Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/367

Rh After these words the slide was dropped again, and deep silence followed.

Time passed. Inside the gate not a movement was audible, but from the direction of the gibbet came the croaking of birds.

Yurand stood a long while yet before he raised the horn and blew in it a second series of times.

But he was answered by silence again.

He understood now that they were detaining him before the gate through the pride of the Knights, which knew no bounds in presence of the conquered. They desired to humiliate him, as if he had been a beggar. He understood, too, that he would have to wait perhaps till evening, or even longer. At the first moment the blood boiled in Yurand; the desire seized him all at once to come down from his horse, raise one of the large stones that lay before the moat, and hurl it against the gate. He would have acted thus at another time, and every other Mazovian or Polish knight also, and let them rush out afterward from behind the gate and fight with him. But recollecting why he had come, he recovered his mind and restrained himself.

"Have I not offered myself for my child?" said he in his soul.

And he waited.

Meanwhile something began to grow dark on the wall. Fur-covered heads showed themselves, dark cowls, and even iron helmets, from under which curious eyes gazed at the master of Spyhov. These figures increased in number every moment, for the terrible Yurand was waiting alone at the gate,—this for the garrison was an uncommon spectacle. Those who before that had seen him in front of them saw their own death, but now it was possible to look at him safely. Heads rose higher and higher till at last all the battlement near the gate was covered with serving-men. Yurand thought that surely those higher in rank must be looking at him through the grating of windows in the gate-tower, and he raised his glance upward, but the windows there were cut in deep walls, and through them one could see only distant objects. But the crowd on the battlement, which had looked first at him in silence, began to call out. This and that man repeated his name, here and there was heard laughter, hoarse voices called to him as to a wolf, more and more loudly, more and more insolently; and when evidently no one from inside forbade, they began at last to hurl lumps of snow at the knight without motion.