Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 8.djvu/294

270 himself and ask or take something to recruit his strength, for he was exhausted with hunger and fatigue.

He accordingly ran on towards this house, still about half a verst distant. As he approached, he could see that it was a telegraph office. Two wires left it in westerly and easterly directions, and a third went towards Kolyvan.

It was to be supposed that under the circumstances this station was abandoned; but even if it was, Michael could take refuge there, and wait till nightfall, if necessary, to again set out across the steppe covered with Tartar scouts. He ran up to the door and pushed it open.

A single person was in the room whence the telegraphic messages were dispatched. This was a clerk, calm, phlegmatic, indifferent to all that was passing outside. Faithful to his post, he waited behind his little wicket until the public claimed his services.

Michael ran up to him, and in a voice broken by fatigue, "What do you know?" he asked.

"Nothing," answered the clerk, smiling.

"Are the Russians and Tartars engaged?"

"They say so."

"But who are the victors?"

"I don't know."

Such calmness, such indifference, in the midst of these terrible events, was scarcely credible.

"And is not the wire cut?" said Michael.

"It is cut between Kolyvan and Krasnoiarsk, but it is still working between Kolyvan and the Russian frontier."

"For the government?"

"For the government, when it thinks proper. For the public, when they pay. Ten copecks a word, whenever you like, sir!"

Michael was about to reply to this strange clerk that he had no message to send, that he only implored a little bread and water, when the door of the house was again thrown open.

Thinking that it was invaded by Tartars, Michael made ready to leap out of the window, when two men only entered the room who had nothing of the Tartar soldier about them. One of them held a dispatch, written in pencil, in his hand, and, passing the other, he hurried up to the wicket of the imperturbable clerk.