I am of an age and strength to tell you so." Michael went up to the postmaster and laid his two powerful hands on his shoulders.
Then in a peculiarly calm tone, "Be off, my friend," said he: "be off! I could kill you." The postmaster understood.

"I like him better for that," he muttered and retired without another word.
At eight o'clock the next morning, the 24th of July, three strong horses were harnessed to the tarantass.

Michael Strogoff and Nadia took their places, and Ichim, with its disagreeable remembrances, was soon left far behind.
At the different relays at which they stopped during the day Strogoff ascertained that the berlin still preceded them on the road to Irkutsk, and that the traveler, as hurried as they were, never lost a minute in pursuing his way across the steppe.
At four o'clock in the evening they reached Abatskaia, fifty miles farther on, where the Ichim, one of the principal affluents of the Irtych, had to be crossed.

This passage was rather more difficult than that of the Tobol.

Indeed the current of the Ichim was very rapid just at that place.