CHAPTER XI.

AN EXCITING ADVENTURE.

For two days and nights we travelled thus, and, as we progressed up the river towards the mountain ranges, the scenery around became extremely grand and wild, the banks occasionally crowding into a narrow gorge, with the cliff-sides of black slate and sandstone rearing themselves up in perpendicular walls for many hundreds of feet. Villages became few and far between, and more primitive, so that occasionally we were compelled to remain in some woodman’s hut for hours at a stretch, awaiting as patiently as possible the arrival of fresh horses. Nor did the surface of the river road improve, for the traffic became less and the track frequently ran through virgin snow. Four days out of Krasnoiarsk the cliffs on either side of the river road subsided, and we passed into the steppe of Minusinsk. This steppe is one of the most peculiar in Siberia, situated as it is at the bottom of a circle of huge mountains, through which the Yenesei runs.

It was while traversing this region that we experienced a sensational incident which served considerably to break the monotony of the journey. At a small village, some one hundred miles north of Minusinsk, we had chartered six sorry-looking steeds to drag us on to the next stage. It was a case of taking them or nothing, and, to add to the difficulties of the situation, the yemshik who was to drive the first troika, containing Gaskell and myself, was hopelessly drunk at the start. The horses, it was clear, had been wretchedly kept, two of them being nothing but skin and bone; still, we had seen some wretched specimens of equine prowess so far, and did not pass much comment.

It was night when we started--a night so black that the darkness could almost be felt. The driver, maudling and hiccoughing, had been helped to his perch by some of the villagers, and we set off along the narrow roadway at the usual gallop, which, however, owing to the inferiority of the horses, soon dwindled down into a mere shuffle through the snow. We had gone to sleep, and it must have been some hours after our departure from the village when Gaskell awakened me and said he thought something was the matter.

Looking out through the tarpaulin of the sledge, we could see nothing but blackness around, with the exception of the thin light thrown up from the snow. The sledge was at a standstill, and our shouts to the yemshik brought forth no response.

Where were our companions?

I bundled out of the sledge, feeling at the same time so numbed that it was with difficulty I could move. I shouted when I got out, in the hope of attracting our companions; but no response came. I felt along the sledge, thinking that perhaps the driver, drunk, had gone to sleep and allowed his horses to wander, and as I went, sunk up to my knees in the deep fleecy snow.

The driver’s perch was empty; and just then I stumbled over one of the horses, which was lying buried up to its neck in the snow. Gaskell joined me, and at once the full horror of our situation burst upon us. It was clear that the driver had fallen from his seat, and that the horses, left to themselves, had wandered off the track at their own sweet will.

We had in the sledge a bicycle lantern which had been brought with us from England. This we lit, and by its feeble light took in as much as we could of the situation. The runners of the sledge were completely buried in deep snow; the horses were likewise stuck fast; and a closer inspection showed one of them to be dead--literally frozen to death.

How were we to get out of the difficulty? Gaskell suggested shouting for our companions: but that was little use. The second troika had probably gone straight ahead on the track, and we had no means of knowing how far off it we were, and there was no telling how soon the other horses, sorry animals that they were, would survive the piercing cold and their inertion.

A glance at the watch showed us that it was three o’clock, and another five hours must elapse before dawn would appear. What to do was at first difficult to decide. To wander off in search of assistance was not to be thought of, as we had no means of telling in which direction the horses had wandered--whether to the north or the south bank of the river. We made a short circuit of the sledge, but nowhere could we find traces of ice. To go forward seemed impossible, and yet to remain as we were was equally risky. Food and drink we had with us, fortunately; but with no means of knowing where we were, it was impossible to tell how long it might be before we could get succour.

There was, however, just one way out of the difficulty, and that was to retrace on the marks made by the sledge runners, if that could be done with two horses. This was the plan decided upon. We cut the dead horse adrift, and, using some of the spare rope as whips, we stood on either side of the living, and lashed them until our arms ached. The poor beasts were nearly succumbing. They lay flat on their stomachs, nibbling at the snow, and our kicks and blows for a time seemed to have no more effect upon them than if they were made of wood. At length, however, we succeeded in getting them to move. We helped by pushing the sledge, and gradually got it round into the track. Then, step by step, with much floundering and many falls, we began to retrace our way. All this in a pitch darkness, in a raw cold that pierced us, and in momentary expectation of one or the other or both the horses dropping dead.

An hour of this sort of work brought us to the river-bank, and here we were so exhausted that we were compelled to rest a few moments, while the horses, with drooping heads and trembling frames, looked fit to fall. To have arrived at the river was at any rate something of a blessing, but how to get on the road again was another difficulty; for on the river surface we could trace no sign of the sledge runners, while the jagged pieces of ice which stuck up all around made forward progress look impossible. The only way out of it was for one of us to go across the river in order to discover the road.

This duty Gaskell took on. He carried the lantern with him, and I was to show the whereabouts of the sledge after his departure by signals with lighted matches. He disappeared into the darkness, but the occasional flash of his lantern as he crawled over the hummocks showed me in his direction. Across the river he went, the spark of light growing fainter and fainter as he progressed, ultimately disappearing altogether, and I was left alone in that vast solitude, in the middle of the night, with no sound but the heavy breathing of my two exhausted horses or the just faintly perceptible rumble of the river beneath the ice.

Five minutes, ten minutes passed, and then a shout was wafted to my waiting ears on the cold air. I shouted in reply, and saw the faint glint of Gaskell’s light away in the distance. He was coming round by a circuitous route, and in a quarter of an hour rejoined me, with the welcome intelligence that by following the bank of the river for a short distance a gap in the hummocks led to the road.

The work it was to get those poor tired horses to start again! It was useless to show mercy, for it was clear that they could not last out much longer. Our compass told us which was the direction to follow, and once having gained the track we set off as hard as we could get the horses to go, both of us on the seat, alternately shouting and whipping.

What relief we both experienced when, around a bend in the river, we saw a sparkle of light away up on the left bank! I got out the bicycle lantern, lit it, and waved it in the air. Then on the faint breeze came the sound of a cry. Some one was evidently looking out for us, and we urged our horses to their topmost pace. Another shout, and yet another, and presently we distinguished the voices of Scawell and Asprey. Ten minutes later we struggled up the bank of the river almost into the arms of our comrades, who had been anxiously awaiting our arrival.

[Illustration: ON THE YENESEI--SUMMER.]

Judge of our astonishment when we learned that they had had an almost similar experience to our own. They had been travelling behind us, and not four versts out of the village from which we had started one of their side horses dropped dead, was cut away, and the journey resumed with the two remaining horses. But their sledge being heavy they could not travel at more than a walking pace, and their anxiety can be imagined when, on arrival at the village, they found that we were absent and nothing had been heard of us. In this part of the country, where murder and robbery are of frequent occurrence, all sorts of surmises and conjectures may be aroused; but, safe out of the difficulty, we had no mood now but to give our first thoughts to the fate of the yemshik. It was obvious that the poor fellow must have dropped asleep and fallen off his box. Where and when it was impossible to say, and his fate seemed as good as sealed, for in that terrible cold, hardened Siberian though he might be, he could scarcely survive the inevitable.

One thing was remarkable, and that was the indifference which the villagers and his brother yemshik displayed regarding his fate. We were anxious to organize a search-party, but none of them evinced any great willingness to enter upon the expedition. He would be sure to turn up, they said; why bother? If he had liked to make a beast of himself and fall from his sledge, that was surely his look out! No self-respecting yemshik ought to do such a thing as that. Our arguments had little avail, and, I confess it with shame, none of us four felt called upon to undertake the task on our own responsibility, even if we had horses with which to perform the task.

Life is cheap in Siberia! We had already heard so much of men being frozen to death, of murders, and of general carelessness in regard to human life, that even we, I fancy, were growing somewhat callous, and we did what Nature called for first, and that was to sleep. We were awake with daylight, prepared to continue our travelling, when our inquiries regarding the fate of the yemshik revealed the fact that a couple of men had gone down the road in order to find him; and we were fain to leave the matter at that.

Fresh horses being engaged, we resumed our journey, and that night galloped into the town of Minusinsk, the last township north of the Chinese border. There was no inn or hotel at Minusinsk, but our yemshik had a friend whose practice it was to put up travellers for the night; so we drove immediately to the house, in order to obtain its shelter and comfort, however poor that might be. To our delight the house turned out to be superior, if anything, to the hotels which we had seen so far in Siberia. It was at least roomy and clean, and was kept by a Livland exile, who spoke German. We had the experience of a meal of cutlets and white bread, washed down with a flagon of red Caucasian wine. What matter if we did sleep on the bare boards, or that the only illumination we had was by means of candles which wanted perpetual snuffing! To what we had been accustomed during the past few days on the river, the exile’s house in Minusinsk was a veritable palace. We slept, and slept soundly; awoke and had our samovar, more white bread, and some eggs. We made a tour of the town, our exit into the street being signalized by the appearance of a Chinaman on the opposite side removing the shutters of a tea-house. It was a glimpse of the Oriental which had a significance for us--a hint that we were close upon the borders of another land. Bad as were the Russian facias to decipher, they were easy compared to the numerous hieroglyphics in Chinese which we now occasionally stumbled across in our perambulations of Minusinsk.

There was not much to be seen in the town. It was a mere huddle of one-story frame-houses, with a rather fine church and a barracks--for Minusinsk was the depôt for the Cossacks used in the control of the Altai gold-mining system. There was a bank also, merely a hut in itself, but sufficient for our purposes, and here we changed some of our big paper money into small silver pieces, for south of Minusinsk we were to go into a country which was almost uninhabited.

As an illustration of the manner in which the Russian officials keep watch over all strangers in the vast dominions of the Czar, it was interesting to find that we had been expected. Our return from the ramble found the chief of police in our apartment, attended by a couple of Cossacks of most formidable dimensions. He knew all our names, knew where we had come from, and where we were going. He signed our passports; urbanely drank tea and vodki with us, shook hands on his departure, and wished us the best of luck.

An incident like this was very instructive as to the manner in which the eye of the law is fixed upon the foreigner in autocratic Russia.