Many civilians joined this bizarre, midnight march through the snow forest and swamps, and made the retreat a spectacle of wantonous disorder, as stoical men and wailing women strove heavily on, bent under the torturing weight of bundled treasures, which, under duress of fatigue, one by one were reluctantly abandoned, leaving a pathetic havoc of cluttering waste in the trail; and soldiers, weakened by much fasting and sleepless battle nights, lurched in the darkness, fell and lay in the cold snow, and had to be struck and urged on by violent means, so grateful was any surcease from further excruciating effort. Late the next day, a merciful halt for the night was made at Shaguvari, where a rear detached outpost of Shenkurst had been maintained, and which outnumbering, advance enemy patrols had vainly striven to dislodge. But the disheartening march was resumed in the morning, when the Bolsheviks were reported collecting in force to cut off retreat downstream. So Shaguvari was added to the sum of Russian villages fed to fires of the Allied cause and became another charred ruin on the Vaga. At villages outside of Kitsa, twenty miles further, trenches were dug in the snow, and barricades improvised of trees, in order that the driven troops might catch their breath. And on the Dvina, now only a few miles away, new positions were taken, where the imperiled River Column could be drawn back, and the consolidated Allied forces stand embattled in a desperate last defense of Bereznik, for if Bereznik fell, all knew it meant the beginning of the siege of unfortified Archangel. But the delaying action was prolonged beyond the most sanguine dream of hope, and at Vistafka and Yeveevskaya, Maximofskaya and Ignatevskaya, the neighboring villages of Kitsa, the Americans held out, relieved in turns by British troops, and the remaining Slavic allies, who atoned for much by a heaven bestowed blunder that saved a surrounded post of the Americans. These places, with their unpronounceable Slavic names, will be remembered always by the Vaga men, for here during Arctic February and March days, they fought savage, bloody fights in the mounting snowdrifts, and performed deeds of sublime sacrifice and courage, that will never be known save by those who were there. They were still at Kitsa, and had not given ground, when the first redolence of spring softened the rasping, winter winds, and made the Bolshevik Commander draw back his artillery in fear of being mired in the yielding snow roads.