CHAPTER XLVII.

The evening after we passed the Irtish, a severe bouran arose.  As the night advanced the wind increased.  The road was filled and apparently obliterated.  The yemshicks found it difficult to keep the track, and frequently descended to look for it.  Each interval of search was a little longer than the preceding one, so that we passed considerable time in impatient waiting.  About midnight we reached a station, where we were urged to rest until morning, the people declaring it unsafe to proceed.  A slight lull in the storm decided us and the yemshicks to go forward, but as we set out from the station it seemed like driving into the spray at the foot of Niagara.  Midway between the station, we wandered from the route and appeared hopelessly lost, with the prospect of waiting until morning.

Just before nightfall, we saw three wolves on the steppe, pointing their sharp noses in our direction, and apparently estimating how many dinners our horses would make.  Whether they took the mammoth into account I cannot say, but presume he was not considered.  Wolves are numerous in all Siberia, and are not admired by the biped inhabitants.  When our road seemed utterly lost, and our chances good for a bivouac in the steppe, we heard a dismal howl in a momentary lull of the wind.

“VOLK,” (wolf,) said the yemshick, who was clearing away the snow near the sleigh.

Again we heard the sound, and saw the horses lift their ears uneasily.

An instant later the fury of the wind returned.  The snow whirled in dense clouds, and the roaring of the tempest drowned all other sounds.  Had there been fifty howling wolves, within a hundred yards of us, we could have known nothing until they burst upon us through the curtain of drifting snow.

It was a time of suspense.  I prepared to throw off my outer garments in case we were attacked, and roused the doctor, who had been some time asleep.  At the cry of “wolf,” he was very soon awake, though he did not lose that calm serenity that always distinguished him.  The yemshicks continued their search for the road, one of them keeping near the sleigh and the other walking in circles in the vicinity.  Our position was not enviable.

[Illustration:  LOST IN A SNOW STORM.]

To be served up au natural to the lupine race was never my ambition, and I would have given a small sum, in cash or approved paper, for a sudden transportation to the Astor House, but with my weight and substance, all the more desirable to the wolves, a change of base was not practicable.  Our only fire-arms were a shot-gun and a pistol, the latter unserviceable, and packed in the doctor’s valise.  Of course the wolves would first eat the horses, and reserve us for dessert.  We should have felt, during the preliminaries, much like those unhappy persons, in the French revolution, who were last in a batch of victims to the guillotine.