As I ran, I saw an officer in uniform leap from the interior of the _droshka_, and draw his sword in preparation for my attack, while his _yemschik_, whip in hand, scrambled from the snow, and assumed a place beside him. They evidently supposed the attack to be of a very different character than it really was. The wounded horse was struggling and kicking, and I found time to think of the grave danger that its hoofs might injure Zara, whom I judged to be unconscious from fright, or because of the shock; and so, heedless of my own necessities in undertaking an assault upon the two men who now faced me, I fired a third bullet into the maddened animal. Then, as I sprang to the attack, I saw and recognized the man who confronted me, and my heart bounded with thanksgiving that I had taken that route to the palace. I recognized Alexis Durnief.
The report of his arrest had been false, or he had managed in some way to escape; and even then, in that instant of rushing onward upon the two men, I could not help wondering by what means he had managed to entice Zara from the house in which she had taken refuge. I had two bullets remaining in my revolver; at least I thought so, and I raised it, and pulled the trigger a fourth time, thus placing the _yemschik_ effectually out of that combat, and rendering it impossible for him ever to engage in others; and then, when barely ten feet away from the scoundrelly captain, I leveled the weapon at him and ordered him to throw down his sword. He laughed derisively, for he was not a coward, and he knew that death would be far preferable to the fate that would be his, if he were captured alive.
"So! It is my friend Dubravnik, is it?" he said, insolently, but in a tone as cool as though he were greeting me in a ballroom. "You have killed my horses, and my _yemschik_; why not do the same for me?"
To shoot a man like that, was against every impulse of my soul; and yet he was armed with a weapon as deadly as mine, if once I should get within reach of its point. I possessed none with which to meet him on even ground. But, inside the _droshka_, was unquestionably the unconscious form of the woman I loved. The occasion was a crisis. There could be no temporizing. Zara must be rescued.