Page 1098 - war-and-peace

karin who gazed rapturously at him with wide-open eyes.
‘Will you believe it, Makarka, it took one’s breath away, the
rate we flew. We came across a train of loaded sleighs and
drove right over two of them. Eh?’
‘Those were horses!’ Balaga continued the tale. ‘That
time I’d harnessed two young side horses with the bay in
the shafts,’ he went on, turning to Dolokhov. ‘Will you be-
lieve it, Theodore Ivanych, those animals flew forty miles?
I couldn’t hold them in, my hands grew numb in the sharp
frost so that I threw down the reins‘Catch hold yourself,
your excellency!’ says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom
of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn’t a case of urging
them on, there was no holding them in till we reached the
place. The devils took us there in three hours! Only the near
one died of it.’

1098 War and Peace