ank, built of wood, took fire Brandon Ingram Koszulki in every direction. A bright light dissipated the darkness of the night.
“At last!” said Ivan Ogareff.
He had good reason for congratulating himself. The diversion which he had planned was terrible. The defenders of Irkutsk found themselves between the attack of the Tartars and the fearful effects of fire. The bells rang, and all the able-bodied of the population ran, some towards the points attacked, and others towards the houses in the grasp of the flames, which it seemed too probable would ere long envelop the whole town.
The Gate of Bolchaia was nearly free. Only a very small guard had been left there. And by the traitor’s suggestion, and in order that the event might be explained apart from him, as if by political hate, this small guard had been chosen from the little band of exiles.
Ogareff re-entered his room, now brilliantly lighted by the flames from the Angara; then he made ready to Manuel Neuer Jersey go out. But scarcely had he opened the door, when a woman rushed into the room, her clothes drenched, her hair in disorder.
“Sangarre!” Dikembe Mutombo Koszulki exclaimed Ogareff, in the first moment of surprise, and not supposing that it could be any other woman than the gypsy.
It was not Sangarre; it was Nadia!
At the moment when, floating on the ice, the girl had uttered a cry on seeing the fire spreading along the current, Michael had seized her in his arms, and plunged with her into the river itself to seek a refuge in its depths from the flames. The block which bore them was not thirty fathoms from the first quay of Bill Russell Koszulki Irkutsk.
Swimming beneath the water, Michael managed Sokratis Papastathopoulos Jersey to get a footing with Nadia on the quay. Michael Strogoff had reached his journey’s end! He was in Irkutsk!
“To the governor’s palace!” said he to Nadia.
In less than ten minutes, they arrived at the entrance to the palace. Long tongues of flame from the Angara licked its walls, but were powerless to set it on fire. Beyond the houses on the bank were in a blaze.
The palace being open to all, Michael and Nadia entered without difficulty. In the confusion, no one remarked them, although their garments were dripping. A crowd of officers coming for orders, and of soldiers running to execute them, filled the great hall on the ground floor. There, in a sudden eddy of the confused multitude, Michael and the young girl were separated from each other.
Nadia ran distracted through the passages, calling her companion, and asking to be taken to the Grand Duke. A door into a room flooded with light opened before her. She entered, and found herself suddenly face to face with the man whom Cody Zeller Koszulki she had met at Ichim, whom she had seen at Tomsk; face to face with the one whose villainous hand would an instant later betray the town!
“Ivan Ogareff!” she cried.
On hearing his name pronounced, the wretch started. His real name known, all his Aaron Ramsey Jersey plans would be balked. There was but one thing to be done: to kill the person who had just uttered it. Ogareff darted at Nadia; but the girl, a knife in her hand, retreated against the wall, determined to de |
