“Chastise, but do not desert me! Do not punish Michael! Michael is innocent.”
Meanwhile night was approaching, and with it cold, darkness, uncertainty of the road, and alarm. Objects had begun to efface themselves, grow dim, lose definite forms, and also to become, as it were, mysteriously alive and expectant. Protuberances on lofty rocks looked like heads in pointed and round caps,—heads peering out from behind gigantic walls of some kind, and gazing in silence and malignity to see who was passing below. Tree branches, stirred by the breeze, made motions like people: some of these beckoned to Basia as if wishing to call her and confide to her some terrible secret; others seemed to speak and give warning: “Do not come near!” The trunks of uprooted trees seemed like monstrous creatures crouching for a spring. Basia was daring, very daring, but, like all people of that period, she was superstitious. When darkness came down completely, the hair rose on her head, and shivers passed through her body at thought of the unclean powers that might dwell in those regions. She feared vampires especially; belief in them was spread particularly in the Dniester country by reason of nearness to Moldavia, and just the places around Yampol and Rashkoff were ill-famed in that regard. How many people there left the world day by day through sudden death, without confession or absolution! Basia remembered all the tales which the knights had told at Hreptyoff, on evenings at the fireside,—stories of deep valleys in which, when the wind howled, sudden groans were heard of “Jesus, Jesus!” of pale lights in which something was snorting; of laughing cliffs; of pale children, suckling infants with green eyes and monstrous heads,—infants which implored to be taken on horseback, and when taken began to suck blood; finally, of heads without bodies, walking on spider legs; and most terrible of all those ghastlinesses, vampires of full size, or brukolaki, so called in Wallachia, who hurled themselves on people directly.
Then she began to make the sign of the cross, and she did not stop till her hand had grown weak; but even then she repeated the litany, for no other weapons were effective against unclean powers.
The horses gave her consolation, for they showed no fear, snorting briskly. At times she patted her pony, as if wishing in that way to convince herself that she was in a real world.
The night, very dark at first, became clearer by degrees, and at last the stars began to glimmer through the thin mist. For Basia this was an uncommonly favorable circumstance,—first, because her fear decreased; and secondly, because by observing the Great Bear, she could turn to the north, or in the direction of Hreptyoff. Looking on the region about, she calculated that she had gone a considerable distance from the Dniester; for there were fewer rocks, more open country, more hills covered with oak groves, and frequently broad plains. Time after time, however, she was forced to cross ravines, and she went down into them with fear in her heart, for in the depths of those places it was always dark, and a harsh, piercing cold was there. Some were so steep that she was forced to go around them; from this came great loss of time and an addition to the journey.
It was worse, however, with streams and rivers, and a whole system of these flowed from the East to the Dniester. All were thawed, and the horses snorted with fear when they went at night into strange water of unknown depth. Basia crossed only in places where the sloping bank allowed the supposition that the water, widely spread there, was shallow. In fact, it was so in most cases; at some crossings, however, the water reached halfway to the backs of her horses: Basia then knelt, in soldier fashion, on the saddle, and, holding to the pommel, tried not to wet her feet. But she did not succeed always in this, and soon a piercing cold seized her from feet to knees.
“God give me daylight, I will go more quickly,” repeated she, from time to time.
At last she rode out onto a broad plain with a sparse forest, and seeing that the horses were barely dragging their legs, she halted for rest. Both stretched their necks to the ground at the same time, and putting forward one foot, began to pluck moss and withered grass eagerly. In the forest there was perfect silence, unbroken save by the sharp breathing of the horses and the crunching of the grass in their powerful jaws.
When they had satisfied, or rather deceived, their first hunger, both horses wished evidently to roll, but Basia might not indulge them in that. She dared not loosen the girths and come to the ground herself, for she wished to be ready at every moment for further flight.
She sat on Azya’s horse, however, for her own had carried her from the last resting-place, and though strong, and with noble blood in his veins, he was more delicate than the other.