Nadia stopped.
"Yes!" said Michael. "It is Serko barking! . . . He has
followed his master!"
"Nicholas!" called the girl. Her cry was unanswered.
Michael listened. Nadia gazed over the plain illumined
now and again with electric light, but she saw nothing.
And yet a voice was again raised, this time murmuring in a
plaintive tone, "Michael!"
Then a dog, all bloody, bounded up to Nadia.
It was Serko! Nicholas could not be far off! He alone
could have murmured the name of Michael! Where was he?
Nadia had no strength to call again. Michael, crawling on
the ground, felt about with his hands.
Suddenly Serko uttered a fresh bark and darted towards a gigantic bird
which had swooped down. It was a vulture. When Serko ran towards it,
it rose, but returning struck at the dog. The latter leapt up at it.
A blow from the formidable beak alighted on his head, and this time
Serko fell back lifeless on the ground.
At the same moment a cry of horror escaped Nadia. "There . . . there!"
she exclaimed.
A head issued from the ground! She had stumbled against it
in the darkness.
Nadia fell on her knees beside it. Nicholas buried up to his neck,
according to the atrocious Tartar custom, had been left in the steppe
to die of thirst, and perhaps by the teeth of wolves or the beaks
of birds of prey!
Frightful torture for the victim imprisoned in the ground--
the earth pressed down so that he cannot move, his arms
bound to his body like those of a corpse in its coffin!
The miserable wretch, living in the mold of clay from which he is
powerless to break out, can only long for the death which is
so slow in coming!
There the Tartars had buried their prisoner three days before!
For three days, Nicholas waited for the help which now came too late!
The vultures had caught sight of the head on a level with the ground,
and for some hours the dog had been defending his master against
these ferocious birds!
Michael dug at the ground with his knife to release his friend!
The eyes of Nicholas, which till then had been closed, opened.
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