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NIKOLAY ROSTOV was standing meanwhile at his post waiting for the wolf. He
was aware of what must be taking place within the copse from the rush of the
pack coming closer and going further away, from the cries of the dogs, whose
notes were familiar to him, from the nearness, and then greater remoteness, and
sudden raising of the voices of the huntsmen. He knew that there were both young
and also old wolves in the enclosure. He knew the hounds had divided into two
packs, that in one place they were close on the wolf, and that something had
gone wrong. Every second he expected the wolf on his side. He made a thousand
different suppositions of how and at what spot the wolf would run out, and how
he would set upon it. Hope was succeeded by despair. Several times he prayed to
God that the wolf would rush out upon him. He prayed with that feeling of
passion and compunction with which men pray in moments of intense emotion due to
trivial causes. “Why, what is it to Thee,” he said to God, “to do this for me? I
know Thou art great and that it's a sin to pray to Thee about this, but for
God's sake do make the old wolf come out upon me, and make Karay fix his teeth
in his throat and finish him before the eyes of ‘uncle,' who is looking this
way.” A thousand times over in that half-hour, with intent, strained, and uneasy
eyes Rostov scanned the thickets at the edge of the copse with two scraggy oaks
standing up above the undergrowth of aspen, and the ravine with its overhanging
bank, and “uncle's” cap peering out from behind a bush on the right. “No, that
happiness is not to be,” thought Rostov, “yet what would it cost Him! It's not
to be! I'm always unlucky, at cards, in war, and everything.” Austerlitz and
Dolohov flashed in distinct but rapid succession through his imagination. “Only
once in my life to kill an old wolf; I ask for nothing beyond!” he thought,
straining eyes and ears, looking from left to right, and back again, and
listening to the slightest fluctuations in the sounds of the dogs. He looked
again to the right and saw something running across the open ground towards him.
“No, it can't be!” thought Rostov, taking a deep breath, as a man does at the
coming of what he has long been hoping for. The greatest piece of luck had come
to him, and so simply, without noise, or flourish, or display to signalise it.
Rostov could not believe his eyes, and this uncertainty lasted more than a
second. The wolf was running forward; he leaped clumsily over a rut that lay
across his path.
It was an old wolf with a grey back and full, reddish belly. He was running
without haste, plainly feeling secure of being unseen. Rostov held his breath
and looked round at the dogs. They were lying and standing about, not seeing the
wolf and quite unaware of him. Old Karay had his head turned round, and was
angrily searching for a flea, snapping his yellow teeth on his haunches. “Loo!
loo! loo!” Rostov whispered, pouting out his lips. The dogs leaped up, jingling
the iron rings of the leashes, and pricked up their ears. Karay scratched his
hind-leg and got up, pricking up his ears and wagging his tail, on which there
were hanging matted locks of his coat.
“Loose them? or not loose them?” Nikolay said to himself as the wolf moved
away from the copse towards him. All at once the whole physiognomy of the wolf
was transformed. He started, seeing—probably for the first time—human eyes fixed
upon him; and, turning his head a little towards Rostov, stood still, in doubt
whether to go back or forward. “Ay! Never mind, forward!…” the wolf seemed to be
saying to himself, and he pushed on ahead, without looking round, softly and not
rapidly, with an easy but resolute movement. “Loo! loo!…” Nikolay cried in a
voice not his own, and of its own accord his gallant horse galloped at
break-neck pace downhill, and leaped over the watercourse to cut off the wolf's
retreat; the hounds dashed on even more swiftly, overtaking it.
Nikolay did not hear his own cry; he had no consciousness of galloping; he
saw neither the dogs nor the ground over which he galloped. He saw nothing but
the wolf, which, quickening its pace, was bounding in the same direction across
the glade. Foremost of the hounds was the black and tan, broad-backed bitch,
Milka, and she was getting close upon him. But the wolf turned a sidelong glance
upon her, and instead of flying at him, as she always had done, Milka suddenly
stopped short, her fore-legs held stiffly before her and her tail in the
air.
“Loo! loo! loo!” shouted Nikolay.
The red hound, Lyubima, darted forward from behind Milka, dashed headlong at
the wolf, and got hold of him by the hind-leg, but in the same second bounded
away on the other side in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed its teeth, rose
again, and bounded forward, followed at a couple of yards' distance by all the
dogs: they did not try to get closer.
“He'll get away! No, it's impossible!” thought Nikolay, still shouting in a
husky voice.
“Karay! Loo! loo!…” he kept shouting, looking for the old hound, who was his
one hope now.
Karay, straining his old muscles to the utmost, and watching the wolf
intently, was bounding clumsily away from the beast, to cut across his path in
front of him. But it was plain from the swiftness of the wolf's course and the
slowness of the hounds that Karay was out in his reckoning. Nikolay saw the
copse not far now ahead of him. If once the wolf reached it, he would escape to
a certainty. But in front dogs and men came into sight, dashing almost straight
towards the wolf. There was still hope. A long, young hound, not one of the
Rostovs'—Nikolay did not recognise him—flew from in front straight at the wolf,
and almost knocked him over. The wolf got up again with a surprising rapidity
and flew at the young hound; his teeth clacked, and the hound, covered with
blood from a gash in his side, thrust its head in the earth, squealing
shrilly.
“Karay! old man!” Nikolay wailed.
The old dog, with the tufts of matted hair, quivering on his haunches, had
succeeded, thanks to the delay, in cutting across the wolf's line of advance,
and was now five paces in front of him. The wolf stole a glance at Karay, as
though aware of his danger, and tucking his tail further between his legs, he
quickened his pace. But then—Nikolay could only see that something was happening
with Karay—the hound had dashed instantly at the wolf and had rolled in a
struggling heap with him into the watercourse before them.
The moment when Nikolay saw the dogs struggling with the wolf in the
watercourse, saw the wolf's grey coat under them, his outstretched hind-leg, his
head gasping in terror, and his ears turned back (Karay had him by the
throat)—the moment when Nikolay saw all this was the happiest moment of his
life. He had already grasped the pommel of his saddle to dismount and stab the
wolf, when suddenly the beast's head was thrust up above the mass of dogs, then
his fore-legs were on the bank of the watercourse. The wolf clacked his teeth
(Karay had not hold of his throat now), leaped with his hind-legs out of the
hollow, and with his tail between his legs, pushed forward, getting away from
the dogs again. Karay, his hair starting up, had difficulty in getting out of
the water-course; he seemed to be bruised or wounded. “My God, why is this!”
Nikolay shouted in despair. The uncle's huntsman galloped across the line of the
wolf's advance from the other side, and again his hounds stopped the wolf, again
he was hemmed in.
Nikolay, his groom, the uncle, and his huntsman pranced about the beast with
shouts and cries of “loo,” every minute on the point of dismounting when the
wolf crouched back, and dashing forward again every time the wolf shook himself
free and moved towards the copse, where his safety lay.
At the beginning of this onset Danilo, hearing the hunters' cries, had darted
out of the copse. He saw that Karay had hold of the wolf and checked his horse,
supposing the deed was done. But seeing that the hunters did not dismount from
their horses, and that the wolf was shaking himself free, and again making his
escape, Danilo galloped his own horse, not towards the wolf, but in a straight
line towards the copse, to cut him off, as Karay had done. Thanks to this
manœuvre, he bore straight down on the wolf when the uncle's dogs had a second
time fallen behind him.
Danilo galloped up in silence, holding a drawn dagger in his left hand, and
thrashing the heaving sides of his chestnut horse with his riding whip, as
though it were a flail.
Nikolay neither saw nor heard Danilo till his panting chestnut darted close
by him, and he heard the sound of a falling body and saw Danilo lying in the
midst of the dogs on the wolf's back, trying to get him by the ears. It was
obvious to the dogs, to the hunters, and to the wolf that all was over now. The
beast, its ears drawn back in terror, tried to get up, but the dogs clung to
him. Danilo, as he got up, stumbled, and as though sinking down to rest, rolled
with all his weight on the wolf, and snatched him by the ears. Nikolay would
have stabbed him, but Danilo whispered: “Don't; we will string him up!” and
shifting his position he put his foot on the wolf's neck. They put a stick in
the wolf's jaws, fastened it, as it were bridling him with a leash, and tied his
legs. Danilo swung the wolf twice from side to side. With happy, exhausted faces
they tied the great wolf alive on a horse, that started and snorted in alarm at
it; and with all the dogs trooping after and whining at the wolf, they brought
it to the place where all were to meet. The wolfhounds had captured two cubs,
and the greyhounds three. The party met together to show their booty and tell
their stories, and every one went to look at the big wolf, which with its
heavy-browed head hanging downward and the stick in its teeth, gazed with its
great, glassy eyes at the crowd of dogs and men around it. When they touched
him, his fastened legs quivered and he looked wildly and yet simply at all of
them. Count Ilya Andreitch too went up and touched the wolf.
“Oh, what a great beast!” he said. “He's an old one, eh?” he asked Danilo,
who was standing near him.
“That he is, your excellency,” answered Danilo, hurriedly taking off his
cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and Danilo's outburst.
“You have a hot temper though, my man,” said the count.
Danilo said nothing, but he shyly smiled a smile of childlike sweetness and
amiability.
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