One of the city gates lay in this direction: that which gave upon the road leading to our own home, the Ukraine. I must at least make sure that Mazeppa intended to take this road. That much ascertained I might rest a little while, or even, perhaps, return for my horse.
Meanwhile the rumble of the wheels in front of me grew fainter with distance; if it had not been night time, and this the only sound audible, I should have lost it long since.
Suddenly I did lose it. Either they were already at the gate and had stopped to be allowed to pass out by the sleepy custodian, or I had fallen out of the range of earshot.
I made a last effort, using all my remaining strength to cover a few hundred yards in case they should be delayed at the gate, and presently I was rewarded by hearing the carriage wheels once more, this time much nearer.
But I could run no further. I staggered forward at a walk and reached the gate; the noise of the wheels had passed out of hearing.
A drowsy peasant in a cart drawn by a little horse which walked in its sleep, according to the custom of these little Finnish or Russian ponies, had just passed into the city. This man sulkily informed me that some Barin had just passed out in his travelling carriage. To the gatekeeper he had given his destination as Kief.
Then I stood and thought for a moment, and as the result of my reflections I hastened homewards for my horse, old Boris, who would carry me to the Ukraine at a gallop if I but shook the reins and laid them upon his neck.
But my lodgings were a long way from this part of the city, and it was nearly an hour before I was back again at the gate and after my quarry. That would matter little if I could keep upon their track; but Mazeppa, being a fox, would employ every device to set possible pursuers at their wit’s end. Therefore I concluded that whichsoever of the many branching roads he might have chosen for his flight it would not be the Kiefsky road, since he had given that city as his destination.
Yet even in this Mazeppa showed wheels within wheels of subtlety, for it proved in the end that he had actually done that which anyone knowing him would suppose to be the most unlikely thing of all, having selected the very road which he had named. And it must be confessed that he thus completely outwitted me, for I spent all that first night in galloping desperately down one road and then another, finding no trace of the fugitives anywhere; and when, at morning, it was necessary to give Boris a rest, I was no wiser as to their whereabouts than I had been when I left the gates of Moscow last night.
But Boris and I were used to hard work together, and we rested but a few hours before recommencing our search. Suffice to say that forty-eight priceless hours had been wasted in fruitless ridings forward and backward before I felt sure that we were at last upon the right track.