It is the essence of good generalship, however, to
keep one thing before one at a time, and so we rode silently on
through the snow, leaving these Cossack bivouacs to right and
left. Behind us the black sky was all mottled with a line of
flame which showed where our own poor wretches were trying to
keep themselves alive for another day of misery and starvation.
All night we rode slowly onward, keeping our horses' tails to the
Pole Star. There were many tracks in the snow, and we kept to
the line of these, that no one might remark that a body of
cavalry had passed that way.
These are the little precautions which mark the experienced
officer. Besides, by keeping to the tracks we were most likely
to find the villages, and only in the villages could we hope to
get food. The dawn of day found us in a thick fir-wood, the
trees so loaded with snow that the light could hardly reach us.
When we had found our way out of it it was full daylight, the rim
of the rising sun peeping over the edge of the great snow-plain
and turning it crimson from end to end.
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