While this contest was being waged Katina, though dizzy from the effects of the stone, bent backwards, and with a strength of wrist marvellous in a slender maiden, she pulled the horses so far back on their haunches as to cause their front hoofs to rise and describe circles in the air. Poised thus she lashed them with a savagery justified only by the occasion, though even in that moment of peril it went to her heart to ill-treat her favorites; and then, with a warning shout, she launched the maddened steeds pell-mell upon the crowd in front, endeavoring also to clear the way by striking out to right and left with her reddened whip.
The crowd facing the troika divided like water cleft by the hand, and the vehicle flew forward with nothing to oppose it. A double line of faces seemed to be rushing by; oaths and cries; a jolt, occasioned by the troika bounding over a prostrate body; another, more violent, which left a sickening sensation in the mouth; and the moment afterwards the vehicle, with its bells wildly jangling, was clear of the press and racing down the Troitzkoi Prospekt, the very embodiment of the wind, followed by the yells of the baffled crowd.
"Bravo, Katina!" cried Paul. "You are the princess of charioteers. A narrow shave, that--eh Noel?"
But, on turning to his companion, Paul gave a cry of horror. Trevisa lay helplessly on the seat of the troika, his face as white as china, his teeth set in agony, in his eyes an awful look.
Paul's cry drew Katina's attention to Trevisa. She immediately pulled up the horses.
"Mary, mother of angels!" she cried in a tone of anguish. "He has been stabbed; stabbed in the side!"
And all the womanhood of her nature asserting itself, she gently raised Trevisa's head, and pillowed it upon her breast, regardless of the blood that flowed down her dress.
"It was Russakoff," gasped Trevisa. "Paul," he continued, seizing his friend's wrist. "Remember! it is the furies, the furies of--of--"
The act of speaking brought a rush of blood to his mouth, and ere he could finish the strange utterance, he was gone.
"Jesu Maria, he's dead!" murmured Katina in awe; and then, her mood changing, she added with a wild laugh, "Russakoff has earned his roubles."