Although it was easy to see that the Countess and the chaplain were
tired, Ian listened to his mother's entreaties to set out without any
rest; for who could sleep within sight of their ruined home? Besides,
time was precious, unless they were prepared to remain under the
Prussian rule; and they decided that exile, beggary, anything would be
better than living in some town to see them every day and every hour of
the day.... Their way lay through what had been the home forest, by
paths and fields that run south of Kosczielna, thence south-west to
Sohaczev. It was already the last day of July and the Prussians at
Ruvno had been boasting that they would be in Warsaw for the third of
August; and the Kaiser's second son crowned King of Poland, in the old
palace, within a month. They were a couple of days late in getting into
Warsaw, and Poland's crown is not yet on a Hohenzollern's head.
The fear that the Grand Duke might no longer be in Sohaczev haunted them
all. Even as the crow flies, Ruvno was twenty versts from there. By
the road, which ran fairly straight, it was thirty. By cutting across
country, by the ways which Ian and Vanda knew well, he thought they
could save five versts, thus leaving twenty-five to cover. He and
Ostap, walking a little ahead, to warn the others of barbed wire and
trenches, soon saw what the short cut meant.
"I'm for getting back to the road," said the Cossack.
"But it is much further." Ian explained the distances.
"Eh, God, but we can't do more than a verst an hour if this kind of
ground goes on, and I know this part. It's cut up like Hell. We shall
be clambering in and out of trenches and dodging wire and dead bodies
all the way. We might do three versts an hour by the road. None of you
are walkers. Nor I. We Cossacks are more at home on horses' backs than
our feet. You walk as if every step hurt you."
"There's something inside me that grates about as I move," admitted Ian.
"Broken ribs. I had them several times. If you tie them up it's all
right, but a bit nasty if you let them jog into your flesh."
They stumbled on a bit and avoided some more wire, making a long detour
to do it. Ian noticed that, whereas his mother and the two girls kept
up better than he thought they could, the Father showed signs of
exhaustion, though he did his bravest to hide it.
"The priest," whispered Ostap. "We shall be carrying him soon. Another
reason for going to the road."
Ian said nothing, knowing he was right. In fact, he soon doubted if any
of them could keep up this kind of exercise very long. The ground was
intersected with trenches, and full of pitfalls in the way of
tree-stumps. They had all been working since daybreak, even the Father,
who was fit only for bed. Ostap was a worse walker than Ian himself,
bruised and shaken by the shell which buried him near the church and led
to their worst troubles. Ostap said he had no sleep for two nights,
being afraid to doze on Sietch's back for fear of getting entrapped.
Father Constantine almost fought to keep his knapsack; but they managed
to get that from him.
"Even if we do three versts an hour, it will take ten hours to
Sohaczev," remarked Ostap, when they had struggled thus for some time
without much progress. "... Walking all the time. That's an
impossibility. What hour is it now?"
Ian took out his watch. It had stopped. The glass was smashed, too.
Ostap studied the summer sky with some attention.
"It is one o'clock," he said after a moment. "In two hours or so it
will be the dawn. We can perhaps cover six versts by then, by the road.
Then we must rest for an hour, or we shall be dead."
"This will be hard on the Father," Ian whispered.
"Yes. And listen. By three we may cover six versts on the road. That
leaves twenty-four. We start again at four, a good hour to walk, for it
is fresh. We go on till six. That leaves us twenty-two versts, for we
shall be going slower than three an hour, say two ... where was I?
"Twenty-two versts from Sohaczev."
"We rest an hour, walk three versts more. That makes eight o'clock ...
we are yet nineteen versts from our goal."
"There's a village nineteen versts from Sohaczev," Ian put in. "Vulki,
it's called."
"We rest a bit. Then we make a great effort, and if we are lucky, by
noon we are ten versts from Sohaczev."
"We'll never catch the Grand Duke," said Vanda, who was with the two
men.
"Who knows? But at ten versts from Sohaczev there is a large camp. Or
there was. If we are lucky we shall find some of the men there, or a
place in a train, for there is the railway, unless we have already
destroyed it. But we shouldn't do that till the last minute, for we are
retreating with as little loss to ourselves as can be. Then we are safe
for either headquarters at Sohaczev, or Warsaw. And Warsaw leads to
anywhere in Russia. I shall join my troop, and you can rest till the
war is over. It must be over sometime, even the Prussians can't help
that. And then your mother, who is a brave woman, and a really great
lady, can come back and rebuild your house. And you can marry your
sisters in the meantime."
"They are not my sisters."
"Then the young lady is your bespoken wife."
"My husband is a volunteer in the Cossack army," said Vanda.