Azya urged his horse up so closely to Basia’s pony that his stirrup
almost touched hers. He rode forward a few steps in silence; during
this time he strove to calm himself finally, and wondered why
calmness came to him with such effort, since he had Basia in his
hands, and there was no human power which could take her from him.
But he did not know that in his soul, despite every probability,
despite every evidence, there glimmered a certain spark of hope
that the woman whom he desired would answer with a feeling like his
own. If that hope was weak, the desire for its object was so strong
that it shook him as a fever. The woman would not open her arms,
would not cast herself into his embrace, would not say those words
over which he had dreamed whole nights: “Azya, I am thine;” she
would not hang with her lips on his lips,--he knew this. But how
would she receive his words? What would she say? Would she lose all
feeling, like a dove in the claws of a bird of prey, and let him
take her, just as the hapless dove yields itself to the hawk? Would
she beg for mercy tearfully, or would she fill that wilderness
with a cry of terror? Would there be something more, or something
less, of all this? Such questions were storming in the head of
the Tartar. But in every case the hour had come to cast aside
feigning, pretences, and show her a truthful, a terrible face. Here
was his fear, here his alarm. One moment more, and all would be
accomplished.
Finally this mental alarm became in the Tartar that which alarm
becomes most frequently in a wild beast,--rage; and he began to
rouse himself with that rage. “Whatever happens,” thought he, “she
is mine, she is mine altogether; she will be mine to-morrow, and
then will not return to her husband, but will follow me.”
At this thought wild delight seized him by the hair, and he said
all at once in a voice which seemed strange to himself, “Your grace
has not known me till now.”
“In this fog your voice has so changed,” answered Basia, somewhat
alarmed, “that it seems to me really as if another were speaking.”
“In Mohiloff there are no troops, in Yampol none, in Rashkoff none.
I alone am lord here,--Krychinski, Adurovich, and those others are
my slaves; for I am a prince, I am the son of a ruler. I am their
vizir, I am their highest murza; I am their leader, as Tugai Bey
was; I am their khan; I alone have authority; all here is in my
power.”
“Why do you say this to me?”
“Your grace has not known me hitherto. Rashkoff is not far away. I
wished to become hetman of the Tartars and serve the Commonwealth;
but Sobieski would not permit it. I am not to be a Lithuanian
Tartar any longer; I am not to serve under any man’s command,
but to lead great chambuls myself, against Doroshenko, or the
Commonwealth, as your grace wishes, as your grace commands.”
“How as I command? Azya, what is the matter with you?”
“This, that here all are my slaves, and I am yours. What is the
hetman to me? I care not whether he has permitted or not. Say a
word, your grace, and I will put Akkerman at your feet; and the
Dobrudja, and those hordes which have villages there, and those
which wander in the Wilderness, and those who are everywhere in
winter quarters will be your slaves, as I am your slave. Command,
and I will not obey the Khan of the Crimea, I will not obey the
Sultan; I will make war on them with the sword, and aid the
Commonwealth. I will form new hordes in these regions, and be khan
over them, and you will be alone over me; to you alone will I bow
down, beg for your favor and love.”
When he had said this, he bent in the saddle, and, seizing the
woman, half terrified, and, as it were, stunned by his words, he
continued to speak in a hurried, hoarse voice; “Have you not seen
that I love only you? Ah, but I have suffered my share! I will take
you now! You are mine, and you will be mine! No one will tear you
from my hands in this place--you are mine, mine, mine!”
“Jesus, Mary!” cried Basia.
But he pressed her in his arms as if wishing to smother her.
Hurried breathing struggled from his lips, his eyes grew misty; at
last he drew her out of the stirrups, off the saddle, put her in
front of him, pressed her breast to his own, and his bluish lips,
opening greedily, like the mouth of a fish, began to seek her mouth.
She uttered no cry, but began to resist with unexpected strength;
between them rose a struggle in which only the panting of their
breaths was to be heard. His violent movements and the nearness of
his face restored her presence of mind. An instant of such clear
vision came to Basia as comes to the drowning; she felt everything
at once with the greatest vividness. Hence she felt first of all
that the earth was vanishing from under her feet, and a bottomless
ravine opening, to which he was dragging her; she saw his desire,
his treason, her own dreadful fate, her weakness and helplessness;
she felt alarm, and a ghastly pain and sorrow, and at the same time
there burst forth in her a flame of immense indignation, rage,
and revenge. Such was the courage and spirit of that daughter of
a knight, that chosen wife of the most gallant soldier of the
Commonwealth, that in that awful moment she thought first of all,
“I will have revenge,” then “I will save myself.” All the faculties
of her mind were strained, as hair is straightened with terror on
the head; and that clearness of vision as in drowning became in her
almost miraculous. While struggling her hands began to seek for
weapons, and found at last the ivory butt of an Eastern pistol;
but at the same time she had presence of mind to think of this
also,--that even if the pistol were loaded, even if she should cock
it, before she could bend her hand, before she could point the
barrel at his head, he would seize her hand without fail, and take
from her the last means of salvation. Hence she resolved to strike
in another way.
All this lasted one twinkle of an eye. He indeed foresaw the
attack, and put out his hand with the speed of a lightning flash;
but he did not succeed in calculating her movement. The hands
passed each other, and Basia, with all the despairing strength of
her young and vigorous arm, struck him with the ivory butt of the
pistol between the eyes.
The blow was so terrible that Azya was not able even to cry, and he
fell backward, drawing her after him in his fall.
Basia raised herself in a moment, and, springing on her horse, shot
off like a whirlwind in the direction opposite the Dnieper, toward
the broad steppes.
The curtain of fog closed behind her. The horse, dropping his ears,
rushed on at random among the rocks, clefts, ravines, and breaches.
Any moment he might run into some cleft, any moment he might crush
himself and his rider against a rocky corner; but Basia looked at
nothing; for her the most terrible danger was Azya and the Tartars.
A wonderful thing it was, that now, when she had freed herself
from the hands of the robber, and when he was lying apparently
dead among the rocks, dread mastered all her feelings. Lying with
her face to the mane of the horse, shooting on in the fog, like a
deer chased by wolves, she began to fear Azya more than when she
was in his arms; and she felt terror and weakness and that which a
helpless child feels, which, wandering where it wished, has gone
astray, and is alone and deserted. Certain weeping voices rose in
her heart, and began, with groaning, with timidity, with complaint,
and with pity, to call for protection: “Michael, save me! Michael,
save me!”
The horse rushed on and on; led by a wonderful instinct, he
sprang over breaches, avoided with quick movement prominent cliff
corners, until at last the stony ground ceased to sound under his
feet; evidently he had come to one of those open “meadows” which
stretched here and there among the ravines.
Sweat covered the horse, his nostrils were rattling loudly, but he
ran and ran.
“Whither can I go?” thought Basia. And that moment she answered
herself: “To Hreptyoff.”
But new alarm pressed her heart at thought of that long road lying
through terrible wildernesses. Quickly too she remembered that Azya
had left detachments of his men in Mohiloff and Yampol. Doubtless
these were all in the conspiracy; all served Azya, and would seize
her surely, and take her to Rashkoff; she ought, therefore, to ride
far into the steppe, and only then turn northward, thus avoiding
the settlements on the Dniester.
She ought to do this all the more for the reason that if men were
sent to pursue her, beyond doubt they would go near the river; and
meanwhile it might be possible to meet some of the Polish commands
in the wide steppes, on their way to the fortresses.
The speed of the horse decreased gradually. Basia, being an
experienced rider, understood at once that it was necessary to give
him time to recover breath, otherwise he would fall; she felt also
that without a horse in those deserts she was lost.
She restrained, therefore, his speed, and went some time at a walk.
The fog was growing thin, but a cloud of hot steam rose from the
poor beast.
Basia began to pray.
Suddenly she heard the neighing of a horse amid the fog a few
hundred yards behind.
Then the hair rose on her head.
“Mine will fall dead, but so will that one!” said she, aloud; and
again she shot on.
For some time her horse rushed forward with the speed of a dove
pursued by a falcon, and he ran long, almost to the last of his
strength; but the neighing was heard continually behind in the
distance. There was in that neighing which came out of the fog
something at once of immeasurable yearning and threatening; still,
after the first alarm had passed, it came to Basia’s mind that if
some one were sitting on that horse he would not neigh, for the
rider, not wishing to betray the pursuit, would stop the neighing.
“Can it be that that is only Azya’s horse following mine?” thought
Basia.
For the sake of precaution she drew both pistols out of the
holsters; but the caution was needless. After a while something
seemed black in the thinning mist, and Azya’s horse ran up with
flowing mane and distended nostrils. Seeing the pony, he began to
approach him, giving out short and sudden neighs; and the pony
answered immediately.
“Horse, horse!” cried Basia.
The animal, accustomed to the human hand, drew near and let itself
be taken by the bridle. Basia raised her eyes to Heaven, and said:--
“The protection of God!”
In fact, the seizure of Azya’s horse was a circumstance for her in
every way favorable. To begin with, she had the two best horses
in the whole detachment; secondly, she had a horse to change;
and thirdly, the presence of the beast assured her that pursuit
would not start soon. If the horse had run to the detachment, the
Tartars, disturbed at sight of him, would have turned surely and at
once to seek their leader; now it will not come to their heads that
anything could befall him, and they will go back to look for Azya
only when they are alarmed at his too prolonged absence.
“By that time I shall be far away,” concluded Basia in her mind.
Here she remembered for the second time that Azya’s detachments
were stationed in Yampol and Mohiloff. “It is necessary to go past
through the broad steppe, and not approach the Dniester until in
the neighborhood of Hreptyoff. That terrible man has disposed his
troops cunningly, but God will save me.”
Thus thinking, she collected her spirits and prepared to continue
her journey. At the pommel of Azya’s saddle she found a musket, a
horn with powder, a box of bullets, a box of hemp-seed which the
Tartar had the habit of chewing continually. Basia, shortening the
stirrups of Azya’s saddle to her own feet, thought to herself that
during the whole way she would live, like a bird, on those seeds,
and she kept them carefully near her.
She determined to avoid people and farms; for in those wildernesses
more evil than good was to be looked for from every man. Fear
oppressed her heart when she asked herself, “How shall I feed the
horses?” They would dig grass out from under the snow, and pluck
moss from the crevices of rocks, but might they not die from bad
food and excessive travelling? Still, she could not spare them.
There was another fear: Would she not go astray in the desert?
It was easy to avoid that by travelling along the Dniester, but
she could not take that road. What would happen were she to enter
gloomy wildernesses, immense and roadless? How would she know
whether she was going northward, or in some other direction, if
foggy days were to come, days without sunshine, and nights without
stars? The forests were swarming with wild beasts; she cared less
for that, having courage in her brave heart and having weapons.
Wolves, going in packs, might be dangerous, it is true, but in
general she feared men more than beasts, and she feared to go
astray most of all.
“Ah, God will show me the way, and will let me return to Michael,”
said she, aloud. Then she made the sign of the cross, wiped with
her sleeve her face free from the moisture which made her pale
cheeks cold, looked with quick eyes around the country, and urged
her horse on to a gallop.