CHAPTER XV THE MARSHES OF THE BARABA
IT was fortunate that Michael Strogoff had left the posting-house sopromptly. The orders of Ivan Ogareff had been immediately transmitted toall the approaches of the city, and a full description of Michael sentto all the various commandants, in order to prevent his departure fromOmsk. But he had already passed through one of the breaches in the wall;his horse was galloping over the steppe, and the chances of escape werein his favor.
It was on the 29th of July, at eight o'clock in the evening, thatMichael Strogoff had left Omsk. This town is situated about halfwaybetween Moscow and Irkutsk, where it was necessary that he should arrivewithin ten days if he wished to get ahead of the Tartar columns. It wasevident that the unlucky chance which had brought him into the presenceof his mother had betrayed his incognito. Ivan Ogareff was no longerignorant of the fact that a courier of the Czar had just passed Omsk,taking the direction of Irkutsk. The dispatches which this courier boremust have been of immense importance. Michael Strogoff knew, therefore,that every effort would be made to capture him.
But what he did not know, and could not know, was that Marfa Strogoffwas in the hands of Ivan Ogareff, and that she was about to atone,perhaps with her life, for that natural exhibition of her feelings whichshe had been unable to restrain when she suddenly found herself in thepresence of her son. And it was fortunate that he was ignorant of it.Could he have withstood this fresh trial?
Michael Strogoff urged on his horse, imbuing him with all his ownfeverish impatience, requiring of him one thing only, namely, to bearhim rapidly to the next posting-house, where he could be exchanged for aquicker conveyance.
At midnight he had cleared fifty miles, and halted at the station ofKoulikovo. But there, as he had feared, he found neither horses norcarriages. Several Tartar detachments had passed along the highway ofthe steppe. Everything had been stolen or requisitioned both in thevillages and in the posting-houses. It was with difficulty that MichaelStrogoff was even able to obtain some refreshment for his horse andhimself.
It was of great importance, therefore, to spare his horse, for he couldnot tell when or how he might be able to replace it. Desiring, however,to put the greatest possible distance between himself and the horsemenwho had no doubt been dispatched in pursuit, he resolved to push on.After one hour's rest he resumed his course across the steppe.
Hitherto the weather had been propitious for his journey. Thetemperature was endurable. The nights at this time of the year are veryshort, and as they are lighted by the moon, the route over the steppe ispracticable. Michael Strogoff, moreover, was a man certain of hisroad and devoid of doubt or hesitation, and in spite of the melancholythoughts which possessed him he had preserved his clearness of mind, andmade for his destined point as though it were visible upon the horizon.When he did halt for a moment at some turn in the road it was to breathehis horse. Now he would dismount to ease his steed for a moment, andagain he would place his ear to the ground to listen for the sound ofgalloping horses upon the steppe. Nothing arousing his suspicions, heresumed his way.
On the 30th of July, at nine o'clock in the morning, Michael Strogoffpassed through the station of Touroumoff and entered the swampy districtof the Baraba.
There, for a distance of three hundred versts, the natural obstacleswould be extremely great. He knew this, but he also knew that he wouldcertainly surmount them.
These vast marshes of the Baraba, form the reservoir to all therain-water which finds no outlet either towards the Obi or towards theIrtych. The soil of this vast depression is entirely argillaceous, andtherefore impermeable, so that the waters remain there and make of ita region very difficult to cross during the hot season. There, however,lies the way to Irkutsk, and it is in the midst of ponds, pools, lakes,and swamps, from which the sun draws poisonous exhalations, that theroad winds, and entails upon the traveler the greatest fatigue anddanger.
Michael Strogoff spurred his horse into the midst of a grassy prairie,differing greatly from the close-cropped sod of the steppe, where feedthe immense Siberian herds. The grass here was five or six feet inheight, and had made room for swamp-plants, to which the dampness ofthe place, assisted by the heat of summer, had given giant proportions.These were principally canes and rushes, which formed a tangled network,an impenetrable undergrowth, sprinkled everywhere with a thousandflowers remarkable for the brightness of their color.
Michael Strogoff, galloping amongst this undergrowth of cane, was nolonger visible from the swamps which bordered the road. The tall grassrose above him, and his track was indicated only by the flight ofinnumerable aquatic birds, which rose from the side of the road anddispersed into the air in screaming flocks.
The way, however, was clearly traceable. Now it would lie straightbetween the dense thicket of marsh-plants; again it would follow thewinding shores of vast pools, some of which, several versts in lengthand breadth, deserve the name of lakes. In other localities the stagnantwaters through which the road lay had been avoided, not by bridges, butby tottering platforms ballasted with thick layers of clay, whosejoists shook like a too weak plank thrown across an abyss. Some of theseplatforms extended over three hundred feet, and travelers by tarantass,when crossing them have experienced a nausea like sea-sickness.
Michael Strogoff, whether the soil beneath his feet was solid or whetherit sank under him, galloped on without halt, leaping the space betweenthe rotten joists; but however fast they traveled the horse and thehorseman were unable to escape from the sting of the two-winged insectswhich infest this marshy country.
Travelers who are obliged to cross the Baraba during the summer takecare to provide themselves with masks of horse-hair, to which isattached a coat of mail of very fine wire, which covers their shoulders.Notwithstanding these precautions, there are few who come out of thesemarshes without having their faces, necks, and hands covered with redspots. The atmosphere there seems to bristle with fine needles, and onewould almost say that a knight's armor would not protect him againstthe darts of these dipterals. It is a dreary region, which man dearlydisputes with tipulae, gnats, mosquitos, horse-flies, and millionsof microscopic insects which are not visible to the naked eye;but, although they are not seen, they make themselves felt by theirintolerable stinging, to which the most callous Siberian hunters havenever been able to inure themselves.
Michael Strogoff's horse, stung by these venomous insects, sprangforward as if the rowels of a thousand spurs had pierced his flanks.Mad with rage, he tore along over verst after verst with the speed of anexpress train, lashing his sides with his tail, seeking by the rapidityof his pace an alleviation of his torture.
It required as good a horseman as Michael Strogoff not to be thrown bythe plungings of his horse, and the sudden stops and bounds whichhe made to escape from the stings of his persecutors. Having becomeinsensible, so to speak, to physical suffering, possessed only with theone desire to arrive at his destination at whatever cost, he saw duringthis mad race only one thing--that the road flew rapidly behind him.
Who would have thought that this district of the Baraba, so unhealthyduring the summer, could have afforded an asylum for human beings? Yetit did so. Several Siberian hamlets appeared from time to time amongthe giant canes. Men, women, children, and old men, clad in the skinsof beasts, their faces covered with hardened blisters of skin, pasturedtheir poor herds of sheep. In order to preserve the animals from theattack of the insects, they drove them to the leeward of fires of greenwood, which were kept burning night and day, and the pungent smoke ofwhich floated over the vast swamp.
When Michael Strogoff perceived that his horse, tired out, was on thepoint of succumbing, he halted at one of these wretched hamlets, andthere, forgetting his own fatigue, he himself rubbed the wounds of thepoor animal with hot grease according to the Siberian custom; then hegave him a good feed; and it was only after he had well groomed andprovided for him that he thought of himself, and recruited his strengthby a hasty meal of bread and meat and a glass of kwass. One hourafterwards,
or at the most two, he resumed with all speed theinterminable road to Irkutsk.
On the 30th of July, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Michael Strogoff,insensible of every fatigue, arrived at Elamsk. There it becamenecessary to give a night's rest to his horse. The brave animal could nolonger have continued the journey. At Elamsk, as indeed elsewhere, thereexisted no means of transport,--for the same reasons as at the previousvillages, neither carriages nor horses were to be had.
Michael Strogoff resigned himself therefore to pass the night at Elamsk,to give his horse twelve hours' rest. He recalled the instructions whichhad been given to him at Moscow--to cross Siberia incognito, to arriveat Irkutsk, but not to sacrifice success to the rapidity of the journey;and consequently it was necessary that he should husband the sole meansof transport which remained to him.
On the morrow, Michael Strogoff left Elamsk at the moment when thefirst Tartar scouts were signaled ten versts behind upon the road to theBaraba, and he plunged again into the swampy region. The road waslevel, which made it easy, but very tortuous, and therefore long. It wasimpossible, moreover, to leave it, and to strike a straight line acrossthat impassable network of pools and bogs.
On the next day, the 1st of August, eighty miles farther, MichaelStrogoff arrived at midday at the town of Spaskoe, and at two o'clock hehalted at Pokrowskoe. His horse, jaded since his departure from Elamsk,could not have taken a single step more.
There Michael Strogoff was again compelled to lose, for necessary rest,the end of that day and the entire night; but starting again on thefollowing morning, and still traversing the semi-inundated soil, on the2nd of August, at four o'clock in the afternoon, after a stage of fiftymiles he reached Kamsk.
The country had changed. This little village of Kamsk lies, likean island, habitable and healthy, in the midst of the uninhabitabledistrict. It is situated in the very center of the Baraba. Theemigration caused by the Tartar invasion had not yet depopulated thislittle town of Kamsk. Its inhabitants probably fancied themselves safein the center of the Baraba, whence at least they thought they wouldhave time to flee if they were directly menaced.
Michael Strogoff, although exceedingly anxious for news, could ascertainnothing at this place. It would have been rather to him that theGovernor would have addressed himself had he known who the pretendedmerchant of Irkutsk really was. Kamsk, in fact, by its very situationseemed to be outside the Siberian world and the grave events whichtroubled it.
Besides, Michael Strogoff showed himself little, if at all. To beunperceived was not now enough for him: he would have wished to beinvisible. The experience of the past made him more and more circumspectin the present and the future. Therefore he secluded himself, and notcaring to traverse the streets of the village, he would not even leavethe inn at which he had halted.
As for his horse, he did not even think of exchanging him for anotheranimal. He had become accustomed to this brave creature. He knew to whatextent he could rely upon him. In buying him at Omsk he had been lucky,and in taking him to the postmaster the generous mujik had renderedhim a great service. Besides, if Michael Strogoff had already becomeattached to his horse, the horse himself seemed to become inured, bydegrees, to the fatigue of such a journey, and provided that he gotseveral hours of repose daily, his rider might hope that he would carryhim beyond the invaded provinces.
So, during the evening and night of the 2nd of August, Michael Strogoffremained confined to his inn, at the entrance of the town; which waslittle frequented and out of the way of the importunate and curious.
Exhausted with fatigue, he went to bed after having seen that his horselacked nothing; but his sleep was broken. What he had seen since hisdeparture from Moscow showed him the importance of his mission. Therising was an extremely serious one, and the treachery of Ogareff madeit still more formidable. And when his eyes fell upon the letter bearingupon it the authority of the imperial seal--the letter which, nodoubt, contained the remedy for so many evils, the safety of all thiswar-ravaged country--Michael Strogoff felt within himself a fiercedesire to dash on across the steppe, to accomplish the distance whichseparated him from Irkutsk as the crow would fly it, to be an eagle thathe might overtop all obstacles, to be a hurricane that he might sweepthrough the air at a hundred versts an hour, and to be at last faceto face with the Grand Duke, and to exclaim: "Your highness, from hisMajesty the Czar!"
On the next morning at six o'clock, Michael Strogoff started off again.Thanks to his extreme prudence this part of the journey was signalizedby no incident whatever. At Oubinsk he gave his horse a whole night'srest, for he wished on the next day to accomplish the hundred verstswhich lie between Oubinsk and Ikoulskoe without halting. He startedtherefore at dawn; but unfortunately the Baraba proved more detestablethan ever.
In fact, between Oubinsk and Kamakore the very heavy rains of someprevious weeks were retained by this shallow depression as in awater-tight bowl. There was, for a long distance, no break in thesuccession of swamps, pools, and lakes. One of these lakes--large enoughto warrant its geographical nomenclature--Tchang, Chinese in name, hadto be coasted for more than twenty versts, and this with the greatestdifficulty. Hence certain delays occurred, which all the impatience ofMichael Strogoff could not avoid. He had been well advised in not takinga carriage at Kamsk, for his horse passed places which would have beenimpracticable for a conveyance on wheels.
In the evening, at nine o'clock, Michael Strogoff arrived at Ikoulskoe,and halted there over night. In this remote village of the Baraba newsof the war was utterly wanting. From its situation, this part of theprovince, lying in the fork formed by the two Tartar columns which hadbifurcated, one upon Omsk and the other upon Tomsk, had hitherto escapedthe horrors of the invasion.
But the natural obstacles were now about to disappear, for, if heexperienced no delay, Michael Strogoff should on the morrow be free ofthe Baraba and arrive at Kolyvan. There he would be within eighty milesof Tomsk. He would then be guided by circumstances, and very probablyhe would decide to go around Tomsk, which, if the news were true, wasoccupied by Feofar-Khan.
But if the small towns of Ikoulskoe and Karguinsk, which he passed onthe next day, were comparatively quiet, owing to their position in theBaraba, was it not to be dreaded that, upon the right banks of the Obi,Michael Strogoff would have much more to fear from man? It was probable.However, should it become necessary, he would not hesitate to abandonthe beaten path to Irkutsk. To journey then across the steppe he would,no doubt, run the risk of finding himself without supplies. There wouldbe, in fact, no longer a well-marked road. Still, there must be nohesitation.
Finally, towards half past three in the afternoon, Michael Strogoff leftthe last depressions of the Baraba, and the dry and hard soil of Siberiarang out once more beneath his horse's hoofs.
He had left Moscow on the 15th of July. Therefore on this day, the 5thof August, including more than seventy hours lost on the banks of theIrtych, twenty days had gone by since his departure.
One thousand miles still separated him from Irkutsk.