I had heard of the wolves of Russia, but had seen but few of them during the terrible days of the retreat.
Perchance the fact that we had rarely left our comrades might have had something to do with it, for naturally the fret and stir of an army in retreat would scare such beasts even at such a season; but here the story was otherwise. They had scented the horses, and nothing now would stop them. Gallop as we would, they gained upon us, and presently were leaping at the throats of the terrified brutes we rode.
In vain we discharged our pistols, struck at them with our swords, and cried for aid to any that might be near us. They came again, with jaws distended and dripping fangs, and we had not gone the third of a league when one caught Léon's horse by the throat and, hanging there, dragged the brute shrieking to the ground.
Surely any man might now have believed that the end had come, and that, whatever else befell, the regiment would see us no more.
There was the horse being torn to pieces before our eyes; there was my nephew striking at the wolves with his sword while I endeavoured maladroitly to lift him to my saddle. The latter task was soon rendered impossible by the ferocity of the savage beasts who now swarmed about us. They had my own horse down before a man could have counted ten, and, leaping from it as it fell, I ran headlong towards the woods for any shelter that could be found.
Our lives now did not seem worth a scudo. There must have been thousands of wolves about the horses; a black wood was upon our left hand, a wide, boundless plain before us. Nevertheless, that dim hope which sustains men in all emergencies remained, and, crying to one another to take courage, we entered the wood. There, to our wonder and amazement, we discerned immediately the haven of our salvation. It was a woodlander's hut, not twenty yards from the open, and hardly had we espied it before we were locked and barred within and laughing at the very magnitude of our misfortune.
It must have been about three o'clock of the morning by this time.
The hut itself had one window looking over the plain, but was as bare of furniture as any room in a madhouse. Léon's tinder-box revealed a floor of baked earth and a stove which lacked fuel, and this, with a shelf upon which there stood empty jars, was all the ornament this fortress possessed. To us, however, it was more beautiful than any palace, and, taking a drain of brandy from our flasks, we climbed up to the window and looked out over the snows.