The fires blazed and
crackled merrily in the frosty air; the yells and songs of the
carousers were echoed back from the opposite shore of the river.
The chill atmosphere, the lowering sky, and the approaching night
could not touch the blood of that wild crowd. Their faces glowed
and their eyes sparkled; they were ready for any deviltry which
their lord might suggest.
Some began to amuse themselves by flinging the clean-picked bones
of deer and hare along the glassy ice of the Volga. Prince Alexis,
perceiving this diverson, cried out in ecstasy,--
"Oh, by St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker, I'll give you better sport
than that, ye knaves! Here's the very place for a reisak,--do
you hear me children?--a reisak! Could there be better ice? and
then the rocks to jump from! Come, children, come! Waska, Ivan,
Daniel, you dogs, over with you!"
Now the reisak was a gymnastic performance peculiar to old
Russia, and therefore needs to be described. It could become
popular only among a people of strong physical qualities, and in a
country where swift rivers freeze rapidly from sudden cold.
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