| NIKOLAY ROSTOV was standing meanwhile at his post waiting for the wolf. He was aware of what must be taking place within the copse from the rush of the pack coming closer and going further away, from the cries of the dogs, whose notes were familiar to him, from the nearness, and then greater remoteness, and sudden raising of the voices of the huntsmen. He knew that there were both young and also old wolves in the enclosure. He knew the hounds had divided into two packs, that in one place they were close on the wolf, and that something had gone wrong. Every second he expected the wolf on his side. He made a thousand different suppositions of how and at what spot the wolf would run out, and how he would set upon it. Hope was succeeded by despair. Several times he prayed to God that the wolf would rush out upon him. He prayed with that feeling of passion and compunction with which men pray in moments of intense emotion due to trivial causes. “Why, what is it to Thee,” he said to God, “to do this for me? I know Thou art great and that it’s a sin to pray to Thee about this, but for God’s sake do make the old wolf come out upon me, and make Karay fix his teeth in his throat and finish him before the eyes of ‘uncle,’ who is looking this way.” A thousand times over in that half-hour, with intent, strained, and uneasy eyes Rostov scanned the thickets at the edge of the copse with two scraggy oaks standing up above the undergrowth of aspen, and the ravine with its overhanging bank, and “uncle’s” cap peering out from behind a bush on the right. “No, that happiness is not to be,” thought Rostov, “yet what would it cost Him! It’s not to be! I’m always unlucky, at cards, in war, and everything.” Austerlitz and Dolohov flashed in distinct but rapid succession through his imagination. “Only once in my life to kill an old wolf; I ask for nothing beyond!” he thought, straining eyes and ears, looking from left to right, and back again, and listening to the slightest fluctuations in the sounds of the dogs. He looked again to the right and saw something running across the open ground towards him. “No, it can’t be!” thought Rostov, taking a deep breath, as a man does at the coming of what he has long been hoping for. The greatest piece of luck had come to him, and so simply, without noise, or flourish, or display to signalise it. Rostov could not believe his eyes, and this uncertainty lasted more than a second. The wolf was running forward; he leaped clumsily over a rut that lay across his path. It was an old wolf with a grey back and full, reddish belly. He was running without haste, plainly feeling secure of being unseen. Rostov held his breath and looked round at the dogs. They were lying and standing about, not seeing the wolf and quite unaware of him. Old Karay had his head turned round, and was angrily searching for a flea, snapping his yellow teeth on his haunches. “Loo! loo! loo!” Rostov whispered, pouting out his lips. The dogs leaped up, jingling the iron rings of the leashes, and pricked up their ears. Karay scratched his hind-leg and got up, pricking up his ears and wagging his tail, on which there were hanging matted locks of his coat. “Loose them? or not loose them?” Nikolay said to himself as the wolf moved away from the copse towards him. All at once the whole physiognomy of the wolf was transformed. He started, seeing—probably for the first time—human eyes fixed upon him; and, turning his head a little towards Rostov, stood still, in doubt whether to go back or forward. “Ay! Never mind, forward!…” the wolf seemed to be saying to himself, and he pushed on ahead, without looking round, softly and not rapidly, with an easy but resolute movement. “Loo! loo!…” Nikolay cried in a voice not his own, and of its own accord his gallant horse galloped at break-neck pace downhill, and leaped over the watercourse to cut off the wolf’s retreat; the hounds dashed on even more swiftly, overtaking it. Nikolay did not hear his own cry; he had no consciousness of galloping; he saw neither the dogs nor the ground over which he galloped. He saw nothing but the wolf, which, quickening its pace, was bounding in the same direction across the glade. Foremost of the hounds was the black and tan, broad-backed bitch, Milka, and she was getting close upon him. But the wolf turned a sidelong glance upon her, and instead of flying at him, as she always had done, Milka suddenly stopped short, her fore-legs held stiffly before her and her tail in the air. “Loo! loo! loo!” shouted Nikolay. The red hound, Lyubima, darted forward from behind Milka, dashed headlong at the wolf, and got hold of him by the hind-leg, but in the same second bounded away on the other side in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed its teeth, rose again, and bounded forward, followed at a couple of yards’ distance by all the dogs: they did not try to get closer. “He’ll get away! No, it’s impossible!” thought Nikolay, still shouting in a husky voice. “Karay! Loo! loo!…” he kept shouting, looking for the old hound, who was his one hope now. Karay, straining his old muscles to the utmost, and watching the wolf intently, was bounding clumsily away from the beast, to cut across his path in front of him. But it was plain from the swiftness of the wolf’s course and the slowness of the hounds that Karay was out in his reckoning. Nikolay saw the copse not far now ahead of him. If once the wolf reached it, he would escape to a certainty. But in front dogs and men came into sight, dashing almost straight towards the wolf. There was still hope. A long, young hound, not one of the Rostovs’—Nikolay did not recognise him—flew from in front straight at the wolf, and almost knocked him over. The wolf got up again with a surprising rapidity and flew at the young hound; his teeth clacked, and the hound, covered with blood from a gash in his side, thrust its head in the earth, squealing shrilly. “Karay! old man!” Nikolay wailed. The old dog, with the tufts of matted hair, quivering on his haunches, had succeeded, thanks to the delay, in cutting across the wolf’s line of advance, and was now five paces in front of him. The wolf stole a glance at Karay, as though aware of his danger, and tucking his tail further between his legs, he quickened his pace. But then—Nikolay could only see that something was happening with Karay—the hound had dashed instantly at the wolf and had rolled in a struggling heap with him into the watercourse before them. The moment when Nikolay saw the dogs struggling with the wolf in the watercourse, saw the wolf’s grey coat under them, his outstretched hind-leg, his head gasping in terror, and his ears turned back (Karay had him by the throat)—the moment when Nikolay saw all this was the happiest moment of his life. He had already grasped the pommel of his saddle to dismount and stab the wolf, when suddenly the beast’s head was thrust up above the mass of dogs, then his fore-legs were on the bank of the watercourse. The wolf clacked his teeth (Karay had not hold of his throat now), leaped with his hind-legs out of the hollow, and with his tail between his legs, pushed forward, getting away from the dogs again. Karay, his hair starting up, had difficulty in getting out of the water-course; he seemed to be bruised or wounded. “My God, why is this!” Nikolay shouted in despair. The uncle’s huntsman galloped across the line of the wolf’s advance from the other side, and again his hounds stopped the wolf, again he was hemmed in. Nikolay, his groom, the uncle, and his huntsman pranced about the beast with shouts and cries of “loo,” every minute on the point of dismounting when the wolf crouched back, and dashing forward again every time the wolf shook himself free and moved towards the copse, where his safety lay. At the beginning of this onset Danilo, hearing the hunters’ cries, had darted out of the copse. He saw that Karay had hold of the wolf and checked his horse, supposing the deed was done. But seeing that the hunters did not dismount from their horses, and that the wolf was shaking himself free, and again making his escape, Danilo galloped his own horse, not towards the wolf, but in a straight line towards the copse, to cut him off, as Karay had done. Thanks to this manœuvre, he bore straight down on the wolf when the uncle’s dogs had a second time fallen behind him. Danilo galloped up in silence, holding a drawn dagger in his left hand, and thrashing the heaving sides of his chestnut horse with his riding whip, as though it were a flail. Nikolay neither saw nor heard Danilo till his panting chestnut darted close by him, and he heard the sound of a falling body and saw Danilo lying in the midst of the dogs on the wolf’s back, trying to get him by the ears. It was obvious to the dogs, to the hunters, and to the wolf that all was over now. The beast, its ears drawn back in terror, tried to get up, but the dogs clung to him. Danilo, as he got up, stumbled, and as though sinking down to rest, rolled with all his weight on the wolf, and snatched him by the ears. Nikolay would have stabbed him, but Danilo whispered: “Don’t; we will string him up!” and shifting his position he put his foot on the wolf’s neck. They put a stick in the wolf’s jaws, fastened it, as it were bridling him with a leash, and tied his legs. Danilo swung the wolf twice from side to side. With happy, exhausted faces they tied the great wolf alive on a horse, that started and snorted in alarm at it; and with all the dogs trooping after and whining at the wolf, they brought it to the place where all were to meet. The wolfhounds had captured two cubs, and the greyhounds three. The party met together to show their booty and tell their stories, and every one went to look at the big wolf, which with its heavy-browed head hanging downward and the stick in its teeth, gazed with its great, glassy eyes at the crowd of dogs and men around it. When they touched him, his fastened legs quivered and he looked wildly and yet simply at all of them. Count Ilya Andreitch too went up and touched the wolf. “Oh, what a great beast!” he said. “He’s an old one, eh?” he asked Danilo, who was standing near him. “That he is, your excellency,” answered Danilo, hurriedly taking off his cap. The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and Danilo’s outburst. “You have a hot temper though, my man,” said the count. Danilo said nothing, but he shyly smiled a smile of childlike sweetness and amiability. |
