'My sweet, it is the only course open to us. To go east would take us deeper into Russia. To go west would bring us again into the battle zone, with the risk of being killed by one side or the other, or murdered for such supplies as we have left by some of those poor devils who are being driven mad by hunger. I tell you, Mary, that is our best chance, and I am determined not to die in this damnable country.'
The going proved easier than Roger had thought would be the case, because the intense cold froze the snow solid within a short time of it falling. The country was well wooded with larch, pine and fir trees, so there were plenty of small fallen branches to make fires with whenever they halted. The woods, too, were a god send in enabling them to avoid other people. After the first night and day they had little to fear from the Cossacks, as the
Russian army had passed on in its tireless pursuit of the enemy. But every hour or two they discerned in the distance solitary figures or groups rarely exceeding half a dozen who, although clad in the weirdest assortment of garments, they knew must be deserters. Whenever they were crossing an open space and such dubious characters came in sight, Roger quickly took the horse by the bridle, turned it and headed for the nearest wood, in which it was easy to disappear.
In order further to minimize the risk of dangerous encounters, they decided to travel mostly by night and lie up in a wood, snug in the big sleeping bag during a good part of each day. In the woods, too, they could light a fire where they halted, without its being seen from a distance and attracting unwelcome attention.
On their second day out, after having a meal they were both in the bag and Roger was just dozing off, when he was suddenly roused by a wail of misery from Mary. She was half sitting up, had got out a small mirror she carried, pushed up the bandage round her head and, for the first time, was examining her injured eye.
As Roger was unhappily aware after having dressed it each morning and night, where her eye had been there was now only a black pit containing a multi colored scab. Dropping the mirror, Mary burst into a passion of tears.
Wriggling up, Roger threw an arm about her shoulders and drew her to him as he said quickly, 'Don't cry, darling. Please don't cry. I know it is a terrible misfortune for you. But it might have been worse. You're not blind. You can still see with the other one.'
'It's not that!' she sobbed. 'It's not that. I'm hideous, hideous; and you'll never love me any more.'
'You absurd child.' He kissed her cold cheek. 'Say that again and I'll slap you. Of course I'll go on loving you. Your face has nothing to do with your personality, and it's that I love. Besides, when we get back to England we will have you fitted with a glass eye, and no one will realize that you've lost one of your own. Unless… yes. Stap me, I have it! You shall have a bright blue one. The contrast to your green one will prove most mightily intriguing, and make you the toast of the town.'
His attempt to take her mind off her misfortune by a joke brought a half smile to her cracked lips. But she could not stop crying, and it was a long time before his comforting and caresses persuaded her that her disfigurement would make no difference to his feelings for her.
That night the moon was obscured by clouds and they virtually stumbled on a little town that, from his map, Roger believed to be Zepel. If he was right they had covered twenty-five miles in a little over two days and nights, which he considered to be good going. The town was burned out and, having made a cautious reconnaissance, they reached the conclusion that it had been completely evacuated. The cold was almost petrifying, as a wind was blowing from the east, so they decided to seek shelter among the ruins. Near the far end of the single street they came upon a hovel that still had a roof, but from it moisture had dripped down during the daytime to form a curtain of icicles, two feet long, over the open doorway. Breaking them off they went inside, lit a fire and spent the remainder of the night there.
The next six days and nights were uneventful. At times they saw small towns or villages in the distance, but as soon as they entered still inhabited country they were careful to keep well away from them. The greater part of their way lay through forests where more icicles hung like stalactites from the branches of trees made feathery and sparkling by the snow, and an utter silence reigned. Even on nights when the moon was hidden, the all pervading snow gave them enough light to see their way without difficulty between the trunks of the trees, and these at least broke the force of the wind that never ceased to blow across the open areas. But they found the absolute silence, broken only by the occasional howling of wolves seeking the bodies of dead deserters, eerie and oppressive, and the climate tried them sorely.
Only when, still wearing their furs, they huddled together in the sleeping bag, were they really warm; and they came to dread having to leave it. Frostbite was a constant menace. Even a short exposure numbed their noses, ears and fingers. Not an hour passed but they had to rub these places on one another vigorously, with handfuls of snow, to restore the circulation. When they were on the march, Roger's beard and the eyebrows of them both were always rimed with frost. Often they had difficulty in keeping their teeth from chattering, and Mary's chilblains caused her agonies.
Just before dawn on the eighth day they reached the frozen Dvina. When they had followed its southern bank westward for a few miles they saw at intervals across the broad river palisades running along the lower part of big, snow covered mounds, and Roger realised that the mounds must be the earthworks thrown up to form von Phull's great redoubt, behind which lay Drissa. Since there had been constant fighting in that neighborhood until fairly recently, Roger wondered for a moment why they had not come upon broken gun carriages and other debris that always littered old battlefields; then he realised that such, jetsam would long since have become mounds covered with snow, and that some of the smaller ones they had passed over probably concealed the bodies of men and horses.
By reaching the river they had accomplished nearly a third of their terrible journey and since, apart from the constant gnawing of the cold, they had suffered no ill, they were cheered by the thought that, if their luck held for just over another fortnight, they should reach Riga. But misfortune was about to strike at them again.
With all the other things he had to carry, Roger had been able to bring only five days' rations for the horse. He had counted on coming upon some, means of renewing the supply-perhaps a solitary, still inhabited farmhouse with a barn he could raid, or a barrow of turnips buried for the winter. But such hopes had not materialized, and they had not dared go near any of the villages that were inhabited.
At the time that the Prussians had attacked Mary, Roger's horse had already become pitifully thin; and they had not been long enough at the farmhouse for the plentiful supply of oats there to put much weight on it. So, although Mary had walked for a good half of the time, the hundred mile trek to the Dvina had again reduced the animal to a living skeleton.
When they woke from their daily sleep on the third day they had been unable to give the poor beast any food, they found it dead. This blow necessitated a redistribution of the things on which their lives depended and, although the panniers were considerably lighter than when they had left the farm, much as Roger would now have liked to take the meat from a whole haunch of the horse, he had to limit himself to cutting off only a few pounds, as he would also have to carry the sleeping bag.
Following the course of the river, but now and then taking short cuts across the bends, they trudged on. Neither of them could decide whether the snow storms that half blinded them and sometimes caused them to lose their way but made the atmosphere a little warmer, or a clear sky under which a knife like wind often cut fiercely at their chapped faces, was the greater affliction. Mary's chilblains itched intolerably, then broke and bled and, for a time, Roger was stricken with snow blindness, so she had to lead him.