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Updated: August 1, 2024
The distant howlings continued and came nearer; and then from every glade and alley, down the frozen streams, and through the wide openings of the forest, came by scores and hundreds such a multitude of wolves as we could not have believed to exist in all Lithuania. 'Hand me my gun, and take the reins, Metski, cried Father Cassimer.
For some time it dragged on without a single wolf appearing, though the odour came strong and savoury through cords and straw. 'If I were a wolf myself, I would come for that, said old Metski. The priest quickened his speed, vowing he would not say mass without a skin that night; and we got deeper into the wilderness of oak and pine. Like most of our Lithuanian forests, it had no underwood.
Our hunting-gear was donned in a trice; and with my uncle's most trusty man, Metski, to assist in driving, away we went at full speed to the forest. Father Cassimer was an experienced general in expeditions of the kind; he knew the turns of the woods where the wolves scented best; and when we had got fairly among the tall oaks, down went his pork.
The bravest among us got terrified at these sounds. Metski loudly avowed his belief that the wolves were sent upon us as a punishment for hunting on Christmas-eve, and fell instantly to his prayers.
'Drive for your life! he added in an under tone; but every one in the sledge heard him. Heaven knows how many we killed; but it seemed of no use. Our pork was swallowed, straw and all. The creatures were pressing upon us on every side, as if trying to surround the sledge; and it was fearful to see the leaps that some gray old fellows among them would take at Metski and the horses.
The last time I saw Wenzel and Metski was in the trenches at Minsk, where they had a tough debate regarding our adventure in the forest: the woodman insisting it was the Finn's spell that brought the wolves in such unheard-of numbers, and the peasant maintaining that it was a judgment on our desecration of Christmas-eve.
The priest began to look disappointed; Metski sympathised with him, for he relished a hunt almost as well as his reverence; but all the rest, with the help of the Russians, amused themselves with making game.
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