Balgonie was surmising whether Natalie would be surveying the beautiful natural illumination from her window, or from the terrace: he forgot that it was nothing new to her. Certainly it proved of little interest to Michail Podatchkine, who, under his thick beard, growled at the officer for loitering.
The Scottish islesmen call the streamers of the Aurora "the merry dancers;" but the Siberians name them "the raging host:" and Balgonie was reflecting what a relief their brilliance must prove to the lonely hunters, who at that very time were pursuing the white bear and the blue fox, far beyond the Lena, and along the shores of the Icy Sea, when his attendant disturbed his reverie.
"Well, Michail," said he, in reply to some remark in which the Corporal, who saw nothing wonderful in the matter, urged that they should proceed, "we have missed the sugar caravan, and cannot discover the residence of the duornin I spoke of, so I am rather provoked with you."
"Oh, Excellency, who can withstand God or the Great Novgorod?" whined the fellow, using an old Russian proverb.
Jean Paul Richter says, "the more weakness, the more lying; force goes straight, but any cannon-ball with cavities in it goes crooked." Some such thought as this occurred to Balgonie, as he checked his horse, and half turning round, with a stern expression in his face, which the light in the north made sufficiently plain, he said:—
"Rascal! I fear you are deceiving me again!"
Hustled up on his saddle, rather than in it, with his knees on his holsters and his lance slung behind him, Podatchkine made many signs of the cross, and called on St. Sergius and all the other moshtschi, or saints of Russia, to bear witness that he was as innocent as a young bear of any such foul idea; but only begged that his Excellency would proceed, and assured him that the track they were on must assuredly bring them, ere long, to some woodman's dwelling.
At this time, such is the slavish influence of superstition, that Podatchkine, for mere fellowship, kept close to the very man against whom he had formed the most fiendish schemes; for stories of the Wood Fairies,—of the Leechie, or Forest-demon, whose fangs tore the benighted asunder,—of the Domovoi, or mischievous Russian Brownie,—of the Vodianoi, or smiling River-spirit, who lured travellers to a watery doom,—of wolves and bears in ravening herds, came fast upon his memory; for the forest was growing denser, and the darkness deepened painfully after the Aurora faded away, and a few solitary stars alone glinted through the openings between the broad, flat, pendant branches of the intertwisted pines.
The silence of the night was now broken only by the whistling croak of the valdchnep, or great woodcock, as he darted from amid the black gloom of a pine tree, or the lighter shadow of the graceful, but, as yet, leafless birch; and the craven and clamorous anxiety that had been giving real pangs, and even qualms of conscience, to the superstitious Podatchkine began to subside, when the wood opened a little, a red light appeared, and they approached the cottage of Nicholas Paulovitch, the half-bred.
It was, as already stated, built of logs, squared by the hatchet outside and inside, and whitened by chalk: before it yawned a deep draw-well, with a bucket, handle, and winch.