It was quite true, when he rubbed my face with his fur coat sleeve, my frozen eyelashes thawed and my eyelids opened. But on what? What was to be seen? I do not know if it can be even more terrible in hell: all around there was profound impenetrable darkness—and it seemed alive, it trembled and cracked like a monster whose body was a compact mass of frozen dust and whose breath was life-destroying cold. Yes, it was death in one of its most awful shapes, and meeting it face to face, I was terrified.
The only thing I was able to say was to ask about Kiriak, Where was he? But it was so difficult to speak that the savage did not hear me. Then I noticed that when he spoke to me, he bent down and shouted under the lappets of my fur cap, straight into my ear, and I also shouted under his fur cap:
"Where is the other sledge?"
"Don't know, Bachka, we have been separated."
"How separated?"
"Separated, Bachka."
I did not want to believe this; I wanted to look round, but I could not see anything in any direction; all around us was hell, dark and terrible. Under my side and close to the sledge something moved like a ball, but it was impossible to see
