Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/489

Rh utmost, and pale from anger; he threw his cap on the table and cried, —

"It passes imagination! Three men killed; Yuzva Butrym cut up, barely breathing!"

"Yuzva Butrym? He is a man with the strength of a bear!" said the astonished Zagloba.

"Before my eyes Pan Kmita stretched him out," put in Jendzian.

"I've had enough of that Kmita!" cried Volodyovski, beside himself; "wherever that man shows himself he leaves corpses behind, like the plague. Enough of this! Balance for balance, life for life; but now a new reckoning! He has killed my men, fallen upon good soldiers; that will be set to his account before our next meeting."

"He did not attack them, but they him; for he hid himself in the darkest corner, so they should not recognize him," explained Jendzian.

"And you, instead of giving aid to my men, testify in his favor!" said Volodyovski, in anger.

"I speak according to justice. As to aid, my men tried to give aid; but it was hard for them, for in the tumult they did not know whom to beat and whom to spare, and therefore they suffered. That I came away with my life and my sacks is due to the sense of Pan Kmita alone, for hear how it happened."

Jendzian began a detailed account of the battle in "The Mandrake," omitting nothing; and when at length he told what Kmita had commanded him to tell, they were all wonderfully astonished.

"Did he say that himself?" asked Zagloba.

"He himself," replied Jendzian. "'I,' said he, 'am not an enemy to Pan Volodyovski or the confederates, though they think differently. Later this will appear; but meanwhile let them come together, in God's name, or the voevoda of Vilna will take them one by one like lobsters from a net.'"

"And did he say that the voevoda was already on the march?" asked Pan Yan.

"He said that the voevoda was only waiting for Swedish reinforcements, and that he would move at once on Podlyasye."

"What do you think of all this, gentlemen?" asked Volodyovski, looking at his comrades.

"Either that man is betraying Radzivill, or he is prepar-