And now twenty minutes more had gone by.... During the last of these twenty minutes, even through the clatter and rumble of our own carriage, we could hear another clatter and another rumbling....
'Stop, Filofey,' I said; 'it's no use--the end's the same!'
Filofey uttered a faint-hearted 'wo'! The horses instantaneously stopped, as though delighted at the chance of resting!
Mercy upon us! the tambourines were simply booming away just behind our backs, the cart was rattling and creaking, the men were whistling, shouting, and singing, the horses were snorting and thumping on the ground with their hoofs.... They had overtaken us!
'Bad luck,' Filofey commented, in an emphatic undertone; and, clicking to the horses irresolutely, he began to urge them on again. But at that very instant there was a sort of sudden rush and whizz, and a very big, wide cart, harnessed with three lean horses, cut sharply at a rush up to us, galloped in front, and at once fell into a walking pace, blocking up the road.
'A regular brigand's trick!' murmured Filofey. I must own I felt a cold chill at my heart.... I fell to staring before me with strained attention in the half-darkness of the misty moonlight. In the cart in front of us were--half-lying, half-sitting--six men in shirts, and in unbuttoned rough overcoats; two of them had no caps on; huge feet in boots were swinging and hanging over the cart-rail, arms were rising and falling helter-skelter... bodies were jolting backwards and forwards.... It was quite clear--a drunken party. Some were bawling at random; one was whistling very correctly and shrilly, another was swearing; on the driver's seat sat a sort of giant in a cape, driving. They went at a walking pace, as' though paying no attention to us.
What was to be done? We followed them also at a walking pace... we could do nothing else.
For a quarter of a mile we moved along in this manner. The suspense was torturing.... To protect, to defend ourselves, was out of the question! There were six of them; and I hadn't even a stick! Should we turn back? But they would catch us up directly. I remembered the line of Zhukovsky (in the passage where he speaks of the murder of field-marshal Kamensky):
'The scoundrel highwayman's vile axe!...'
Or else--strangling with filthy cord... flung into a ditch...there to choke and struggle like a hare in a trap....