"Throw out everything—clothes as well as food! Throw them all out of the sledge!" Stefan shouted, scarcely able to keep pace with the terrified dogs. Bags, implements of all kinds, and furs flew away into the darkness. The lightened sledge sped forward rapidly, and Stefan was only just in time to throw himself on to it beside Józef; the dogs needed no rein or guiding.
"You will die through my fault, Stefan; forgive me," Józef said. "When I think of that, I want to jump out of the sledge and go back into the storm; but I expect you would not let me, would you?"
"What's the use of talking nonsense! We shall die together as we have lived together. A year sooner or later...! But we shall be buried in graves—never fear, we shall get back all right! Besides, the wind is going down. Can that be the coast?" he exclaimed, as he looked up.
Close above them rose a dark belt of rocks. Quickly they climbed up on to this firm ground, and while sheltering there, half dead with exhaustion, they watched the white ice-floes below packing with a loud roar. Stefan went to look for wood, and found a tree trunk not far away, from which he broke off a few splinters and lighted a small fire. The wind soon changed this into a bonfire, and for the rest of the night they slept beside it.
Buza found them there at daybreak.
"Are you alive? Thank God! It's a good thing that I didn't allow you to take anything away with you from there, or we should never have come off safe and sound. For this is just their 'bad weather.' It's the crime that made it bad. We didn't even make a fire, for I am afraid of the Chukchee. Didn't you light one? We saw a fire in this direction."
"We lighted one, for we haven't any of our things left, and nothing to eat. We should have been frozen."
They related how they had lost everything, and how the sea had chased them.
"Ah! that was not the sea—it wasn't the sea!" Buza sighed. "If only we get home safely...."
Sadly they returned along the cliffs. They were obliged to make a wide circle, for the wind had blown them far beyond Pawal. They were unable to light fires, and drove on without resting as long as the dogs' strength held out. Buza continually cast anxious looks about him.