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The water was muddy.... White waves splashed on the clay, but the Irtysh itself made no roar or din, but gave forth a strange sound as though someone were nailing up a coffin under the water.... The further bank was a flat, disconsolate plain.... You often dream of the Bozharovsky pool; in the same way now I shall dream of the Irtysh.... But behold a ferry.
We must be ferried across to the other side. He advises us to wait for calm weather.... And so I am sitting at night in a hut on a lake at the very edge of the Irtysh. I feel a penetrating dampness to the very marrow of my bones, and a loneliness in my soul; I hear my Irtysh banging on the coffins and the wind howling, and wonder where I am, why I am here.
Upon another side he found himself weakened by the defection of the mirza Karatcha, who, abandoning him in his misfortune, had drawn away a great part of his troops, and was getting ready to encamp in the country of Lym, near a large lake, above the junction of the Tara with the Irtysh.
I was prevented from turning back partly by obstinacy and partly by the desire to get out of these dreary parts as quickly as possible. We began driving through the lakes.... My God, I have never experienced anything like it in my life! Where was I? All around, desert, dreariness; the bare sullen bank of the Irtysh in sight.... We drive into the very biggest lake.
Towards evening I am told at the station I can't go on further, as everything is under water, the bridges have been carried away, and so on. I had not driven more than five versts when I saw the land on the bank of the Irtysh all covered with great lakes, the road disappeared under water, and the bridges on the road really had been swept away or had decayed.
From the Irtysh and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hands of Timur; his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his name.
Iermak having made himself master of the enemy's camp, found rich booty there, consisting of provisions of all kinds, as well as a large number of tuns of honey, intended for the consumption of the sovereign. The third combat, on the Irtysh, was bloody, and stubbornly fought.
Farther on in the canton of Tzingal, at the place where the Irtysh, contracted by the mountains, precipitates its rapid course, a multitude of armed men awaited the Cossacks. But a discharge of musketry put them to flight, and the Cossacks took the little town of Nazym, where they found only women and children, stricken with terror and awaiting death.
For instance, they bring out not a proper carriage but a common, jolting cart. I refuse to travel in the jolting cart, I insist, and the carriage is sure to appear, though they may have declared that there was no such thing in the whole village, and so on. Well, I suspected that the Irtysh floods were invented simply to avoid driving me by night through the mud. I protested and told them to start.
I am going to-day to buy rubber overshoes. Shall I find a letter from you at Irkutsk? Ask Lika not to leave such big margins in her letters. Your Homo Sachaliensis, A. CHEKHOV. My greetings, honoured Marya Vladimirovna! I meant to write you a farewell letter from Moscow, but I had not time; I write to you now sitting in a hut on the bank of the Irtysh. It is night.
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