Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich, with his feet and the ends of the reins,
urged the horse on in the direction in which for some reason he expected
the forest and forester’s hut to be. The snow covered his eyes and the
wind seemed intent on stopping him, but bending forward and constantly
lapping his coat over and pushing it between himself and the cold
harness pad which prevented him from sitting properly, he kept urging
the horse on. Mukhorty ambled on obediently though with difficulty, in
the direction in which he was driven.
Vasili Andreevich rode for about five minutes straight ahead, as he
thought, seeing nothing but the horse’s head and the white waste, and
hearing only the whistle of the wind about the horse’s ears and his coat
collar.
Suddenly a dark patch showed up in front of him. His heart beat with
joy, and he rode towards the object, already seeing in imagination the
walls of village houses. But the dark patch was not stationary, it
kept moving; and it was not a village but some tall stalks of wormwood
sticking up through the snow on the boundary between two fields, and
desperately tossing about under the pressure of the wind which beat
it all to one side and whistled through it. The sight of that wormwood
tormented by the pitiless wind made Vasili Andreevich shudder, he knew
not why, and he hurriedly began urging the horse on, not noticing that
when riding up to the wormwood he had quite changed his direction and
was now heading the opposite way, though still imagining that he was
riding towards where the hut should be. But the horse kept making
towards the right, and Vasili Andreevich kept guiding it to the left.
Again something dark appeared in front of him. Again he rejoiced,
convinced that now it was certainly a village. But once more it was the
same boundary line overgrown with wormwood, once more the same wormwood
desperately tossed by the wind and carrying unreasoning terror to his
heart. But its being the same wormwood was not all, for beside it
there was a horse’s track partly snowed over. Vasili Andreevich stopped,
stooped down and looked carefully. It was a horse-track only partially
covered with snow, and could be none but his own horse’s hoofprints. He
had evidently gone round in a small circle. ‘I shall perish like that!’
he thought, and not to give way to his terror he urged on the horse
still more, peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only
flitting and fitful points of light. Once he thought he heard the
barking of dogs or the howling of wolves, but the sounds were so faint
and indistinct that he did not know whether he heard them or merely
imagined them, and he stopped and began to listen intently.
Suddenly some terrible, deafening cry resounded near his ears, and
everything shivered and shook under him. He seized Mukhorty’s neck,
but that too was shaking all over and the terrible cry grew still more
frightful. For some seconds Vasili Andreevich could not collect himself
or understand what was happening. It was only that Mukhorty, whether
to encourage himself or to call for help, had neighed loudly and
resonantly. ‘Ugh, you wretch! How you frightened me, damn you!’ thought
Vasili Andreevich. But even when he understood the cause of his terror
he could not shake it off.
‘I must calm myself and think things over,’ he said to himself, but yet
he could not stop, and continued to urge the horse on, without noticing
that he was now going with the wind instead of against it. His body,
especially between his legs where it touched the pad of the harness and
was not covered by his overcoats, was getting painfully cold, especially
when the horse walked slowly. His legs and arms trembled and his
breathing came fast. He saw himself perishing amid this dreadful snowy
waste, and could see no means of escape.
Suddenly the horse under him tumbled into something and, sinking into
a snow-drift, began to plunge and fell on his side. Vasili Andreevich
jumped off, and in so doing dragged to one side the breechband on which
his foot was resting, and twisted round the pad to which he held as he
dismounted. As soon as he had jumped off, the horse struggled to his
feet, plunged forward, gave one leap and another, neighed again, and
dragging the drugget and the breechband after him, disappeared, leaving
Vasili Andreevich alone on the snow-drift.
The latter pressed on after the horse, but the snow lay so deep and
his coats were so heavy that, sinking above his knees at each step, he
stopped breathless after taking not more than twenty steps. ‘The copse,
the oxen, the lease-hold, the shop, the tavern, the house with the
iron-roofed barn, and my heir,’ thought he. ‘How can I leave all that?
What does this mean? It cannot be!’ These thoughts flashed through his
mind. Then he thought of the wormwood tossed by the wind, which he had
twice ridden past, and he was seized with such terror that he did not
believe in the reality of what was happening to him. ‘Can this be a
dream?’ he thought, and tried to wake up but could not. It was real snow
that lashed his face and covered him and chilled his right hand from
which he had lost the glove, and this was a real desert in which he was
now left alone like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and
meaningless death.
‘Queen of Heaven! Holy Father Nicholas, teacher of temperance!’ he
thought, recalling the service of the day before and the holy icon with
its black face and gilt frame, and the tapers which he sold to be set
before that icon and which were almost immediately brought back to him
scarcely burnt at all, and which he put away in the store-chest. He
began to pray to that same Nicholas the Wonder-Worker to save him,
promising him a thanksgiving service and some candles. But he clearly
and indubitably realized that the icon, its frame, the candles,
the priest, and the thanksgiving service, though very important and
necessary in church, could do nothing for him here, and that there was
and could be no connexion between those candles and services and his
present disastrous plight. ‘I must not despair,’ he thought. ‘I must
follow the horse’s track before it is snowed under. He will lead me out,
or I may even catch him. Only I must not hurry, or I shall stick fast
and be more lost than ever.’
But in spite of his resolution to go quietly, he rushed forward and
even ran, continually falling, getting up and falling again. The horse’s
track was already hardly visible in places where the snow did not lie
deep. ‘I am lost!’ thought Vasili Andreevich. ‘I shall lose the track
and not catch the horse.’ But at that moment he saw something black. It
was Mukhorty, and not only Mukhorty, but the sledge with the shafts
and the kerchief. Mukhorty, with the sacking and the breechband twisted
round to one side, was standing not in his former place but nearer to
the shafts, shaking his head which the reins he was stepping on drew
downwards. It turned out that Vasili Andreevich had sunk in the same
ravine Nikita had previously fallen into, and that Mukhorty had been
bringing him back to the sledge and he had got off his back no more than
fifty paces from where the sledge was.