w, and the soldiers, having been
partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these
lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in
trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and
were borne on the breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.

Kosmaroff sat up.

"Give me a piece of bread," he said. "I am famished."

But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.

The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills;
here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead
horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a
hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant
sea on muddy waters.

Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out, conscious
of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands of God.

When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above
the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here
and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big,
low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was
almost morning.

Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were
proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.

"Where are we?" he asked.

Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others
gray and muddy.

"I know where we are," he answered, after a pause. "We have passed
Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
my teeth wouldn't chatter."

"I have secured mine with a piece of bread," mumbled Martin.

Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.

"We cannot travel during the day