Platoff travelled very swiftly, and in state: he himself sat in the calash, and on the box sat two Cossacks of the Imperial Suite[20] with nagaikas,[21] one on each side of the coachman, whom they belabored unmercifully, so that he should drive at a gallop. And if one of these Cossacks fell into a doze, Platoff kicked him out of the calash, and they drove on harder than ever. These means of encouragement operated so efficaciously that it was impossible to bring the horses to a halt at a single posting-station, and they always over-ran the stopping-place by a hundred leaps. Then the Suite-Cossack would work upon the coachman in the opposite quarter again, and they would return to the entrance.

And in this same fashion did they roll into Tula; at first they flew a hundred leaps beyond the Moscow barrier, and then the Cossack worked upon the coachman in the opposite quarter, with his nagaika, and fresh horses were put in at the porch.

Platoff did not alight from the calash himself, but merely commanded a Suite-Cossack to bring to him, as speedily as possible, the master-workman with whom he had left the flea.

One Suite-Cossack ran to make them fetch the work which was to put the English to shame, as quickly as possible, and his Cossack had barely departed when Platoff despatched after him courier after courier, that all possible haste might be made.

When he had sent off all the Cossacks of the Suite on the run, he began to despatch simple members of the curious public, and even thrust his own legs out of the calash in his impatience, and was on the point of rushing off himself, and fairly gnashed his teeth—everything seemed so slow to him.

Such, at that time, was the demand that everything should be very quick and exact, that not a single moment might be wasted to Russian usefulness.

[20] By the transposition of a letter, the old armorer contrives to call them "whistle-Cossacks."