"How?" cried I. "They are not following us!" And then I reined back to listen.
We must have travelled a league by this time, but the face of the bleak country was unchanged. Dense woods and gigantic lakes of snow were the outstanding features, and over all the paralysing silence of a Russian night. Good God! what a solitude, and yet we had won freedom in it!
"They did not think us worth powder and shot," says Léon presently. "Perhaps they were hungry, or"—and here he pointed grimly over his shoulder—"they may have preferred the camp to that."
I looked at him curiously.
"Of what are you speaking?" I asked him, and at that he shrugged his shoulders.
"Listen," he cried, "and then answer for yourself, mon oncle."
I took a pull upon the rein again, and bent my ear towards the wood. A weird sound, like to nothing but the howling of the doomed, broke the silence all about and made its meaning clear. We had lost the Cossacks, but the wolves were on our track; aye, thousands of them—leaping, barking, snarling from their fastnesses, and bending their heads to the chase like hounds that follow a scent. Good God, what a sight that was to see! With what terror the spectacle filled us as we let the maddened horses go and rode again from an enemy more terrible than man!
I had heard of the wolves of Russia, but had seen but few of them during the terrible days of the retreat.
Perchance the fact that we had rarely left our comrades might have had something to do with it, for naturally the fret and stir of an army in retreat would scare such beasts even at such a season; but here the story was otherwise. They had scented the horses, and nothing now would stop them. Gallop as we would, they gained upon us, and presently were leaping at the throats of the terrified brutes we rode.
In vain we discharged our pistols, struck at them with our swords, and cried for aid to any that might be near us. They came again, with jaws distended and dripping fangs, and we had not gone the third of a league when one caught Léon's horse by the throat and, hanging there, dragged the brute shrieking to the ground.