In his house we found the whole war council.  Two or three colonists and several Cossacks had galloped from the mountains and announced that the Red detachment was approaching Khathyl but would remain for the night in the forest, where they were building campfires.  In fact, through the house windows we could see the glare of the fires.  It seemed very strange that the enemy should await the morning there in the forest when they were right on the village they wished to capture.

An armed Cossack entered the room and announced that two armed men from the detachment were approaching.  All the men in the room pricked up their ears.  Outside were heard the horses’ hoofs followed by men’s voices and a knock at the door.

“Come in,” said Gay.

Two young men entered, their moustaches and beards white and their cheeks blazing red from the cold.  They were dressed in the common Siberian overcoat with the big Astrakhan caps, but they had no weapons.  Questions began.  It developed that it was a detachment of White peasants from the Irkutsk and Yakutsk districts who had been fighting with the Bolsheviki.  They had been defeated somewhere in the vicinity of Irkutsk and were now trying to make a junction with Kazagrandi.  The leader of this band was a socialist, Captain Vassilieff, who had suffered much under the Czar because of his tenets.

Our troubles had vanished but we decided to start immediately to Muren Kure, as we had gathered our information and were in a hurry to make our report.  We started.  On the road we overtook three Cossacks who were going out to bring back the colonists who were fleeing to the south.  We joined them and, dismounting, we all led our horses over the ice.  The Yaga was mad.  The subterranean forces produced underneath the ice great heaving waves which with a swirling roar threw up and tore loose great sections of ice, breaking them into small blocks and sucking them under the unbroken downstream field.  Cracks ran like snakes over the surface in different directions.  One of the Cossacks fell into one of these but we had just time to save him.  He was forced by his ducking in such extreme cold to turn back to Khathyl.  Our horses slipped about and fell several times.  Men and animals felt the presence of death which hovered over them and momentarily threatened them with destruction.  At last we made the farther bank and continued southward down the valley, glad to have left the geological and figurative volcanoes behind us.  Ten miles farther on we came up with the first party of refugees.  They had spread a big tent and made a fire inside, filling it with warmth and smoke.  Their camp was made beside the establishment of a large Chinese trading house, where the owners refused to let the colonists come into their amply spacious buildings, even though there were children, women and invalids among the refugees.  We spent but half an hour here.  The road as we continued was easy, save