Jules Verne

“ At every sharp angle of the pass it became necessary to lay all hands on the Fair Rambler, lest it should knock, fore or aft, against the edges of the rocks.
These defiles in the Urals are not the work of man. Nature alone has wrought a passage for the outpourings of the chains through these meanderous clifts. ”

“ He is a political convict, a man of what they call noble birth, and as much fortune as you like. Now, his secret is known to nobody but the said Cascabel and his wife—”
“How did you come to know it?”
“By a conversation we overheard the other day at Mouji between the showman and his Russian friend.”
“And his name is—?”
“For the world at large, his name is Sergius; but in reality it is Count Narkine; and it's as much as his life is worth, if ever he is caught on Russian ground.” ”

“ But, since Ortik's itinerary had brought them farther north, it was better to enter the pass of the Petchora, and go down, afterwards, as far as Perm.
That is what they proposed doing on the very next morning.
When daylight came, they were able to ascertain how considerable the number of their assailants had been. Should they have succeeded in forcing their way into the Fair Rambler, not one of its occupants would have survived the carnage.
Two or three scores of wolves lay dead on the ground,—of those large-sized wolves, so formidable to the wayfarers across the steppe. ”

“ Even before this recent siege, the billows and the squalls had played havoc with the harmony of its coats of paint and the relief of its gilt borders. The snow-drifts had half slashed away the escutcheon of the Cascabels. What time and skill it would now take the artist to restore its ancient luster! ”

“ But what we have done, there is another man that has done it, too, in the hope that no one would go ferret him out among a lot of acrobats. He is a Russian, who has no more right than we have to set his foot in Russia, although the charges against him aren't the same color as ours. ”

“ The main body had fled as if the devil was after them; and even he could hardly have “made it hotter” for them. As to the two paraffined animals, their charred remains were discovered a few hundred paces away from the clearing.
And now, one question had to be solved: at this end of the Petchora pass, the Fair Rambler was at a considerable distance from the nearest zavody, for there are few of them on the eastern side of the Ural.
“How shall we manage?” asked John. “Our reindeer have run away—”
“If they had only run away,” answered Mr. Cascabel, “we might perhaps get them back again ”

“ Seven men were there; Ortik and Kirschef had joined them; they were all under a tree, and this is what Kayette overheard of the conversation, carried on in Russian.
“Devilish lucky,” said Ortik, “that I took the Petchora pass! A fellow is always sure to meet old chums this way! ”