They rushed out impetuously from their sheltered nook. The gale caught them at once, blowing about the dogs' hair and tilting the sledges upwards. The men bent down to meet it, and turned their faces away, but they felt it cutting through them more and more. It beat against them with increasing force, piercing them through until there was no warmth left in their bodies, nothing but a smarting sensation from the snow which completely covered them. Their mouths and their clothes were soon full of these parching flakes; they felt them penetrating their furs to their very skin and melting there, making them shudder all over. Streams of this powdery snow ran above the smooth, shining surface of the ground, coiling with a hiss like an adder round their feet and bodies, catching the dogs' drooping heads, striking the runners of the sledges, and rolling back in grey balls which increased as they wound in and out of the caravan.
The men crouched in contorted attitudes, seeking to screen themselves from the biting cold. Their chins almost rested on their knees, and they only glanced ahead now and then to where the rock, which was to be their refuge, was darkening in the distance. The dogs also understood where their safety lay; they used their light shaggy paws to the best of their power, and plunged resolutely into the raging wind driving towards the sea. They constantly fell down, for they slipped on the hard surface; their eyes were bloodshot and starting from the sockets, the breast collar choked them, the sledge had suddenly become a great weight on them. The poor animals ran stooping low, and not even daring to open their mouths to take breath, for the cold wind hurt their throat and lungs. The rattle of the sledges, the dogs' whining, the men's curses, were like atoms in the furious, hollow roar of the storm, and fell into space, as though no one were calling, suffering, or struggling. Stefan never took his eyes off the distance, mentally measuring it all the while; he realized despairingly that his dogs were growing tired and would cease to follow the leader, and that he must stand up to drive them on and turn them back into the track. Józef clung helplessly to the sledge, shivering as in fever. At last, when they were nearly under the huge crag of Peweka, the wind abated and merely blew in gusts. Stefan looked up with a feeling of almost religious awe at this rock which weathered gales and sea. Buza was waiting for them there.
"Well, we have done more than we could expect! We may congratulate ourselves. Now it will be just as if we were at home. I am only surprised not to see anyone about. It's true the weather's bad. But they ought to have seen us. Perhaps they have been killing reindeer or catching seals, and have eaten too much and are asleep. We must go up the mountain. Hi, Shaggy-hair! Noch! Noch!"
The dogs, being hungry and in a bad temper, began to bite one another. By the time they had been quieted and the harness set to rights, the sun had hidden behind the high hills and the red glow of evening was spreading over rocks and snow.
They reached the pass by a narrow and difficult way.
Then Buza, who was going on ahead, suddenly pulled up at a turn of the path, thunderstruck; his dogs immediately lay down. The men rushed up to him, but he neither answered their questions nor took his eyes off something lying hidden under a rock. Empty tents, with the flaps unfastened in a hospitable manner, stood before them in a strange silence. But the Cossack's eyes were fixed on something else.
A Chukchee, dressed in fur and with a spear in his hand, lay face downwards across the pathway. A little farther on a head showed from under a snowdrift, the whites of the eyes shining and the hair dishevelled by the gale; a hand like a claw, clotted with blood, protruded from lower down the drift. Streaks of blood mingled with the red evening glow.
"What does it mean? What is this?"
"Hush! For the love of God, be quiet! Let us escape!" the Cossack exclaimed, looking in consternation at the dogs, which suddenly sat up and began to howl. "Let us escape!" he repeated, turning away.
But Stefan and the priest objected.