More Tales from Tolstoi/The Snowstorm/IV.

by Leo Tolstoy

IV.

The snowstorm was growing more and more violent. The flakes descended fine and dry, apparently it was freezing hard. My nose and cheeks grew numb with cold, currents of cold air penetrated my furs more and more frequently and it was necessary to huddle up in them more closely. Occasionally the sledge bumped up against a bare, ice-clad hummock, from which it scattered the snow in every direction.

As I had travelled some score or so of versts without a night's rest, notwithstanding the fact that I was very much interested in the issue of our wanderings, I involuntarily shut my eyes and dozed off. All at once, when I opened my eyes again, I was struck by what seemed to me in the first moment a bright light illuminating the white plain; the horizon had considerably widened, the low, black sky had suddenly disappeared; in every direction were visible white oblique lines of falling snow; the figures of the troika people in front appeared more plainly, and when I looked upwards it seemed to me for the first moment as if the clouds had parted and that only the falling snow covered the sky. Whilst I had been slumbering the moon had arisen and threw her cold and clear light through the scattered clouds and falling snow. The one thing I saw clearly was my sledge, the horses, the driver, and the three troikas going on in front: the first troika, the courier's, on the box of which one of the drivers was still sitting urging his horses on at a good round pace; the second, in which sat the two other drivers, who had thrown the reins aside and made themselves a shelter against the wind out of their armyaks,^[1] never ceasing to smoke their pipes the whole time, as was clear from the sparks proceeding from that quarter, and the third troika, in which nobody was visible—presumably the driver was sleeping in the middle of it. Before I went to sleep, however, the leading driver had at rare intervals stopped his horses and tried to find the way. Then, every time we stopped, the howling of the wind became more audible and the enormous quantity of snow suspended in the air more strikingly visible. I now saw by the light of the moon, half obscured by the snowstorm, the small, squat figure of the driver, with the big whip in his hand, with which he flicked at the snow in front of him, moving backwards and forwards in the bright mist and coming back again to the sledge, leaping sideways on to the box seat, and amidst the monotonous whistling of the wind the alert, sonorous ringing and clanging of the little bells was audible once more. Every time the driver in front leaped out to look for the road or the verst posts one could hear the brisk, self-confident voice of one of the drivers shouting to the driver in front:

"Do you hear, Ignashka! take the road to the left! You'll find more shelter to the right!" Or, "Why are you going round and round like a fool? Go by the snow; take the lee of it, and you'll come out all right!" Or, "A little more to the right, a little more to the right, my brother! Don't you see there's something black yonder—some sign-post or other?" Or, "Where are you going? Where are you going? Loose the piebald nag and go on in front and he'll guide you to the road straight away. It'll be much better if you do that!"

This selfsame person, who was so fond of giving advice, not only did not loose the side-horse and go over the snow to look for the road, but did not even so much as thrust his nose from out of his armyak, and when Ignashka, the driver in front, in reply to one of his counsels, shouted to him to go in front himself if he knew where to go so well, the counsellor replied that if he had been travelling with courier's horses he would have gone on and led them to the right road straight away, "but our horses cannot go on in front in snow-drifts, not such nags as these, anyway."

"Then you can hold your jaw!" replied Ignashka, cheerily whistling to his horses.

The other driver, sitting in the same sledge with the counsellor, said not a word to Ignashka, and in fact did not interfere at all, although he was not asleep either, at least I assumed as much from the fact that his pipe continued unextinguished, and also from the circumstance that whenever we stopped I heard his measured, uninterrupted narration. He was telling some tale or other. Only when Ignashka suddenly halted for the sixth or seventh time, this other driver plainly became very angry at being interrupted by such leisurely procedure, and he shouted at him:

"What! stopping again! You want to find the road, eh? It's a snowstorm we're in, and there's an end of it! Why, even a land-surveyor wouldn't be able to find the road now. Go on as long as the horses can drag us! Never fear; we shan't freeze to death! Go on, I say!"

"Never fear, indeed! Last year a postilion was frozen to death!" observed my driver.

The driver of the third troika did not wake the whole time, only once, during a stoppage, the counsellor shouted:

"Philip! I say, Philip!" and receiving no answer observed: "I wonder if he's frozen? You might go and see, Ignashka!"

Ignashka, who hastened to do everyone's bidding, went to the sledge and began to shake the sleeper.

"Why, he's drunk as drunk—like a log!" said he, "I say! you! are you frozen?" he said, shaking him violently.

The sleeper babbled something or other and cursed him.

"He's alive, all right, my brother!" said Ignashka; and again he ran forward and again we went on, and so quickly indeed, this time, that the little brown side horse attached to my troika, constantly lashed up from behind, more than once broke into a clumsy gallop.

1. A peasant's cloak of rough camel-hair.