All South-west Poland speedily became a prey to fear. Everywhere the
rumour flew, “The Zaporozhtzi! The Zaporozhtzi have appeared!” All
who could flee did so. All rose and scattered after the manner of that
lawless, reckless age, when they built neither fortresses nor castles,
but each man erected a temporary dwelling of straw wherever he happened
to find himself. He thought, “It is useless to waste money and labour on
an izba, when the roving Tatars will carry it off in any case.” All was
in an uproar: one exchanged his plough and oxen for a horse and gun, and
joined an armed band; another, seeking concealment, drove off his cattle
and carried off all the household stuff he could. Occasionally, on the
road, some were encountered who met their visitors with arms in their
hands; but the majority fled before their arrival. All knew that it was
hard to deal with the raging and warlike throng known by the name of
the Zaporozhian army; a body which, under its independent and disorderly
exterior, concealed an organisation well calculated for times of battle.
The horsemen rode steadily on without overburdening or heating their
horses; the foot-soldiers marched only by night, resting during the day,
and selecting for this purpose desert tracts, uninhabited spots, and
forests, of which there were then plenty. Spies and scouts were sent
ahead to study the time, place, and method of attack. And lo! the
Zaporozhtzi suddenly appeared in those places where they were least
expected: then all were put to the sword; the villages were burned; and
the horses and cattle which were not driven off behind the army killed
upon the spot. They seemed to be fiercely revelling, rather than
carrying out a military expedition. Our hair would stand on end nowadays
at the horrible traits of that fierce, half-civilised age, which the
Zaporozhtzi everywhere exhibited: children killed, women’s breasts cut
open, the skin flayed from the legs up to the knees, and the victim then
set at liberty. In short, the Cossacks paid their former debts in
coin of full weight. The abbot of one monastery, on hearing of their
approach, sent two monks to say that they were not behaving as they
should; that there was an agreement between the Zaporozhtzi and the
government; that they were breaking faith with the king, and violating
all international rights. “Tell your bishop from me and from all the
Zaporozhtzi,” said the Koschevoi, “that he has nothing to fear: the
Cossacks, so far, have only lighted and smoked their pipes.” And the
magnificent abbey was soon wrapped in the devouring flames, its tall
Gothic windows showing grimly through the waves of fire as they parted.
The fleeing mass of monks, women, and Jews thronged into those towns
where any hope lay in the garrison and the civic forces. The aid sent
in season by the government, but delayed on the way, consisted of a
few troops which either were unable to enter the towns or, seized with
fright, turned their backs at the very first encounter and fled on
their swift horses. However, several of the royal commanders, who had
conquered in former battles, resolved to unite their forces and confront
the Zaporozhtzi.
And here, above all, did our young Cossacks, disgusted with pillage,
greed, and a feeble foe, and burning with the desire to distinguish
themselves in presence of their chiefs, seek to measure themselves in
single combat with the warlike and boastful Lyakhs, prancing on their
spirited horses, with the sleeves of their jackets thrown back and
streaming in the wind. This game was inspiriting; they won at it many
costly sets of horse-trappings and valuable weapons. In a month the
scarcely fledged birds attained their full growth, were completely
transformed, and became men; their features, in which hitherto a trace
of youthful softness had been visible, grew strong and grim. But it was
pleasant to old Taras to see his sons among the foremost. It seemed
as though Ostap were designed by nature for the game of war and the
difficult science of command. Never once losing his head or becoming
confused under any circumstances, he could, with a cool audacity almost
supernatural in a youth of two-and-twenty, in an instant gauge the
danger and the whole scope of the matter, could at once devise a means
of escaping, but of escaping only that he might the more surely conquer.
His movements now began to be marked by the assurance which comes from
experience, and in them could be detected the germ of the future leader.
His person strengthened, and his bearing grew majestically leonine.
“What a fine leader he will make one of these days!” said old Taras. “He
will make a splendid leader, far surpassing even his father!”
Andrii gave himself up wholly to the enchanting music of blades and
bullets. He knew not what it was to consider, or calculate, or to
measure his own as against the enemy’s strength. He gazed on battle with
mad delight and intoxication: he found something festal in the moments
when a man’s brain burns, when all things wave and flutter before his
eyes, when heads are stricken off, horses fall to the earth with a sound
of thunder, and he rides on like a drunken man, amid the whistling of
bullets and the flashing of swords, dealing blows to all, and heeding
not those aimed at himself. More than once their father marvelled too
at Andrii, seeing him, stirred only by a flash of impulse, dash at
something which a sensible man in cold blood never would have attempted,
and, by the sheer force of his mad attack, accomplish such wonders as
could not but amaze even men grown old in battle. Old Taras admired and
said, “And he too will make a good warrior if the enemy does not
capture him meanwhile. He is not Ostap, but he is a dashing warrior,
nevertheless.”
The army decided to march straight on the city of Dubno, which, rumour
said, contained much wealth and many rich inhabitants. The journey was
accomplished in a day and a half, and the Zaporozhtzi appeared before
the city. The inhabitants resolved to defend themselves to the utmost
extent of their power, and to fight to the last extremity, preferring to
die in their squares and streets, and on their thresholds, rather than
admit the enemy to their houses. A high rampart of earth surrounded the
city; and in places where it was low or weak, it was strengthened by a
wall of stone, or a house which served as a redoubt, or even an oaken
stockade. The garrison was strong and aware of the importance of their
position. The Zaporozhtzi attacked the wall fiercely, but were met with
a shower of grapeshot. The citizens and residents of the town evidently
did not wish to remain idle, but gathered on the ramparts; in their eyes
could be read desperate resistance. The women too were determined to
take part in the fray, and upon the heads of the Zaporozhians rained
down stones, casks of boiling water, and sacks of lime which blinded
them. The Zaporozhtzi were not fond of having anything to do with
fortified places: sieges were not in their line. The Koschevoi ordered
them to retreat, saying, “It is useless, brother gentles; we will
retire: but may I be a heathen Tatar, and not a Christian, if we do not
clear them out of that town! may they all perish of hunger, the dogs!”
The army retreated, surrounded the town, and, for lack of something to
do, busied themselves with devastating the surrounding country, burning
the neighbouring villages and the ricks of unthreshed grain, and turning
their droves of horses loose in the cornfields, as yet untouched by the
reaping-hook, where the plump ears waved, fruit, as luck would have it,
of an unusually good harvest which should have liberally rewarded all
tillers of the soil that season.
With horror those in the city beheld their means of subsistence
destroyed. Meanwhile the Zaporozhtzi, having formed a double ring of
their waggons around the city, disposed themselves as in the Setch in
kurens, smoked their pipes, bartered their booty for weapons, played
at leapfrog and odd-and-even, and gazed at the city with deadly
cold-bloodedness. At night they lighted their camp fires, and the cooks
boiled the porridge for each kuren in huge copper cauldrons; whilst
an alert sentinel watched all night beside the blazing fire. But the
Zaporozhtzi soon began to tire of inactivity and prolonged sobriety,
unaccompanied by any fighting. The Koschevoi even ordered the allowance
of wine to be doubled, which was sometimes done in the army when no
difficult enterprises or movements were on hand. The young men, and
Taras Bulba’s sons in particular, did not like this life. Andrii was
visibly bored. “You silly fellow!” said Taras to him, “be patient, you
will be hetman one day. He is not a good warrior who loses heart in an
important enterprise; but he who is not tired even of inactivity, who
endures all, and who even if he likes a thing can give it up.” But hot
youth cannot agree with age; the two have different natures, and look at
the same thing with different eyes.
But in the meantime Taras’s band, led by Tovkatch, arrived; with him
were also two osauls, the secretary, and other regimental officers: the
Cossacks numbered over four thousand in all. There were among them many
volunteers, who had risen of their own free will, without any summons,
as soon as they had heard what the matter was. The osauls brought to
Taras’s sons the blessing of their aged mother, and to each a picture
in a cypress-wood frame from the Mezhigorski monastery at Kief. The two
brothers hung the pictures round their necks, and involuntarily grew
pensive as they remembered their old mother. What did this blessing
prophecy? Was it a blessing for their victory over the enemy, and then
a joyous return to their home with booty and glory, to be everlastingly
commemorated in the songs of guitar-players? or was it...? But the
future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising
from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping
wings, never recognising each other, the dove seeing not the vulture,
nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be flying
from destruction.
Ostap had long since attended to his duties and gone to the kuren.
Andrii, without knowing why, felt a kind of oppression at his heart. The
Cossacks had finished their evening meal; the wonderful July night had
completely fallen; still he did not go to the kuren, nor lie down to
sleep, but gazed unconsciously at the whole scene before him. In the sky
innumerable stars twinkled brightly. The plain was covered far and wide
with scattered waggons with swinging tar-buckets, smeared with tar, and
loaded with every description of goods and provisions captured from the
foe. Beside the waggons, under the waggons, and far beyond the waggons,
Zaporozhtzi were everywhere visible, stretched upon the grass. They
all slumbered in picturesque attitudes; one had thrust a sack under
his head, another his cap, and another simply made use of his comrade’s
side. Swords, guns, matchlocks, short pipe-stems with copper mountings,
iron awls, and a flint and steel were inseparable from every Cossack.
The heavy oxen lay with their feet doubled under them like huge whitish
masses, and at a distance looked like gray stones scattered on the
slopes of the plain. On all sides the heavy snores of sleeping warriors
began to arise from the grass, and were answered from the plain by the
ringing neighs of their steeds, chafing at their hobbled feet. Meanwhile
a certain threatening magnificence had mingled with the beauty of the
July night. It was the distant glare of the burning district afar.
In one place the flames spread quietly and grandly over the sky; in
another, suddenly bursting into a whirlwind, they hissed and flew
upwards to the very stars, and floating fragments died away in the most
distant quarter of the heavens. Here the black, burned monastery like
a grim Carthusian monk stood threatening, and displaying its dark
magnificence at every flash; there blazed the monastery garden. It
seemed as though the trees could be heard hissing as they stood wrapped
in smoke; and when the fire burst forth, it suddenly lighted up the ripe
plums with a phosphoric lilac-coloured gleam, or turned the yellowing
pears here and there to pure gold. In the midst of them hung black
against the wall of the building, or the trunk of a tree, the body of
some poor Jew or monk who had perished in the flames with the structure.
Above the distant fires hovered a flock of birds, like a cluster of
tiny black crosses upon a fiery field. The town thus laid bare seemed to
sleep; the spires and roofs, and its palisade and walls, gleamed quietly
in the glare of the distant conflagrations. Andrii went the rounds of
the Cossack ranks. The camp-fires, beside which the sentinels sat, were
ready to go out at any moment; and even the sentinels slept, having
devoured oatmeal and dumplings with true Cossack appetites. He was
astonished at such carelessness, thinking, “It is well that there is no
strong enemy at hand and nothing to fear.” Finally he went to one of
the waggons, climbed into it, and lay down upon his back, putting his
clasped hands under his head; but he could not sleep, and gazed long at
the sky. It was all open before him; the air was pure and transparent;
the dense clusters of stars in the Milky Way, crossing the sky like a
belt, were flooded with light. From time to time Andrii in some degree
lost consciousness, and a light mist of dream veiled the heavens from
him for a moment; but then he awoke, and they became visible again.
During one of these intervals it seemed to him that some strange human
figure flitted before him. Thinking it to be merely a vision which would
vanish at once, he opened his eyes, and beheld a withered, emaciated
face bending over him, and gazing straight into his own. Long coal-black
hair, unkempt, dishevelled, fell from beneath a dark veil which had
been thrown over the head; whilst the strange gleam of the eyes, and the
death-like tone of the sharp-cut features, inclined him to think that
it was an apparition. His hand involuntarily grasped his gun; and he
exclaimed almost convulsively: “Who are you? If you are an evil spirit,
avaunt! If you are a living being, you have chosen an ill time for your
jest. I will kill you with one shot.”
In answer to this, the apparition laid its finger upon its lips and
seemed to entreat silence. He dropped his hands and began to look more
attentively. He recognised it to be a woman from the long hair, the
brown neck, and the half-concealed bosom. But she was not a native
of those regions: her wide cheek-bones stood out prominently over her
hollow cheeks; her small eyes were obliquely set. The more he gazed at
her features, the more he found them familiar. Finally he could restrain
himself no longer, and said, “Tell me, who are you? It seems to me that
I know you, or have seen you somewhere.”
“Two years ago in Kief.”
“Two years ago in Kief!” repeated Andrii, endeavouring to collect in
his mind all that lingered in his memory of his former student life. He
looked intently at her once more, and suddenly exclaimed at the top of
his voice, “You are the Tatar! the servant of the lady, the Waiwode’s
daughter!”
“Sh!” cried the Tatar, clasping her hands with a supplicating glance,
trembling all over, and turning her head round in order to see whether
any one had been awakened by Andrii’s loud exclamation.
“Tell me, tell me, why are you here?” said Andrii almost breathlessly,
in a whisper, interrupted every moment by inward emotion. “Where is the
lady? is she alive?”
“She is now in the city.”
“In the city!” he exclaimed, again almost in a shriek, and feeling all
the blood suddenly rush to his heart. “Why is she in the city?”
“Because the old lord himself is in the city: he has been Waiwode of
Dubno for the last year and a half.”
“Is she married? How strange you are! Tell me about her.”
“She has eaten nothing for two days.”
“What!”
“And not one of the inhabitants has had a morsel of bread for a long
while; all have long been eating earth.”
Andrii was astounded.
“The lady saw you from the city wall, among the Zaporozhtzi. She said to
me, ‘Go tell the warrior: if he remembers me, let him come to me; and do
not forget to make him give you a bit of bread for my aged mother, for
I do not wish to see my mother die before my very eyes. Better that I
should die first, and she afterwards! Beseech him; clasp his knees, his
feet: he also has an aged mother, let him give you the bread for her
sake!’”
Many feelings awoke in the young Cossack’s breast.
“But how came you here? how did you get here?”
“By an underground passage.”
“Is there an underground passage?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“You will not betray it, warrior?”
“I swear it by the holy cross!”
“You descend into a hole, and cross the brook, yonder among the reeds.”
“And it leads into the city?”
“Straight into the monastery.”
“Let us go, let us go at once.”
“A bit of bread, in the name of Christ and of His holy mother!”
“Good, so be it. Stand here beside the waggon, or, better still, lie
down in it: no one will see you, all are asleep. I will return at once.”
And he set off for the baggage waggons, which contained the provisions
belonging to their kuren. His heart beat. All the past, all that had
been extinguished by the Cossack bivouacks, and by the stern battle of
life, flamed out at once on the surface and drowned the present in its
turn. Again, as from the dark depths of the sea, the noble lady rose
before him: again there gleamed in his memory her beautiful arms, her
eyes, her laughing mouth, her thick dark-chestnut hair, falling in curls
upon her shoulders, and the firm, well-rounded limbs of her maiden form.
No, they had not been extinguished in his breast, they had not vanished,
they had simply been laid aside, in order, for a time, to make way for
other strong emotions; but often, very often, the young Cossack’s deep
slumber had been troubled by them, and often he had lain sleepless on
his couch, without being able to explain the cause.
His heart beat more violently at the thought of seeing her again, and
his young knees shook. On reaching the baggage waggons, he had quite
forgotten what he had come for; he raised his hand to his brow and
rubbed it long, trying to recollect what he was to do. At length he
shuddered, and was filled with terror as the thought suddenly occurred
to him that she was dying of hunger. He jumped upon the waggon and
seized several large loaves of black bread; but then he thought, “Is
this not food, suited to a robust and easily satisfied Zaporozhetz, too
coarse and unfit for her delicate frame?” Then he recollected that the
Koschevoi, on the previous evening, had reproved the cooks for having
cooked up all the oatmeal into porridge at once, when there was plenty
for three times. Sure that he would find plenty of porridge in the
kettles, he drew out his father’s travelling kettle and went with it
to the cook of their kuren, who was sleeping beside two big cauldrons,
holding about ten pailfuls, under which the ashes still glowed. Glancing
into them, he was amazed to find them empty. It must have required
supernatural powers to eat it all; the more so, as their kuren numbered
fewer than the others. He looked into the cauldron of the other
kurens--nothing anywhere. Involuntarily the saying recurred to his mind,
“The Zaporozhtzi are like children: if there is little they eat it,
if there is much they leave nothing.” What was to be done? There was,
somewhere in the waggon belonging to his father’s band, a sack of
white bread, which they had found when they pillaged the bakery of
the monastery. He went straight to his father’s waggon, but it was not
there. Ostap had taken it and put it under his head; and there he lay,
stretched out on the ground, snoring so that the whole plain rang again.
Andrii seized the sack abruptly with one hand and gave it a jerk, so
that Ostap’s head fell to the ground. The elder brother sprang up in his
sleep, and, sitting there with closed eyes, shouted at the top of his
lungs, “Stop them! Stop the cursed Lyakhs! Catch the horses! catch
the horses!”--“Silence! I’ll kill you,” shouted Andrii in terror,
flourishing the sack over him. But Ostap did not continue his speech,
sank down again, and gave such a snore that the grass on which he lay
waved with his breath.
Andrii glanced timidly on all sides to see if Ostap’s talking in his
sleep had waked any of the Cossacks. Only one long-locked head was
raised in the adjoining kuren, and after glancing about, was dropped
back on the ground. After waiting a couple of minutes he set out with
his load. The Tatar woman was lying where he had left her, scarcely
breathing. “Come, rise up. Fear not, all are sleeping. Can you take one
of these loaves if I cannot carry all?” So saying, he swung the sack on
to his back, pulled out another sack of millet as he passed the waggon,
took in his hands the loaves he had wanted to give the Tatar woman to
carry, and, bending somewhat under the load, went boldly through the
ranks of sleeping Zaporozhtzi.
“Andrii,” said old Bulba, as he passed. His heart died within him. He
halted, trembling, and said softly, “What is it?”
“There’s a woman with you. When I get up I’ll give you a sound
thrashing. Women will lead you to no good.” So saying, he leaned his
hand upon his hand and gazed intently at the muffled form of the Tatar.
Andrii stood there, more dead than alive, not daring to look in his
father’s face. When he did raise his eyes and glance at him, old Bulba
was asleep, with his head still resting in the palm of his hand.
Andrii crossed himself. Fear fled from his heart even more rapidly than
it had assailed it. When he turned to look at the Tatar woman, she stood
before him, muffled in her mantle, like a dark granite statue, and the
gleam of the distant dawn lighted up only her eyes, dull as those of
a corpse. He plucked her by the sleeve, and both went on together,
glancing back continually. At length they descended the slope of a small
ravine, almost a hole, along the bottom of which a brook flowed lazily,
overgrown with sedge, and strewed with mossy boulders. Descending into
this ravine, they were completely concealed from the view of all the
plain occupied by the Zaporovian camp. At least Andrii, glancing back,
saw that the steep slope rose behind him higher than a man. On its
summit appeared a few blades of steppe-grass; and behind them, in the
sky, hung the moon, like a golden sickle. The breeze rising on the
steppe warned them that the dawn was not far off. But nowhere was
the crow of the cock heard. Neither in the city nor in the devastated
neighbourhood had there been a cock for a long time past. They crossed
the brook on a small plank, beyond which rose the opposite bank, which
appeared higher than the one behind them and rose steeply. It seemed as
though this were the strong point of the citadel upon which the besieged
could rely; at all events, the earthen wall was lower there, and no
garrison appeared behind it. But farther on rose the thick monastery
walls. The steep bank was overgrown with steppe-grass, and in the narrow
ravine between it and the brook grew tall reeds almost as high as a man.
At the summit of the bank were the remains of a wattled fence, which
had formerly surrounded some garden, and in front of it were visible
the wide leaves of the burdock, from among which rose blackthorn, and
sunflowers lifting their heads high above all the rest. Here the Tatar
flung off her slippers and went barefoot, gathering her clothes up
carefully, for the spot was marshy and full of water. Forcing their way
among the reeds, they stopped before a ruined outwork. Skirting this
outwork, they found a sort of earthen arch--an opening not much larger
than the opening of an oven. The Tatar woman bent her head and went
first. Andrii followed, bending low as he could, in order to pass with
his sacks; and both soon found themselves in total darkness.