ve!"

"Do as I do, and drag them on."

"The storm will come back!"

"Do you mean to obey?"

"Do you order it?"

"The Father orders it!" answered Michael, for the first time invoking
the all-powerful name of the Emperor.

"Forward, my swallows!" cried the iemschik, seizing one horse, while
Michael did the same to the other.

Thus urged, the horses began to struggle onward. They could no longer
rear, and the middle horse not being hampered by the others, could keep
in the center of the road. It was with the greatest difficulty that
either man or beasts could stand against the wind, and for every three
steps they took in advance, they lost one, and even two, by being forced
backwards. They slipped, they fell, they got up again. The vehicle ran a
great risk of being smashed. If the hood had not been securely fastened,
it would have been blown away long before. Michael Strogoff and the
iemschik took more than two hours in getting up this bit of road, only
half a verst in length, so directly exposed was it to the lashing of the
storm. The danger was not only from the wind which battered against the
travelers, but from the avalanche of stones and broken trunks which were
hurtling through the air.

Suddenly, during a flash of lightning, one of these masses was seen
crashing and rolling down the mountain towards the tarantass. The
iemschik uttered a cry.

Michael Strogoff in vain brought his whip down on the team, they refused
to move.

A few feet farther on, and the mass would pass behind them! Michael saw
the tarantass struck, his companion crushed; he saw there was no time to
drag her from the vehicle.

Then, possessed in this hour of peril with superhuman strength, he threw
himself behind it, and planting his feet on the ground, by main force
placed it out of danger.

The enormous mass as it passed grazed his chest, taking away his breath
as though it had been a cannon-ball, then crushing to powder the flints
on the road, it bounded into the abyss below.

"Oh, brother!" cried Nadia, who had seen it all by the light of the
flashes.

"Nadia!" replied Michael, "fear nothing!"

"It is not on my own account that I fear!"

"God is with us, sister!"

"With me truly, brother, since He has sent thee in my way!" murmured the
young girl.

The impetus the tarantass had received was not to be lost, and the tired
horses once more moved forward. Dragged, so to speak, by Michael and the
iemschik, they toiled on tow