Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/368

vented it from sinking at once, and by the exercise of agility and good judgment we all succeeded in getting out of it and seeming a foothold on the solid ice. We cut our horses free from their harness, dragged them out one by one, hauled out our sledge with fresh horses, and returned to Olón to repair damages. After consultation with the villagers we decided that it would not be prudent to continue our journey down the river in that way. Night was coming on, the river road was impassable, and if we should break through the ice again, in the darkness and away from help, the consequences might be more serious. Late in the evening a good-looking young peasant, tempted by an offer of fifteen rúbles, which was about five times the usual rate, agreed to take us to the next village below by a circuitous and difficult route over the mountains. There was no road; but as the snow was not very deep, he thought he could make his way through, and at half-past ten o'clock we started. In all our East-Siberian experience I remember no night more full of hardship, anxiety, and suffering than the one that followed. About midnight a storm came on with high wind, flying snow, and a temperature of fifteen or twenty degrees below zero; we lost our way in the darkness, capsized into ravines, floundered for hours in deep snow-drifts, and lifted and tugged at our heavy, unwieldy sleigh until we were utterly exhausted and half frozen. About four o'clock in the morning I began to feel, at every respiration, a sharp, cutting pain in my right lung, and in less than half an hour I found myself completely disabled. Leaving Mr. Frost and the driver to struggle with the snow-drifts and the exhausted, dispirited horses, I crawled back into the half-capsized sleigh, pulled the sheepskin robe over my shivering body, and gave myself up to gloomy forebodings of pneumonia. What happened between that time and morning I do not remember. Just before daybreak I was aroused by the barking of dogs, and, looking out, was gladdened by