The pursuit returned two days later, but with empty hands. Tugai Bey’s son went, therefore, to the land of the Sultan with despair and rage in his heart, leaving behind him a gray and bluish pile of ruins.
CHAPTER XLI.
The towns through which Basia passed in going from Hreptyoff to Rashkoff were separated from each other by ten or twelve Ukraine miles,[26] and that road by the Dniester was about thirty miles long. It is true that they started each morning in the dark, and did not stop till late in the evening; still, they made the whole journey, including time for refreshment, and in spite of difficult crossings and passages, in three days. People of that time and troops did not make such quick journeys usually; but whoso had the will, or was put to it, could make them. In view of this, Basia calculated that the journey back to Hreptyoff ought to take less time, especially as she was making it on horseback, and as it was a flight in which salvation depended on swiftness.
But she noted her error the first day, for unable to escape on the road by the Dniester, she went through the steppes and had to make broad circuits. Besides she might go astray, and it was probable that she would; she might meet with thawed rivers, impassable, dense forests, swamps not freezing even in winter; she might come to harm from people or beasts,—therefore, though she intended to push on continually, even at night, she was confirmed in the conviction in spite of herself that, even if all went well with her, God knew when she would be in Hreptyoff.
She had succeeded in tearing herself from the arms of Azya; but what would happen farther on? Doubtless anything was better than those infamous arms; still, at thought of what was awaiting her the blood became icy in her veins.
It occurred at once to her that if she spared the horses she might be overtaken by Azya’s men, who knew those steppes thoroughly; and to hide from discovery, from pursuit, was almost impossible. They pursued Tartars whole days even in spring and summer when horses’ hoofs left no trace on the snow or in soft earth; they read the steppe as an open book; they gazed over those plains like eagles; they knew how to sniff a trail in them like hunting dogs; their whole life was passed in pursuing. Vainly had Tartars gone time and again in the water of streams so as not to leave traces; Cossacks, Lithuanian Tartars, and Cheremis, as well as Polish raiders of the steppe, knew how to find them, to answer their “methods” with “methods,” and to attack as suddenly as if they had sprung up through the earth. How was she to escape from such people unless to leave them so far in the rear that distance itself would make pursuit impossible? But in such an event her horses would fall.
“They will fall dead without fail, if they continue to go as they have gone so far,” thought Basia, with terror, looking at their wet, steaming sides, and at the foam which was falling in flakes to the ground.
Therefore she slackened their speed from time to time and listened; but in every breath of wind, in the rustling of leaves on the edge of ravines, in the dry rubbing of the withered steppe reeds against one another, in the noise made by the wings of a passing bird, even in the silence of the wilderness, which was sounding in her ears, she heard voices of pursuit, and terrified urged on her horses again, and ran with wild impetus till their snorting declared that they could not continue at that speed.
The burden of loneliness and weakness pressed her down more and more. Ah! what an orphan she felt herself; what regret, as immense as unreasoning, rose in her heart for all people, the nearest and dearest, who had so forsaken her! Then she thought that surely it was God punishing her for her passion for adventures, for her hurrying to every hunt, to expeditions, frequently against the will of her husband; for her giddiness and lack of sedateness.
When she thought of this she wept, and raising her head began to repeat, sobbing,—