Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/98

70 difficult, or wait to descend the river when time served, so as to enable them to reach other rivers, from which they might afterwards return home by a circuitous land journey.

During these consultations, the army meanwhile suffering under extreme famine, the nine men whom I have described as escaping from the slaughter of the five hundred, happened to arrive, and announced that Ivan Palitzki was come with provisions; but although the latter had hastened his journey, he had had the misfortune to lose the greater part of his vessels, and had but few remaining when he reached the camp. For, being weary with his daily labour, he had laid up one night to rest himself on the shore of the Volga, but was hailed by the Czeremissi, who came upon him with great clamour, inquiring who sailed by that way; they were answered by the servants of Palitzki, who took them for servants a-shipboard, and with much abuse threatened them with stripes on the following day for disturbing their master's sleep with their unseasonable vociferations. The Czeremissi replied: "You and we shall have other business to attend to to-morrow, for we will take you all bound to Kazan." In the morning, accordingly, before the sun was up, and while the entire bank of the river was covered with a thick fog, the Czeremissi made a sudden attack upon the ships, and threw such terror amongst the Russians, that Palitzki, the commander of the fleet, left ninety of his largest vessels, each containing thirty men, in the hands of the enemy, and loosing his vessel from the shore, and taking the Volga in mid-stream, escaped under cover of the mist, and reached the army almost in a state of nudity. A similar misfortune afterwards occurred to him in returning with several vessels in his train, when he again fell into the snares of the Czeremissi, and not only lost his vessels, but himself escaped only with great difficulty, and with very few of his men.

While the Russians were thus oppressed on all sides by hunger and the enemy's force, a troop of horse, dispatched by