Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/380

 356 the Stroganovs, and even to the Tsar, actually venturing to send Koltso, the sentenced man for whom the executioner was still waiting on the scaffold, to the Sovereign.

He was not mistaken in thinking Ivan would be disarmed. Koltso was not even questioned as to his past, and, with the Tsar's congratulations, Ermak received a considerable sum of money, to which, so the legend assures us, Ivan added splendid gifts—two richly-adorned cuirasses, a silver goblet, and a pelisse taken off his own shoulders. At the same time the Tsar despatched two of his voiévodes, Prince Simon Bolkhovski and Ivan Gloukhov, to take possession, in his name, of the territories wrested from Koutchoum. This was the usual course of events. The Cossacks were sent on in front: when they were beaten they were disowned and called 'brigands'; when they won, the fruits of their victories were forthwith absorbed.

Ivan the Terrible did not live to hear of the fate which overtook his envoys, nor the tragic close of the enterprise in which Ermak had just won immortal renown. In the month of August, 1584, the valiant leader lost his life, on the banks of the Irtych, in a night surprise, the details of which have never been known. According to the legend, he tried to swim the river, and was dragged down by the weight of his, cuirass, the Tsar's fatal gift. The Tartars recognised his corpse by the armour, which bore a gilded eagle, set his body on a scaffold, and used it for a target for the space of six weeks. Meanwhile, the huge clouds of birds of prey that hovered over the brave man's corpse did not dare to settle on it; terrifying visions appeared around it, and so alarmed did the Tartars become that they resolved to give the hero magnificent burial, and killed and ate thirty oxen in the course of the ceremony. But fresh wonders occurred, even over the ashes of the heroic warrior, and at last the Moslem priests resorted to the expedient of burying the remains, and so thoroughly hiding the place of sepulture that it has never been discovered.

The only fact known to history is that Bolkhovski had already been carried off by sickness, and that after Ermak's death the second envoy was fain to beat a retreat in the direction of the Piétchora. As to its immediate results, therefore, this expedition was very much on a par with its predecessors. And yet a new thing had happened. The popular imagination had been stirred—by a more resounding name, it may be, or a bolder gesture—and out of the long series of efforts, repeated year by year, out of the crowd of unknown heroes in whose steps Ermak had followed, the popular legend had chosen its own. The bandit of those far-off days, whose