The Knights of the Cross

Zbyszko ordered two of his men to carry him to the nearest hut and try to resuscitate him, but himself lost no time but hastened with the rest of the attendants and the guide to rescue the rest of the retinue. On the way it crossed Zbyszko's mind that perhaps he might find his wife Danuska dead, and he urged on his horse who waded up to his breast in snow, to his last breath.

Fortunately it was not distant, a few furlongs at most. In the darkness voices were heard exclaiming: "Byway."[107] They were those who had been left with the snow-covered people.

Zbyszko rushed in and jumped from his horse and shouted: "To the spades!"

Two sleighs were dug out before they reached those in the rear. The horses and the people in the sleighs were frozen to death, and past all hope of reviving. The place where the other teams were could be recognized by the heaps of snow, though not all the sleighs were entirely covered with snow; in front of some of the sleighs were the horses up to their bellies, in the posture of their last effort to run. In front of one team there stood a man up to his belt in snow, holding a lance and motionless as a post; in front of the others were dead attendants holding the horses by their muzzles. Death had apparently overtaken them at the moment when they attempted to extricate the horses from the drifts. One team, at the very end of the train, was not at all in the drift. The driver sat in front bent, his hands protecting his ears, but in the rear lay two people, who, owing to the continuous, long snow-fall, were completely covered. On their breasts, to escape the drift, they lay closely side by side, and the snow covered them like a blanket. They seemed to be sleeping peacefully. But others perished, struggling hard with the snow-drift to the last moment, their benumbed position demonstrated the fact. A few sleighs were upset, others had their poles broken. The spades now and then uncovered horses' backs, bent like bows, and jaws biting the snow. People were within and beside the sleighs. But there was no woman in any of the sleighs. At times even Zbyszko labored with the spade till his brow was covered with perspiration, and at others he looked with palpitating heart into the eyes of the corpses, perchance to discover the face of his beloved. But all in vain. The faces which the torchlight revealed were those of whiskered soldiers of Spychow. Neither Danusia nor any other woman was there.