On flew the horses, and on hacked Boris; while Peter, in the carriage, slashed at the hindmost wolves, and old Ivan prodded bravely and shouted loudly at those in front. If things were to go wrong, and he should be unable to keep the leaders at bay until the Tsar was in safety, Boris knew what he would do.
Meanwhile the chase went on for another half-mile. Then the outside horse, harassed beyond endurance by the ever-increasing number of his assailants, stumbled repeatedly. In an instant Boris had slashed in two the cords which attached him to the vehicle, and freed from the incubus of the carriage, the poor animal darted forward and turned aside into the forest, Boris himself still lying full length upon its back, but assuming as quickly as he could a sitting posture. In this position, still slashing at the wolves which swarmed about him, and waving adieu to the Tsar with his left hand, he disappeared from sight; and in the distance the horrified Peter heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs as the devoted hunter was borne away from him to his doom.
For one wild moment Peter was for bidding Ivan direct the carriage in pursuit; but the absurdity of such a course was apparent on the face of it, and the Tsar was obliged, with grief and reluctance, to leave his faithful servant and friend to his fate. At least half the wolves or more had followed Boris into the depths of the forest, and Peter and Ivan together succeeded in keeping the rest at bay long enough to allow the panting shafter to drag the carriage in safety to within sight of the village, when, with a gasp of despair, the poor creature stumbled and fell, causing the carriage to stop suddenly with a jolt that almost unseated the driver. Peter, with that personal courage in which he has never been surpassed, leaped out to cut the traces and allow the gallant animal which had served him so well to gallop for life. Seeing him on foot, the wolves, unable even now to overcome altogether their natural terror of man, drew off for a moment, and in that moment Peter freed the horse, which dashed madly away into the woods like its fellows, followed by all the wolves with the exception of two or three which preferred to hang about the two men as they walked on towards the village, but not daring to approach within striking distance of spear or knife. When within a few yards of the first dwelling-house of the village, these disappeared into the forest also, looking round once or twice ere they finally retreated, and licking their lips, as though their imagination dwelt upon the delights of a feast that might have been.
The Tsar was morose and silent; and his attendants, who arrived within an hour after himself, and who declared that they had met neither wolves nor Boris, left the young monarch to his supper, avowing to one another that they had never yet seen the Tsar so terrible to look upon.
CHAPTER VIII.
BORIS AND HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS.
The young Tsar was himself surprised, as he sat alone at his evening meal, to find how very heavily the loss of poor Boris weighed upon him. He had scarcely realized how closely the young hunter had wound himself already around his heart—a heart which, in spite of its hardness and waywardness, was capable of forming the warmest attachments. Peter was all through his life on the look-out for men who were after his own ideal, and upon whom he could rely for assistance in carrying out the vast schemes and plans for the good of his people, and the development and aggrandizement of his country, with which his brain was filled from the first. Such a man Peter thought he had found in Boris—one upon whose absolute faithfulness he could rely, and whose courage, as he had seen already more than once, was equal to any emergency. He felt that he could have trained Boris to be the ideal man for his purposes, to be employed far or near with equal confidence, and in any capacity that seemed good to his employer; and instead, here was the poor fellow gone already, a martyr to his devotion to himself! "Why are there not more of my poor Russians like this one?" thought the young Tsar; "and where am I to lay my hand upon such another—even one?" It certainly was most unfortunate and deplorable; so no wonder the Tsar's servants found their master in his most dangerous mood, and left him, as soon as might be, to himself.
Peter ate his cabbage-soup, and sighed as he ate. Why had he not anticipated the sudden action of Boris, and sternly forbidden him to sacrifice himself—ah, why indeed? Peter was not accustomed to personal devotion of this sort. He had not come across a Boris before this one, or he might have guessed what the brave fellow would do, and could have pulled him back into the carriage at the last moment. He would rather have fed those thrice-accursed gray brutes upon the whole of his retinue than that they should have feasted upon that brave heart. Poor Bear-Hunter! he had killed his last bear. What a fight there must have been at the very last before he permitted the skulking brutes to crowd around and pull him down!
Wrapped in these sad reflections, Peter sat before his neglected bowl of soup, when of a sudden the door opened, and the apparition of the very subject of his dismal reflections stood before him. Bootless, dishevelled, and with his clothes, what was left of them, blood-stained and in rags, was it the ghost of Boris as he had appeared at his last moment on earth? Peter was not superstitious, wonderfully little so for a Russian, but for a full minute he gazed in doubt and uncertainty upon the apparition before him. Then he burst into one of his very loudest guffaws.