The ice railway not yet being complete, there was but one way to cross Lake Baikal--by horse-power or on foot. High officials and favoured travellers secured sledges; the main body of infantry, including Ivan's regiment, having hastily swallowed a breakfast of army rations, set out on the march across the forty miles of ice plain, at "fatigue step." The bands were forbidden to play, lest the rhythmic tread of the soldiers, instinctively keeping time to the music, should bring too great and concentrated strain upon the ice. Before they were half a league from shore the wind pounced upon its new playthings; it blew upon their sides, their backs, and their faces. It pelted them with ice-drops, with whirling masses of snow. They leaned forward and plodded on, unmurmuring. It roared like a cataract, and howled like wolf-packs; the air was so filled with drift that each man simply followed his file-leader, with no idea of the direction of the march, the van being guided by telegraph-poles set in the ice at short intervals of space. Hands and feet became numb; beards were fringed with icicles; the men in the disordered ranks slipped and stumbled against one another. With the mercury 23° below zero, and a northerly gale, hurled down the entire four hundred miles of unbroken expanse of the lake, the cold was frightful. Ivan turned his head stiffly to mumble something to his neighbour in the ranks. He was no longer there. The subaltern who had answered him on the shore was also missing. Like scores of others he had wandered off the line of march, to fall and die unseen. Ivan bent his head to a fierce blast, muttering "Courage, comrades!" No one replied to him as he staggered uncertainly onward. "Courage, comrades!" shouted Ivan again. His voice was lost in the ceaseless roar of the gale. Ivan peered out from under the mask of ice which had formed across his eyes, from his shaggy brows to his moustache. No one was near him. He was alone with the storm. It seemed an easy thing to lie down in the snow and go to sleep. It would be a joy merely to drop the heavy musket. Nobody knew where he was; the lake would swallow him up, and who would be the wiser? Ivan halted a moment, pondering in his dull way. Suddenly he remembered. That would be disobedience of orders. His officer had said, "It is the Czar's command!" What madness, to think of disobeying the Little Father at St. Petersburg! The peasant-soldier gripped his breast, where the ikon lay, and, taking his course as well as he could from the direction of the wind, staggered on. Whether it was five minutes or an hour he could not tell; but now he saw dim figures around him, plodding silently onward. Whether they were comrades of his own regiment he neither knew nor cared. He was once more, after that moment of individuality, a part of the Russian army, and moved mechanically forward with it.