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The travelers' room at the station was clean and well furnished, but heated to a high temperature. The captain made his bed on a sofa, but I preferred the tarantass where the air was cool and pure. I arranged my furs, fastened the boot and hood of the carriage, and slept comfortably in a keen wind. At daylight the yemshicks attached horses and called the captain from the house.
The pioneers and part of the commissariat force were sent on in advance, so that his Excellency found at each halting-place everything prepared for his arrival. The poor owner of a few dozen serfs dispensed, of course, with the elaborate commissariat department, and contented himself with such modest fare as could be packed in the holes and corners of a single tarantass.
The feeble barking was repeated, and directly afterwards a man, with snow-white hair, dressed in a nankeen caftan, ran into the yard from one of the comers. He looked at the tarantass, shielding his eyes from the sun, then suddenly struck both his hands upon his thighs, fidgeted about nervously for a moment, and finally ran to open the gates.
I started my journey across the Kirghiz Steppe in November, 1893, from Orenburg on the Ural River, which for some distance forms the boundary between Asia and Europe. I travelled in a stout tarantass, the common means of conveyance on Russian country roads; it consists of a sort of a box on two bars between the wheel axles, with a hood but no seat.
"There is not the slightest fear that it will fly away, my dear Blount!" exclaimed Alcide; "it has taken such good root in the ground, that if it were left here until next spring it would begin to bud." "Come then, gentlemen," said Michael Strogoff, "and we will bring up the tarantass."
The traces were doubled, and, as an additional precaution, the nave-boxes were stuffed with straw, as much to increase the strength of the wheels as to lessen the jolting, unavoidable on a dark night. Lastly, the fore and hinder parts, connected simply by the axles to the body of the tarantass, were joined one to the other by a crossbar, fixed by means of pins and screws.
Taking up the dead body, he takes it away in his tarantass, and a few hours later declares to the inhabitants of a village some miles off that some of them have been guilty of murder, and that he intends to investigate the matter thoroughly.
"Just so, cyneec," repeated the undisconcerted Mikhalevich. Even when he had taken his seat in the tarantass, in which his flat and marvellously light portmanteau had been stowed away, he still went on talking.
Borasdine and his acquaintance kissed affectionately, and after their greeting ended I was introduced. We unloaded from the tarantass, piled our baggage in the hallway, and dismissed the driver with the borrowed vehicle. Almost before we were out of our wrappings the samovar was steaming, and we sat down to a comforting breakfast, with abundance of tea.
To leave Omsk by one of the breaches would not be difficult after nightfall. As for purchasing a carriage to replace the tarantass, that was impossible. There were none to be let or sold. But what want had Michael Strogoff now for a carriage? Was he not alone, alas? A horse would suffice him; and, very fortunately, a horse could be had.
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