rses' hoofs followed by men's
voices and a knock at the door.

"Come in," said Gay.

Two young men entered, their moustaches and beards white and their
cheeks blazing red from the cold. They were dressed in the common
Siberian overcoat with the big Astrakhan caps, but they had no weapons.
Questions began. It developed that it was a detachment of White peasants
from the Irkutsk and Yakutsk districts who had been fighting with the
Bolsheviki. They had been defeated somewhere in the vicinity of Irkutsk
and were now trying to make a junction with Kazagrandi. The leader of
this band was a socialist, Captain Vassilieff, who had suffered much
under the Czar because of his tenets.

Our troubles had vanished but we decided to start immediately to Muren
Kure, as we had gathered our information and were in a hurry to make
our report. We started. On the road we overtook three Cossacks who were
going out to bring back the colonists who were fleeing to the south. We
joined them and, dismounting, we all led our horses over the ice. The
Yaga was mad. The subterranean forces produced underneath the ice great
heaving waves which with a swirling roar threw up and tore loose great
sections of ice, breaking them into small blocks and sucking them under
the unbroken downstream field. Cracks ran like snakes over the surface
in different directions. One of the Cossacks fell into one of these
but we had just time to save him. He was forced by his ducking in such
extreme cold to turn back to Khathyl. Our horses slipped about and fell
several times. Men and animals felt the presence of death which hovered
over them and momentarily threatened them with destruction. At last we
made the farther bank and continued southward down the valley, glad to
have left the geological and figurative volcanoes behind us. Ten miles
farther on we came up with the first party of refugees. They had spread
a big tent and made a fire inside, filling it with warmth and smoke.
Their camp was made beside the establishment of a large Chinese trading
house, where the owners refused to let the colonists come into their
amply spacious buildings, even though there were children, women and
invalids among the refugees. We spent but half an hour here. The road
as we continued was easy, save in places where the snow lay deep. We
crossed the fairly high divide between the Egingol and Muren. Near the
pass one very unexpected event occurred to us. We crossed the mouth of
a fairly