Suddenly I was roused by my man’s voice calling me to get out at once. Peeping, half-asleep, from under my rugs, I could see very little of anything except that my man and the yemstchik had both got down and the cart had stopped. ‘What is the matter?’ I asked, feeling for my revolver, and expecting the oft-promised highwaymen. ‘One of the horses has fallen down,’ came the answer. Cross at being disturbed for so little, and not wanting to get my stockinged feet wet in the mud, I was curling myself up again with a sulky injunction to the men to let the horse get up and be hanged to him, when, to my horror, I felt the cart tilting over in a way that threatened soon to reverse our relative positions. In a moment I was wide awake. The cart was already so far over that I was obliged to jump the way it was falling, and my next sensation was that of travelling through space, such as one sometimes experiences in a dream. This came to an end with a jerk, and my next recollection is of being dug out of the mud at the bottom of a considerable precipice from among the débris of boxes, broken cart and horses, which had accompanied me in my fall. By the greatest good luck nothing had struck me, though the heavy built cart had fallen so close as to pin down the corner of my bourka, which was still on my shoulders. Luckily, too, only one of the horses was so far damaged as to be unable to proceed. There was no village within reach. To walk on to Akstapha in the then state of the roads and weather would have been a wearisome trudge, even if we could have persuaded the driver to leave his horses and guide us, or ourselves to leave our belongings in his charge, which we could not do.
Here, then, I had a splendid opportunity of witnessing the really wonderful handiness of Russian peasants in extremities. Thanks to our love of tobacco we had with us a box of brimstone matches; grovelling about by the light of which we retrieved all that was not utterly destroyed of our luggage, and by means of old ropes, pocket-handkerchiefs, and what not, so tied and spliced together the broken harness, that after two hours’ work in that bitter winter night we managed to extricate our cart and make yet another start for Tiflis.
Beyond Akstapha, snow had evidently been falling for some time past, and still continued to fall until we reached Tiflis. Every verst showed us deeper drifts, and at the last station from Tiflis the drivers, in defiance of their master’s orders, refused to get out of their warm corners to drive us through the wintry night to the end of our journey. After many threats and much persuasion one was prevailed on to mount the box, and though we only proceeded at a snail’s pace, we consoled ourselves with the thought that every minute brought us nearer our bourne. At last, when we had got some three versts on the way, the horses were brought to a standstill by their driver, who calmly announced his intention of returning.
We were already half-frozen and irritable from constant mishaps, so that his announcement was not very cheerfully received, and every effort was made to urge him on. Everything else failing, in an evil moment Ivan persuaded me to use the common Russian argument, and, if he would not take copecks, give him stick. He took a very fair thumping as stolidly as an ox, and then utterly nonplussed me by quietly handing me the reins, and decamping into the darkness before I had time to think.
Never in my life did I feel in a more awkward predicament. The roads were deep with snow; the night dark as pitch; the way unknown, over a succession of hills down the sides of any of which one false step might at any time hurl us. It would never do to let the rascal go. As quickly as we could Ivan and I dragged our team round and, risking everything, galloped hard in the direction of our runaway into the darkness behind, until, as luck would have it, we nearly ran over him. Having found him, all manner of bribes were devised, every fearful threat conjured up that our imaginations could furnish us with, and by the joint pressure of hope of reward and fear of punishment we at last got the sulky brute on to his seat, and at about six in the morning drove into Tiflis.
True to my resolution, I made the cart set me down at the baths; large subterranean places, in which, in an extremely hot atmosphere, you may bathe yourself in little baths of natural hot water, strongly impregnated with sulphur, after which a swarthy little Tartar, nearly naked, comes and, kneeling on your chest, kneads your body with his clenched hands, thumps and smacks you, pulls out your different joints and replaces them, making your fingers crack in a marvellous manner, and finally dries and leaves you, feeling as if you had just had the gloves on with the celebrated Professor Bat Mullins, of Panton Street renown. Meanwhile, my servant had taken away every rag I possessed, and in a state of happy, cleanly nudity I sat awaiting that greatest of boons to a weary wayfarer, a clean shirt and an invitation to breakfast. Both arrived in due time, and feeling once more that I was a few steps removed from a Tartar beggar in appearance as well as in feelings, I betook myself to an Englishman’s house, vowing that, if I could help it, my experiences of Russian post-travelling should never go beyond my last stoppage at the sulphur baths.
The snowfall that now enveloped Tiflis was—so the inhabitants told me—the heaviest they could ever remember, and certainly never could Tiflis have looked better than it did under the white pall that hid all its foulness and lent such éclat to whatever beauty it possesses. For me, too, the snowfall had its advantages, in affording me an opportunity of witnessing the pursuit of the antelope on horseback as practised by the Tartars of Kariâs. About two score well-mounted men, all carrying rifles on their shoulders and a powerful greyhound on their horse in front of the saddle, started at an early hour for the steppe. Having found a herd of antelope, they proceeded to surround and break it up, so that the quarry might separate. Then each man chose his own prey, and for the first part of the day followed it slowly from place to place, never pressing it hard enough to make it gallop any distance, yet never losing sight of it. In this way travelling slowly over the unfrozen snow, which ‘balled’ fearfully on its pointed feet, the antelope became weary and harassed, the continual slow pace tiring it far more than a smart gallop, during which the snow would not have so much chance of clinging to the flying feet. When the poor little beast is sufficiently exhausted, the hunter begins to close in, and even should the antelope make a dash at the last it is ten to one it gets headed by one of the hunter’s comrades. If, however, it lets the Tartar get tolerably near, he drops his hound from its place beside him for the first time, and cheering him on with voice and example, speedily runs down the already exhausted prey.
What puzzled me most was how the Tartars induced their dogs to retain their equestrian position, but I presume early training will teach the dog as much as it does the man.
Whilst staying in Tiflis, I first heard the report of the ‘black death’ or black small-pox, as the Russians called the plague which was devastating Astrachan; and fearing lest the story should be true that it was spreading with rapid strides towards Russia, or at least, that having come from the coasts of the Caspian I should be put in quarantine, I determined to make my way to the Black Sea, have one more turn at the bears of Golovinsky, and then get back to England before the fever became prevalent. The Tiflis authorities made very little difficulty, only taking my larger impedimenta under their care, for the purpose of disinfecting them before sending them on to England; so that in another day or two I found myself once more at Poti, with my faithful Ivan the Pole still with me.