Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/179

Rh pain, he thundered till the more terribly. Trying to reach Zbyshko he pressed onto the fork and drove it into himself the more effectually. Zbyshko, not knowing whether the points had sunk deeply enough, did not let go the handle. The man and the beast pulled and struggled. The pine wood trembled unceasingly from the roar, in which rage and despair were united.

Zbyshko could not use the axe till he had first planted the other sharp end of the fork in the earth, and the bear, grasping the handle with his paws, shook both it and Zbyshko, as if understanding what the struggle meant, and, despite the pain caused by every movement of the deeply buried barbs, he did not let himself be "planted." In this way the terrible struggle continued, and Zbyshko understood that his strength would be worn out at last. He might fall, too, and in that case be lost; so he collected himself, stretched his arms, planted his feet apart, bent forward, like a bow, so as not to be thrown on his back, and in his excitement repeated through set teeth,—

"My death, or thine!"

Finally such rage possessed him, and such resolution, that really he would have preferred at the moment to die, rather than let that bear go. At last his foot struck a root of the pine; he tottered and would have fallen had it not been that a dark figure stood by him; another fork "propped" the beast, and a voice right at his ear cried,—

"With the axe!"

Zbyshko in the ardor of battle did not stop for the twinkle of an eye to learn whence the unexpected aid had come, but grasped his axe and struck terribly. The fork handle cracked, then broke from the weight and the last convulsions of the bear, which, as if struck by a lightning flash tumbled to the earth, and groaned there. But the groaning stopped immediately. Silence followed, broken only by the loud panting of Zbyshko, who leaned against the tree, for the legs were tottering under him. He raised his head only after a while, looked at the figure standing by his side, and was frightened, thinking that, perhaps, it was not a person.

"Who art thou?" asked he, in alarm.

"Yagenka!" answered a thin female voice.

Zbyshko was dumb from amazement, not believing his own ears.

But his doubt did not last long, for Yagenka's voice was heard again.