“If it is God’s will!” answered the old man.
“Against His will there is nothing to be done.”
“You hear them,” said Alcide.
“Yes,” replied Michael, “but God is with us!”
The situation became more and more serious.
Should the raft be stopped, not only would the fugitives not reach Irkutsk, but they would be obliged to leave their floating platform, for it would be very soon smashed to pieces in the ice.
The osier ropes would break, the fir trunks torn asunder would drift under the hard crust, and the unhappy people would have no refuge but the ice blocks themselves.
Then, when day came, they would be seen by the Tartars, and massacred without mercy!
Michael returned to the spot where Nadia was waiting for him.
He approached the girl, took her hand, and put to her the invariable question:
“Nadia, are you ready?” to which she replied as usual,
“I am ready!”
For a few versts more the raft continued to drift amongst the floating ice.
Should the river narrow, it would soon form an impassable barrier.
Already they seemed to drift slower.
Every moment they encountered severe shocks or were compelled to make detours; now, to avoid running foul of a block, there to enter a channel, of which it was necessary to take advantage.
At length the stoppages became still more alarming.
There were only a few more hours of night.
Could the fugitives not reach Irkutsk by five o’clock in the morning, they must lose all hope of ever getting there at all.
At half-past one, notwithstanding all efforts, the raft came up against a thick barrier and stuck fast.
The ice, which was drifting down behind it, pressed it still closer, and kept it motionless, as though it had been stranded.
At this spot the Angara narrowed, it being half its usual breadth.
This was the cause of the accumulation of ice, which became gradually soldered together, under the double influence of the increased pressure and of the cold.
Five hundred feet beyond, the river widened again, and the blocks, gradually detaching themselves from the floe, continued to drift towards Irkutsk.
It was probable that had the banks not narrowed, the barrier would not have formed.
But the misfortune was irreparable, and the fugitives must give up all hope of attaining their object.
Had they possessed the tools usually employed by whalers to cut channels through the ice-fields—had they been able to get through to where the river widened—they might have been saved.
But they had nothing which could make the least incision in the ice, hard as granite in the excessive frost.
What were they to do?
At that moment several shots on the right bank startled the unhappy fugitives.
A shower of balls fell on the raft.
The devoted passengers had been seen.
Immediately afterwards shots were heard fired from the left bank.
The fugitives, taken between two fires, became the mark of the Tartar sharpshooters.
Several were wounded, although in the darkness it was only by chance that they were hit.
“Come, Nadia,” whispered Michael in the girl’s ear.
Without making a single remark, “ready for anything,” Nadia took Michael’s hand.
“We must cross the barrier,” he said in a low tone.
“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.