Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/184

 "What is the matter?"

"What is the matter with me? Something has pricked through the knob! Surely an arrow-head! I hold it! I cannot pull it out, but I feel it clink and move."

"The point! nothing else. Catch it firmly and pull."

Matsko squirmed and hissed from pain, but he thrust his fingers deeper and deeper till he held the hard object firmly; then he dragged and pulled.

"O Jesus!"

"You have it? " asked Zbyshko.

"I have. Cold sweat has come out on me. But here it is! Look!"

He showed Zbyshko a long, sharp splinter which had broken from the badly bound arrow and had stuck for some months in his body.

"Glory to God and Queen Yadviga! You will get well now."

"Perhaps; I am relieved, but I feel terrible pain," answered Matsko, squeezing the sore, from which blood mixed with matter flowed abundantly. "The less of this vileness there is in a man, the more must sickness leave him. Yagenka said that now we must apply beaver's fat."

"We will go for a beaver to-morrow."

Next day Matsko grew notably better. He slept till late, and on waking called for food. He could not look at bear's fat, but they broke up twenty eggs to be fried for him, as through caution Yagenka would not permit more. He ate these with relish, together with half a loaf of bread, and drank a pot of beer. He asked to bring Zyh then, for he felt joyous.

Zbyshko sent one of his Turks for Zyh, who mounted a horse and came before mid-day, just when the young people were preparing to go to Odstayani Lake for a beaver. At first there was laughing, joking, and singing over mead beyond measure, but later the old men talked of the children, and each praised his own.

"What a man that Zbyshko is," said Matsko; "in the world there is not another such. He is brave, he is as nimble as a wild cat, and skilful [sic]. And, do you know, when they were leading him to death in Cracow the girls in the windows were squealing as if some one behind were sticking awls into them; and what girls! the daughters of knights and castellans, not to mention various wonderful daughters of citizens."

"Let them be daughters of castellans, and wonderful, but they are not better than my Yagenka," said Zyh.