Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [342]
Laska ran with a gay and preoccupied air over the bog that yielded under her.
Running into the marsh, Laska at once picked up, amidst the familiar smells of roots, marsh grass, rust, and the alien smell of horse dung, the bird smell spread all through the place, that same strong-smelling bird that excited her more than anything else. Here and there over the moss and marsh burdock this smell was very strong, but it was impossible to tell in which direction it grew stronger or weaker. To find the direction she had to go further downwind. Not feeling her legs under her, moving at a tense gallop so that she could stop at each leap if necessary, Laska ran to the right, away from the morning breeze blowing from the east, and then turned upwind. Breathing in the air with flared nostrils, she sensed at once that there were not only tracks but they themselves were there, and not one but many. She slowed the speed of her run. They were there, but precisely where she was still unable to tell. She had already begun a circle to find the place when her master’s voice suddenly distracted her. ‘Here, Laska!’ he said, pointing in a different direction. She paused briefly, as if to ask if it would not be better to finish what she had begun. But he repeated the order in an angry voice, pointing to a water-flooded hummocky spot where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending to search in order to give him pleasure, ran all over the hummocks and then went back to the former place, and immediately sensed them again. Now, when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and, not looking where she put her feet, stumbling in vexation over high hummocks and getting into the water, but managing with her strong, supple legs, she began the circle that would make everything clear to her. Their smell struck her more and more strongly, more and more distinctly, and suddenly it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was there, behind that hummock, five steps away from her. She stopped and her whole body froze. On her short legs she could see nothing ahead of her, but she knew from the smell that it was sitting no more than five steps away. She stood, sensing it more and more and delighting in the anticipation. Her tense tail was extended and only its very tip twitched. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears pricked up a little. One ear had got folded back as she ran, and she was breathing heavily but cautiously, and still more cautiously she turned more with her eyes than her head to look at her master. He, with his usual face but with his ever terrible eyes, was coming, stumbling over hummocks, and extremely slowly as it seemed to her. It seemed to her that he was moving slowly, yet he was running.
Noticing the special way Laska was searching, pressed flat to the ground, as if raking it with her hind legs in big strides, and with her mouth slightly open, Levin understood that she was after great snipe, and, praying to God in his heart that he would be successful, especially with the first bird, he ran to her. Coming right up to her, he began looking in front of him from his height and saw with his eyes what she had seen with her nose. In a space between two hummocks, close to one of them, he made out a great snipe. It was listening, its head turned. Then, fluffing its wings slightly and folding them again, it wagged its behind clumsily and disappeared round the corner.
‘Flush it, flush it,’ cried Levin, nudging Laska from behind.
‘But I can’t flush anything,’ thought Laska. ‘Where will I flush it from? I can sense them from here, but if I move forward, I won’t be able to tell where they are or what they are.’ Yet