Feeling now easier in my mind, I raised my head and looked at Picart. His face was all covered with blood. Blood had formed in icicles on his moustache and beard. I told him that he was wounded on his head. He said 'yes,' he had discovered it when his cap had caught on a branch, and blood had flowed down his face; it was nothing of any consequence. 'And besides,' he continued, 'this is not the time to bother about it; it will do this evening.'
I proposed that, to get on faster, we should both mount the horse. 'Let us try,' he said. We therefore took off the wooden saddle he had on his back, leaving only a cloth underneath, and we both got astride, Picart in front, and I behind. We drank some of our spirit and started, holding our muskets across like balancing-poles. We trotted on, sometimes we galloped; often our way was barred by fallen trees, and the idea occurred to Picart to cut down a few more which looked on the point of falling, and thus to form a barrier against the cavalry if they came after us. He dismounted, and with my axe he felled some small pine-trees across the road, which would effectually provide twenty-five men with work for an hour. After he had mounted again, we trotted on for a quarter of an hour, when he stopped and said:
'Coquin de Dieu! this tartar has a hard trot!'
I said he was taking his revenge on us for having killed his master.
'Ah, sergeant,' he said, 'the drop of drink has made you merry, I see.'
Picart arranged the flaps of his white cloak carefully on the horse's back to make his seat easier, and we went on for a quarter of an hour at a walking pace. Some time the horse was half buried in the snow. We now saw a road crossing ours, which we concluded must be the highroad, but we had to be careful before entering it. We jumped down, and leading the horse, we retired into the forest, in order to examine the road without being seen. We soon recognised it as being the road leading to the Bérézina, by the vast number of corpses half covered by snow, and footmarks coming towards us; and the traces of blood on the snow looked as if a convoy of French prisoners, escorted by Russians, had passed not long since.
There was therefore no doubt that we were behind the Russian van-guard, and that very soon others would come after us. What were we to do? To follow the highroad was the only course open to us. Picart's opinion was this:
'An idea has occurred to me. You shall be the rear-guard, and I the van-guard. I will guide the horse forward if I see nothing coming; you, my friend, with your head turned towards his tail, can look out behind.'
It was not easy to put Picart's idea into practice. We had to sit back to back, like a double eagle, as he said, with two eyes in front and two behind. We each took a small glass of gin, reserving the rest for a case of necessity, and we put the horse to a walk, setting off again in this silent and lonely forest.
The north wind was bitterly cold, and the rear-guard suffered severely from it, hardly able as he was to keep his position; but, fortunately, the atmosphere was clear, and one could see objects quite a long way off; the road we followed was also a straight one, so that we had no fear of being surprised at a sudden bend. We progressed in this way for half an hour, when we met in the wood bordering the road seven peasants, who appeared to be waiting for us. They each wore a sheepskin coat, and their boots were made of the bark of trees. They came up to us, wished us good-day in Polish, and seemed pleased to find that we were French. They made us understand that they had to go to Minsk to join the Russian army, as they belonged to the militia; they had been forced to march against us by blows from the knout, and Cossacks were stationed in all the villages to drive them out.