"It is now two o'clock, and we know all we want to know. Let us return to the bivouac."
The young men slung their rifles upon their backs, and, leaving the valley of the Broque to the left, they pushed up the steep ascent of Hengsbach and descended on the further side, without following any path through the snow, but guiding themselves solely by the peaks, to cut short their journey.
They had thus proceeded for about two hours; the winter sun was drooping to the horizon, and night was fast approaching, but calm and light. They had only to cross the solitary gorge of Riel, which forms a wide circular basin in the midst of the forest, enclosing a blue lake, often the resort of the roebuck.
Suddenly, as they left the cover of the trees, the old man stopped short behind a clump of bushes.
"Hist!"
He pointed to the little lake, which was covered with a thin and transparent coating of ice. A strange spectacle greeted their eyes. Twenty Cossacks, with matted yellow beards, heads covered with old funnel-shaped caps of the skin of some animal, and long ragged cloaks hanging from their shoulders, were before them, seated on their little horses. Their stirrups were simply looped ropes, and the steeds, with long manes, thin tails, and flanks matted with yellow, black, and white, looked not unlike goats. Some of the riders were armed only with long lances, others with sabres, others with merely a hatchet hanging by a cord from their saddle, and a large horse-pistol in their belt. Some gazed with ecstasy upon the lines of green firs, and one tall, lean fellow was breaking the ice with the butt of his spear, while his horse drank. Others dismounted, and began to remove the snow preparatory to encamping.
They formed a singular picture—those men from afar, with their bronzed features, flat foreheads and noses, and grey fluttering rags, as they stood by the side of the lake under the tall tree-covered crags. It seemed a glimpse of another world than the one we live in, and as the three hunters gazed and caught the sounds of their uncouth speech, curiosity for a while mastered all other feelings. But Kasper and Frantz soon fixed their long bayonets on their rifles and retired once more into the cover of the woods. They reached a rock some twenty feet high, which Materne climbed; then, after a few words exchanged in a low voice, Kasper examined his priming, slowly brought his piece to his shoulder, and aimed, while his brother stood by ready to follow his example.
The Cossack whose horse was drinking was about two hundred paces from our little party. The report of the rifle rang through the forest and awoke the deep echoes of the gorge, and the horseman bent forward and disappeared beneath the ice of the lake.
It would be impossible to describe the stupefaction which seemed to seize the band. The echoes rolled like a volley of musketry; the dismounted barbarians bounded on their steeds, gazing wildly around, while a thick wreath of smoke rolled above the clump of trees behind which the hunters stood.