Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/286

 270 It was quite true, when he rubbed my face with his fur coat sleeve, my frozen eyelashes thawed and my eyelids opened. But on what? What was to be seen? I do not know if it can be even more terrible in hell: all around there was profound impenetrable darkness—and it seemed alive, it trembled and cracked like a monster whose body was a compact mass of frozen dust and whose breath was life-destroying cold. Yes, it was death in one of its most awful shapes, and meeting it face to face, I was terrified.

The only thing I was able to say was to ask about Kiriak, Where was he? But it was so difficult to speak that the savage did not hear me. Then I noticed that when he spoke to me, he bent down and shouted under the lappets of my fur cap, straight into my ear, and I also shouted under his fur cap:

"Where is the other sledge?"

"Don't know, Bachka, we have been separated."

"How separated?"

"Separated, Bachka."

I did not want to believe this; I wanted to look round, but I could not see anything in any direction; all around us was hell, dark and terrible. Under my side and close to the sledge something moved like a ball, but it was impossible to see