Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/326

302 Shovels began to sink in the snow and throw it on both sides.

After a while they saw sitting under the tree a man with head inclined on his breast and his cap pulled deeply over his face. With one hand he was holding the reins of a horse lying at his side with nostrils buried in the snow. Evidently the man had ridden away from the company, perhaps to reach human dwellings more quickly and obtain help, but when his horse fell he took refuge under the willow on the side opposite the wind, and there he was chilled.

"Bring a light!" called Zbyshko.

An attendant pushed up a torch to the face of the frozen man; it was difficult to recognize him at once. But when another attendant turned the face upward, one cry was wrested from the breasts of all present,—

"The Lord of Spyhov!"

Zbyshko commanded two men to carry him to the nearest cottage and care for him; he himself, without losing time, galloped on with the rest of the servants and the guide to rescue the remainder of the party. On the way he thought that he should find Danusia there, his wife, perhaps not alive, and he urged the last breath out of his horse which struggled breast-deep in snow. Fortunately it was not very far, at the most a few furlongs. In the darkness voices were heard, "Come this way!"—voices from the prince's men who had remained near the people snowed in. Zbyshko rushed up and sprang from his horse.

"To the shovels!"

Two sleighs had been dug out already by those left on guard. The horses and the men in the sleigh were frozen beyond recovery. Where the others were might be known by hills of snow, though not all sleighs were entirely covered. At some were visible horses with their bellies pressed against drifts, as if while exerting themselves in running they had grown stiff in a supreme effort. In front of one pair stood a man sunk to his waist, and as immovable as a column; at more distant sleighs the men had died near the horses while holding their bridles. Evidently death had caught them while trying to free the beasts from snowdrifts. One sleigh at the very end of the line was free altogether. The driver was on the seat with his hands over his ears; behind lay two people; the long lines of snow blown across their breasts were united with a bank at the side and covered them like a blanket, so that they seemed sleeping