“Voilà,” said Barlasch. “That is Kowno. I am done. Go on, mon capitaine. I will lie here, and if I am not dead tomorrow morning, I will join you.”
Louis looked at him with a slow smile.
“I am tired as you,” he said. “We will rest here until the moon rises.”
Already the bare larches threw shadows three times their own length on the snow. Near at hand it glittered like a carpet of diamonds, while the distance was of a pale blue, merging to grey on the horizon. A far-off belt of pines against a sky absolutely cloudless suggested infinite space—immeasurable distance. Nothing was sharp and clearly outlined, but hazy, silvery, as seen through a thin veil. The sea would seem to be our earthly picture of infinite space, but no sea speaks of distance so clearly as the plain of Lithuania—absolutely flat, quite lonely. The far-off belt of pines only leads the eye to a shadow beyond, which is another pinewood; and the traveller walking all day towards it knows that when at length he gets there he will see just such another on the far horizon.
Louis sat down wearily beside Barlasch. As far as eye could see, they were alone in this grim white world. They had nothing to say to each other. They sat and watched the sun go down with drawn eyes and a queer stolidity which comes to men in great cold, as if their souls were numb.
As the sun sank, the shadows turned bluer, and all the snow gleamed like a lake. The silver tints slowly turned to gold; the greys grew darker. The distant lines of pines were almost black now, a silhouette against the golden sky. Near at hand the little inequalities in the snow loomed blue, like deeper pools in shallow water.
The sun sank very slowly, moving along the horizon almost parallel with it towards two bars of golden cloud awaiting it, the bars of the West forming a prison to this poor pale captive of the snows. The stems of a few silver-birch near at hand were rosy now, and suddenly the snow took a similar tint. At the same moment, a wave of cold seemed to sweep across the world.
The sun went down at length, leaving a brownish-red sky. This, too, faded to grey in a few minutes, and a steely cold gripped the world as in a vice.
Louis d’Arragon made a sudden effort and rose to his feet, beneath which the snow squeaked.
“Come,” he said. “If we stay, we shall fall asleep, and then—”
Barlasch roused himself and looked sleepily at his companion. He had a patch of blue on either cheek.
“Come!” shouted Louis, as if to a deaf man. “Let us go on to Kowno, and find out whether he is alive or dead.”
XX
Désirée’s Choice
Our wills and fates do so contrary run,
That our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
Rapp found himself in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an insuperable barrier to the enemy. He had an army which was a paper army only.
He had, according to official returns, thirty-five thousand men. In reality a bare eight thousand could be collected to show a face to the enemy. The rest were sick and wounded. There was no national spirit among these men; they hardly had a language in common. For they were men from Africa and Italy, from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Holland. The majority of them were recruits, raw and of poor physique. All were fugitives, flying before those dread Cossacks whose “hurrah! hurrah!”—the Arabic “kill! kill!”—haunted their fitful sleep at night. They came to Danzig not to fight, but to lie down and rest. They were the last of the great army—the reinforcements dragged to the frontier which many of them had never crossed. For those who had been to Moscow were few and far between. The army of Moscow had perished at Malo-Jaroslavetz, at the Bérésina, in Smolensk and Vilna.
These fugitives had fled to Danzig for safety; and Rapp in crossing the bridge had made a grimace, for he saw that there was no safety here.
The fortifications had been merely sketched out. The ditches were full of snow, the rivers were frozen. All work was at a standstill. Danzig lay at the mercy of the first-comer.
In twenty-four hours every available smith was at work, forging ice-axes and picks. Rapp was going to cut the frozen Vistula and set the river free. The Danzigers laughed aloud.
“It will freeze again in a night,” they said. And it did. So Rapp set the ice-cutters to work again next day. He kept boats moving day and night in the water, which ran sluggish and thick, like porridge, with the desire to freeze and be still.
He ordered the engineers to set to work on the abandoned fortifications. But the ground was hard like granite, and the picks sprang back in the worker’s grip, jarring his bones, and making not so much as a mark on the surface of the earth.
Again the Danzigers laughed.
“It is frozen three feet down,” they said.
The thermometer marked between twenty and thirty degrees of frost every night now. And it was only December—only the beginning of the winter. The Russians were at the Niemen, daily coming nearer. Danzig was full of sick and wounded. The available troops were worn out, frostbitten, desperate. There were only a few doctors, who were without medical stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits, no forage.
No
