properly so called, is composed of two distinct
Page 66
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
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.
Michael Strogoff
CHAPTER XIV MOTHER AND SON
69
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 GovernorGeneral, 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. This man was
Colonel Ivan
Ogareff.
Ivan Ogareff, terrible as any of the most savage Tartar chieftains, was an
educated soldier. Possessing on his mother's side some Mongolian blood, he
delighted in deceptive strategy and ambuscades, stopping short of nothing when
he desired to fathom some secret or to set some trap. Deceitful by nature, he
willingly had recourse to the vilest trickery; lying when occasion demanded,
excelling in the adoption of all disguises and in every species of deception.
Further, he was cruel, and had even acted as an executioner. FeofarKhan
possessed in him a lieutenant well capable of seconding his designs in this
savage war.
When Michael Strogoff arrived on the banks of the Irtych, Ivan Ogareff was
already master of Omsk, and was pressing the siege of the upper quarter of the
town all the more eagerly because he must hasten to Tomsk, where the main body
of the Tartar army was concentrated.
Tomsk, in fact, had been taken by FeofarKhan some days previously, and it was
thence that the invaders, masters of Central Siberia, were to march upon
Irkutsk.
Irkutsk was the real object of Ivan Ogareff. The plan of the traitor was to
reach the Grand Duke under a false name, to gain his confidence, and to
deliver into Tartar hands the town and the Grand Duke himself. With such a
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkskarol.keep.pl
|
