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Winter had set in early and suddenly, and one day, as the
Prince and his retainers emerged from the forest with their
forenoon's spoil, and found themselves on the bank of the Volga,
the water was already covered with a thin sheet of ice. Fires were
kindled, a score or two of hares and a brace of deer were skinned,
and the flesh placed on sticks to broil; skins of mead foamed and
hissed into the wooden bowls, and the cask of unbroached wine
towered in the midst. Prince Alexis had a good appetite; the meal
was after his heart; and by the time he had eaten a hare and half
a flank of venison, followed by several bowls of fiery wine, he was
in the humor for sport. He ordered a hole cut in the upper side of
the barrel, as it lay; then, getting astride of it, like a grisly
Bacchus, he dipped out the liquor with a ladle, and plied his
thirsty serfs until they became as recklessly savage as he.
They were scattered over a slope gently falling from the dark,
dense fir-forest towards the Volga, where it terminated in a rocky
palisade, ten to fifteen feet in height.


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