“By that time I shall be far away,” concluded Basia in her mind.
Here she remembered for the second time that Azya’s detachments were stationed in Yampol and Mohiloff. “It is necessary to go past through the broad steppe, and not approach the Dniester until in the neighborhood of Hreptyoff. That terrible man has disposed his troops cunningly, but God will save me.”
Thus thinking, she collected her spirits and prepared to continue her journey. At the pommel of Azya’s saddle she found a musket, a horn with powder, a box of bullets, a box of hemp-seed which the Tartar had the habit of chewing continually. Basia, shortening the stirrups of Azya’s saddle to her own feet, thought to herself that during the whole way she would live, like a bird, on those seeds, and she kept them carefully near her.
She determined to avoid people and farms; for in those wildernesses more evil than good was to be looked for from every man. Fear oppressed her heart when she asked herself, “How shall I feed the horses?” They would dig grass out from under the snow, and pluck moss from the crevices of rocks, but might they not die from bad food and excessive travelling? Still, she could not spare them.
There was another fear: Would she not go astray in the desert? It was easy to avoid that by travelling along the Dniester, but she could not take that road. What would happen were she to enter gloomy wildernesses, immense and roadless? How would she know whether she was going northward, or in some other direction, if foggy days were to come, days without sunshine, and nights without stars? The forests were swarming with wild beasts; she cared less for that, having courage in her brave heart and having weapons. Wolves, going in packs, might be dangerous, it is true, but in general she feared men more than beasts, and she feared to go astray most of all.
“Ah, God will show me the way, and will let me return to Michael,” said she, aloud. Then she made the sign of the cross, wiped with her sleeve her face free from the moisture which made her pale cheeks cold, looked with quick eyes around the country, and urged her horse on to a gallop.
CHAPTER XL.
No one thought of searching for Tugai Bey’s son; therefore he lay on the ground until he recovered consciousness. When he had come to his senses, he sat upright, and wishing to know what was happening to him, began to look around. But he saw the place as if in darkness; then he discovered that he was looking with only one eye, and badly with that one. The other was either knocked out, or filled with blood.
Azya raised his hands to his face. His fingers found icicles of blood stiff on his mustaches; his mouth too was full of blood which was suffocating him so that he had to cough and spit it out a number of times; a terrible pain pierced his face at this spitting; he put his fingers above his mustaches, but snatched them away with a groan of suffering.
Basia’s blow had crushed the upper part of his nose, and injured his cheek-bone. He sat for a time without motion; then he began to look around with that eye in which some sight remained, and seeing a streak of snow in a cleft he crept up to it, seized a handful and applied it to his broken face.