VII
“Please get in: it’s all ready!” Alyoshka called to me from the front sledge.
The blizzard was so terrific that it was only by my utmost efforts, bending double and clutching the skirts of my coat in both hands, that I managed to struggle through the whirling snow, which was blown up by the wind under my feet, and to make the few steps that separated me from the sledge. My former driver was kneeling in the middle of the empty sledge, but on seeing me he took off his big cap; whereupon the wind snatched at his hair furiously. He asked me for something for drink, but most likely had not expected me to give him anything extra, for my refusal did not in the least disappoint him. He thanked me for that too, put on his cap, and said to me, “Well, good luck to you, sir!” and tugging at his reins, and clucking to his horses, he drove away from us. After that, Ignashka too, with a swing of his whole body forward, shouted to his horses. Again the sound of the crunching of the hoofs, shouting, and bells replaced the sound of the howling of the wind, which was more audible when we were standing still.
For a quarter of an hour after moving I did not go to sleep, but amused myself by watching the figures of my new driver and horses. Ignashka sat up smartly, incessantly jumping up and down, swinging his arm with the whip over the horses, shouting, knocking one leg against the other, and bending forward to set straight the shaft-horse’s breech, which kept slipping to the right side. He was not tall, but seemed to be well built. Over his full coat he had on a cloak not tied in at the waist; the collar of it was open, and his neck was quite bare; his boots were not of felt, but of leather, and his cap was a small one, which he was continually taking off and shifting. His ears had no covering but his hair.
In all his actions could be detected not merely energy, but even more, it struck me, the desire to keep up his own energies. The further we went, the more and more frequently he jumped up and down on the box, shifted his position, slapped one leg against the other, and addressed remarks to me and Alyoshka. It seemed to me he was afraid of losing heart. And there was good reason; though we had good horses, the road became heavier and heavier at every step, and the horses unmistakably moved more unwillingly; he had to use the whip now, and the shaft-horse, a spirited, big, shaggy horse, stumbled twice, though at once taking fright, he darted forward and flung up his shaggy head almost to the very bells. The right trace-horse, whom I could not help watching, noticeably kept the traces slack, together with the long leather tassel of the breech, that shifted and shook up and down on the offside. He needed the whip, but, like a good, spirited horse, he seemed vexed at his own feebleness, and angrily dropped and flung up his head, as though asking for the rein. It certainly was terrible to see the blizzard getting more and more violent, the horses growing weaker, and the road getting worse, while we hadn’t a notion where we were and whether we should reach the station, or even a shelter of any sort. And ludicrous and strange it was to hear the bells ringing so gaily and unconcernedly, and Ignashka calling so briskly and jauntily, as though we were driving at midday in sunny, frosty Christmas weather, along some village street on a holiday; and strangest of all it was to think that we were going on all the while and going quickly, anywhere to get away from where we were. Ignashka sang a song, in the vilest falsetto, but so loudly and with breaks in it, filled in by such whistling, that it was odd to feel frightened as one listened to him.
“Hey, hey, what are you splitting your throat for, Ignashka?” I heard the voice of the counsellor. “Do stop it for an hour.”
“What?”
“Shut up!”
Ignat ceased. Again all was quiet, and the wind howled and whined, and the whirling snow began to lie thicker on our sledge. The counsellor came up to us.
“Well, what is it?”
“What, indeed; which way are we to go?”
“Who knows?”
“Why, are your feet frozen, that you keep beating them together?”
“They’re quite numb.”
“You should take a run. There’s something over yonder; isn’t it a Kalmuck encampment? It would warm your feet, anyway.”
“All right. Hold the horses … there.”
And Ignat ran in the direction indicated.
“One must keep looking and walking round, and one will find something; what’s the sense of driving on like a fool?” the counsellor said to me. “See, what a steam the horses are in!”
All the time Ignat was gone—and that lasted so long that I began to be afraid he was lost—the counsellor told me in a calm, self-confident tone, how one must act during a blizzard, how the best thing of all was to unyoke a horse and let it go its own way; that as God is holy, it would lead one right; how one could sometimes see by the stars, and how if he had been driving the leading sledge, we should have been at the station long ago.
“Well, is it?” he asked Ignat, who was coming back, stepping with difficulty almost knee-deep in the snow.
“Yes, it’s an encampment,” Ignat answered, panting, “but I don’t know what sort of a one. We must have come right out to Prolgovsky homestead, mate. We must bear more to the left.”
“What nonsense! … That’s our encampment, behind the village!” retorted the counsellor.
“But I tell you it’s not!”
“Why, I’ve looked, so I know. That’s what it will be; or if not that, then it’s Tamishevsko. We must keep more to the right, and we shall get out on the big bridge, at the eighth verst, directly.”
“I tell you it’s not so! Why, I’ve seen it!” Ignat answered with irritation.
“Hey, mate, and you call yourself a driver!”
“Yes, I do. … You go yourself!”
“What should I go for? I know as it is.”
Ignat unmistakably lost his temper; without replying, he jumped on the box and drove on.
“I say, my legs are numb; there’s no warming them,” he said to Alyoshka, clapping his legs together more and more frequently, and knocking off and scraping at the snow, that had got in above his boot-tops.
I felt awfully sleepy.