The Great White Army

by Max Pemberton

Surely any man might now have believed that the end had come, and that, whatever else befell, the regiment would see us no more.

There was the horse being torn to pieces before our eyes; there was my nephew striking at the wolves with his sword while I endeavoured maladroitly to lift him to my saddle. The latter task was soon rendered impossible by the ferocity of the savage beasts who now swarmed about us. They had my own horse down before a man could have counted ten, and, leaping from it as it fell, I ran headlong towards the woods for any shelter that could be found.

Our lives now did not seem worth a scudo. There must have been thousands of wolves about the horses; a black wood was upon our left hand, a wide, boundless plain before us. Nevertheless, that dim hope which sustains men in all emergencies remained, and, crying to one another to take courage, we entered the wood. There, to our wonder and amazement, we discerned immediately the haven of our salvation. It was a woodlander's hut, not twenty yards from the open, and hardly had we espied it before we were locked and barred within and laughing at the very magnitude of our misfortune.

VIII

It must have been about three o'clock of the morning by this time.

The hut itself had one window looking over the plain, but was as bare of furniture as any room in a madhouse. Léon's tinder-box revealed a floor of baked earth and a stove which lacked fuel, and this, with a shelf upon which there stood empty jars, was all the ornament this fortress possessed. To us, however, it was more beautiful than any palace, and, taking a drain of brandy from our flasks, we climbed up to the window and looked out over the snows.

Our poor horses were but bones by this time, and there were hundreds of the wolves fighting about the carcasses. Less to our liking were the slinking forms about the hut itself and the savage howling which assailed our ears. It was clear that the brutes had scented us out, and would stand sentinel until their courage was screwed up to something more. We could count them by the hundred as they prowled round and round the hut, leaping often at the window, and snarling when the butts of our pistols drove them back. Some, indeed, went so far as to spring upon the roof, and there yapped and howled most dismally; while, as for ourselves, we could but keep guard and wonder what the day would bring. Would it send aid to us, or must we be prisoners there until we perished of hunger and cold? This was a question neither dared answer. The minutes became as hours while we waited for the dawn. The horror of the snow paralysed our faculties and almost forbade speech between us.

I cannot tell you truly of all that happened during that appalling vigil. It is odd to look back to it now and to remember the light words with which Léon and I would endeavour to cheer each other; how we laughed and jested when our nerves were at a tension and it seemed that any minute the cold might overcome us and the door be left open to death in its most revolting aspect. But an instant of carelessness, and there would have been a dozen brutes at our throats, and we should have shared the fate of the wretched horses whose very bones were now vanished from the plain.

All this was in our minds, yet our lips made no mention of it. "Courage," we said; "the day will help us." It seemed a vain hope, for who should be in this wild place when the sun rose again? You answer the Cossacks. Aye, true enough, it was the Cossacks who came just as the day had dawned, and the red light of the morning sun shimmered upon that frozen sea.

Léon heard them sooner than I, but the brutes were quicker than he. I had taken my turn at the window, and had just crashed my pistol into a gaping mouth which menaced me, when the wolves around suddenly pricked their ears and turned their heads towards the east.