at this crisis, gathered about them.
The group was sufficiently large; there were about fifty men all told.
A couple of hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery
bridge, which had broken down the day before; the major saw this, and
"Let us make a raft!" he cried.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole group hurried
to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men began to pick up iron clamps
and to hunt for planks and ropes--for all the materials for a raft, in
short. A score of armed men and officers, under command of the major,
stood on guard to protect the workers from any desperate attempt on the
part of the multitude if they should guess their design. The longing for
freedom, which inspires prisoners to accomplish impossibilities, cannot
be compared with the hope which lent energy at that moment to these
forlorn Frenchmen.

"The Russians are upon us! Here are the Russians!" the guard shouted to
the workers.

The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, and more
substantial. Generals, colonels, and common soldiers all alike bent
beneath the weight of wagon-wheels, chains, coils of rope, and planks of
timber; it was a modern realization of the building of Noah's ark. The
young Countess, sitting by her husband's side, looked on, regretful that
she could do nothing to aide the workers, though she helped to knot the
lengths of rope together.

At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out into the river,
while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that must keep it moored to
the shore. The moment that they saw their handiwork floating on
the Beresina, they sprang down onto it from the bank with callous
selfishness. The major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held back
Stephanie and the general; but a shudder ran through him when he saw the
landing place black with people, and men crowding down like playgoers
into the pit of a theatre.

"It was I who thought of the raft, you savages!" he cried. "I have saved
your lives, and you will not make room for me!"

A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at the edge took up stout
poles, trust them against the bank with all their might, so as to shove
the raft out and gain an impetus at its starting upon a journey across a
sea of floating ice and dead bodies towards the other shore.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu_! I will knock some of you off into the water if
you don't make room for the major and his two companions," shouted