Boris the Bear-Hunter

by Frederick Whishaw

"Out sprang Boris, and alighted with terrific force upon
Menshikoff's back."
Page [186].

Peter's pleasant mood underwent a great change when Boris went on to tell of his interview with Jansen in prison. His face worked in terrible contortions, and he rose and paced the room once more without a word. "So you would have throttled him, would you?" he said at last. "I am thankful that you did not interfere with what is my privilege. Enough about Yakooshka. Go on."

But the Tsar fairly roared with laughter as Boris described how he had leaped upon the back of the sentinel, a distance of fifteen feet, and stuck the poor fellow with his little broken bit of sword-end. He must have that little weapon, he said, as a keepsake from his good bear-eater. But nothing would satisfy the Tsar with regard to the mighty spring upon the back of the sentry but a rehearsal of the feat then and there, in that very room.

Menshikoff said the thing was impossible; no man, he said, could leap five yards from a cramped position upon a window ledge. Boris must have miscalculated the distance. But Menshikoff regretted this remark a moment after he had made it; for Peter declared he believed the bear-eater could perform the feat if no one else could, and that he should try it at once, in order to put this sceptic to confusion. Menshikoff should act the part of sentry, and walk along while Boris jumped on him. Afterwards they would all try it. Then two tables were piled together, and Boris was instructed to bend himself into the original position as far as possible, and thence spring upon the unhappy Menshikoff, who paced the floor at a distance of fifteen feet. Menshikoff eyed the heavy figure of Boris, soon to be launched at him, with gloomy foreboding; but there was no help for it, Peter was in earnest. As Menshikoff reached the necessary point, out sprang Boris, and without difficulty covering the distance, alighted with terrific force upon Menshikoff's back. Over rolled the favourite, and over went Boris with him, amid the boisterous laughter of the Tsar and the rest, the crash making such a commotion that frightened courtiers from the room beneath presently rushed in to see what had happened to his Majesty.

Peter insisted upon attempting the feat himself, and insisted also that Lefort and Menshikoff should leap as well. The Tsar easily accomplished the leap; but so tremendous was the shock of his descent, that poor Lefort, who was detailed to receive the ponderous imperial body after its flight through space, was well-nigh wiped out of the land of the living. Both Menshikoff and Lefort failed to accomplish the feat, and Boris was obliged to repeat it, in order that the Tsar might try the sensations of the sentinel, as a "bolt from the blue," in the shape of some thirteen stone of humanity, came crashing down upon his shoulders. Peter was better built to stand the shock than the unfortunate Turkish soldier, and Boris's big body hardly caused him to stagger; though when the two changed places, and the huge Tsar sprang through the air and alighted upon the back of Boris, that hardy young hunter, for all his sturdiness, rolled over like a rabbit.

Then at length the Tsar, now in the highest good-humour, permitted Boris to finish his tale—how he had plunged into the dark waters of the Azof Sea, and found his way to land; how he had been befriended in a village of the Cossacks of the Don—Peter making a note of the name of the village; and of his long adventurous journey through moor and forest, where he supplied himself with food from day to day by means of his knowledge of woodcraft, until he reached Moscow that very morning. Then the Tsar informed Boris of his own designs for a renewed siege of Azof by land and sea, and of all that had happened in the regiment and out of it since his disappearance. The officers had all mourned him as certainly lost, the Tsar said, and had even included his name in their service for the repose of the souls of those slain beneath the walls of the city; they would be overjoyed to see his face again. Then Peter told of how little Nancy Drury had come to scold him for losing "her Boris," and of how he had promised faithfully to go and fetch her friend home again in the summer. When Peter mentioned Nancy, the face of Boris flushed, but his eyes glowed with great tenderness; and presently he asked leave to retire, in order to visit his fellow-officers, "and others." The Tsar permitted him to go, on condition that he went first to see "those others;" for, said Peter, those others might be even more rejoiced to see him home again than the officers of the regiment, who, at least, had not blushed whenever his name had been mentioned. Then Boris blushed again, and thanked the Tsar, and went out to do his kind bidding.

When Boris reached the house of the Drurys, and was ushered into the sitting-room by the frightened servant, who took him for a ghost, and did not announce him because his tongue refused to speak for very fear, Mrs. Drury was busy over her needlework, while Nancy sat at her lessons at the same table. Mother and daughter looked up together, but their first impressions were entirely different. Mrs. Drury had never felt the slightest doubt that her little daughter's faithful friend was long since dead and buried in the far-away Tartar city, and had mourned his death in secret, while concealing her convictions from Nancy, in the hope that when the truth must be known time would have softened the blow. When, therefore, the door opened noiselessly, and the scared servant, speechless and pale, admitted the ragged figure which so strongly resembled the dead friend of the family, Mrs. Drury was taken by surprise, and screamed and hid her face in her hands. But Nancy's instincts did not err. No sooner did she raise her eyes than she knew that this was no ghost, but her own beloved and familiar friend; and with a cry of great joy and surprise she sprang to her feet, and was in his arms in a moment, her head buried in his tanned neck, sobbing and laughing, and conscious of nothing excepting that here was her Boris alive and well and come home again.

When Mrs. Drury recovered her equanimity, which she did in a minute, her English ideas of propriety were a little shocked at Nancy's undisguised demonstration towards her friend, and, after warmly greeting Boris, she reminded her little daughter that her fifteenth birthday was at hand, and that she would shock Boris Ivanitch by her demonstrativeness. But Boris begged her to let Nancy be as affectionate as she pleased, for, he said, he had sadly needed the comfort of a little love for many a long and dreary month. So Mrs. Drury let matters be as they were, and Nancy clung to her friend's neck, and cried and laughed in turns, though saying but little, until Boris gently detached her arms from about his neck and placed her upon his knee to hear the stirring tale of his adventures and escape and return home.