Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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"Swim the river I must," he muttered, after having traversed the valley in vain, looking for a bridge, boat, or raft of timber; "but, egad, death may be the penalty. Well," he added, with a gleam of ire in his dark grey eyes and a bitter smile on his lip, "there was a time, perhaps, when I little thought that I, Charlie Balgonie, would find a nameless grave in this land of timber, hemp, and salted hides, where caviare is a luxury, train-oil a liqueur, and the air of Siberia deemed healthy for all who have any absurd ideas of political freedom, or are silly enough to imagine that a man may be the lord of his own proper person."

To add to his troubles and discomfort, though the month was April—usually the most serene of the year in Russia—snow-flakes were beginning to fall, rendering yet greater the gloom of the gathering night.

"I was to have found a bridge here. Can that Livonian villain, Podatchkine, have deluded, and then left me to my fate?"

He knew that in his rear, the way by which he had come, lay half-frozen morasses, heathy wastes, and forests of spruce, larch, and silver-leaved firs—vast natural magazines for supplying all Europe with masts and spars—the haunt of the wolf and bear; he knew that to linger or to return were worse than to advance, and that he must cross the stream and seek quarters and guidance at the château, the name of which was yet unknown to him.