s a
mass of floating corpses.

The retrograde movement of those who now fell back into the plain
to escape the death before them was so violent, and their concussion
against those who were advancing from the rear so terrible, that numbers
were smothered or trampled to death. The Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres
owed their lives to their carriage, behind which Philippe forced them,
using it as a breastwork. As for the major and the grenadier, they found
their safety in their strength. They killed to escape being killed.

This hurricane of human beings, the flux and reflux of living bodies,
had the effect of leaving for a few short moments the whole bank of the
Beresina deserted. The multitude were surging to the plain. If a few men
rushed to the river, it was less in the hope of reaching the other bank,
which to them was France, than to rush from the horrors of Siberia.
Despair proved an aegis to some bold hearts. One officer sprang
from ice-cake to ice-cake, and reached the opposite shore. A soldier
clambered miraculously over mounds of dead bodies and heaps of ice. The
multitude finally comprehended that the Russians would not put to death
a body of twenty thousand men, without arms, torpid, stupid, unable
to defend themselves; and each man awaited his fate with horrible
resignation. Then the major and the grenadier, the general and his wife,
remained almost alone on the river bank, a few steps from the spot where
the bridge had been. They stood there, with dry eyes, silent, surrounded
by heaps of dead. A few sound soldiers, a few officers to whom the
emergency had restored their natural energy, were near them. This group
consisted of some fifty men in all. The major noticed at a distance
of some two hundred yards the remains of another bridge intended for
carriages and destroyed the day before.

"Let us make a raft!" he cried.

He had hardly uttered the words before the whole group rushed to the
ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood
and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable for
the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers, who were
armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the workers
against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the crowd,
if their scheme was discovered. The instinct of freedom, strong in all
prisoners, inspiring them to miraculous acts, can only be compared with
that which now drove to action thes