"Guide me, but let no one see us leave the raft."
Nadia obeyed. Michael and she glided rapidly over the floe
in the obscurity, only broken now and again by the flashes from
the muskets. Nadia crept along in front of Michael. The shot
fell around them like a tempest of hail, and pattered on the ice.
Their hands were soon covered with blood from the sharp and rugged
ice over which they clambered, but still on they went.
In ten minutes, the other side of the barrier was reached.
There the waters of the Angara again flowed freely.
Several pieces of ice, detached gradually from the floe,
were swept along in the current down towards the town.
Nadia guessed what Michael wished to attempt. One of the blocks
was only held on by a narrow strip.
"Come," said Nadia. And the two crouched on the piece of ice,
which their weight detached from the floe.
It began to drift. The river widened, the way was open.
Michael and Nadia heard the shots, the cries of distress,
the yells of the Tartars. Then, little by little, the sounds
of agony and of ferocious joy grew faint in the distance.
"Our poor companions!" murmured Nadia.
For half an hour the current hurried along the block of ice which
bore Michael and Nadia. They feared every moment that it would
give way beneath them. Swept along in the middle of the current,
it was unnecessary to give it an oblique direction until they drew
near the quays of Irkutsk. Michael, his teeth tight set, his ear on
the strain, did not utter a word.
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