"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

heavy waves against the current. The Prince bade his wife and children
farewell, then stood for a long time watching the triangular white sail of
their boat grow smaller in the distance. As he observed the clouds gathering
above the Volga and listened to the wind howling in the rigging, he was
filled with foreboding.
Before long the news reached Guryev that his wife and daughters had
been drowned in the storm. Only his little son had been rescued.
When in the company of others the Prince tried to hide his sorrow. But
the sight of him sitting alone in his tent, gazing fixedly into space, his
face a picture of despair, was enough to wring the hardest heart.
At the end of May 1717 the expedition set out from Guryev for Khiva.
There was a good road, and they had an abundance of water as well as plenty
of forage for the horses. The expedition was able to make up to fifteen
kilometres a day across the salt marshes, and reached the Emba River in a
week's time. There the men and the horses rested for two days, then built
rafts and crossed the river.
Here the sands began. Following a caravan route, the expedition finally
reached the blue Sea of Aral.
The men were tormented by the heat and by thirst. All around them
stretched scorching sands. Time and again the expedition failed to reach the
next well by nightfall. Slowly but surely it was moving towards its doom.
Fedor Matveyev found the march difficult. Although he had a good
physique and endured the heat better than many of the others, a presentiment
of disaster kept nagging at him. Outwardly, however, he was composed. He
encouraged the weary and seemed to know just where to dig shallow wells
during bivouacs. The water brought up was brackish but potable.
Finally the expedition reached Lake Aibugir. Now Khiva was only a few
days' march away.
It had been assumed, when plans for the expedition were first laid,
that Khan Shirgazy was a weak ruler, fearful of his subjects, and would
eagerly accept an offer of Russian military aid. That was no longer the case
in 1717. Khan Shirgazy had brutally suppressed an uprising and was now
stronger than ever before. As the Russians approached Khiva he resolved to
show his enemies just how strong he really was.
One morning a band of Khiva horsemen galloped into view from behind the
hillocks along the lake shore. Brandishing curved sabres and filling the
desert with war cries, they charged the Russian camp.
The attack failed because the sentries were vigilant and the camp was
surrounded by a wall of carts from the baggage-trains. The attacking force
had to dismount and lie prone. The exchange of fare lasted until evening.
During the night the Russians fortified their positions. They dug
ditches on three sides of the camp and built an earthen rampart. The fourth
side was the lake, which was thickly overgrown with reeds. They tied reeds
into bundles and piled them together to conceal the batteries.
The next morning an army of 20 000 men-ten times more than the
expedition had-led by Khan Shirgazy himself, surrounded the camp.
The siege lasted two days. The Russian cannon pounded away steadily;
the men did not run out of either cannon-balls or vodka, and water for
cooling the gun barrels was at hand. Heavy losses were inflicted on the
attacking Khivans. Although the Prince's men were exhausted from their