Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/562

 124 "And it always happens that for two or three days after such a visit he says no word to any man, and on his face dreadful suffering is evident. He guards the cradle carefully, both he and that serving-woman of the Order, so that no person at any time can see the young lady."

"But do they not torture her?" asked Zbyshko, in a dull voice.

"In clear truth I will tell your lordship that blows or cries I have not heard, but I have heard sad singing, and sometimes it was as if a bird piped complainingly."

"Woe!" cried out Zbyshko.

But Matsko interrupted further inquiry.

"Enough of this!" said he. "Tell now of the battle. Didst thou see it? How did they escape, and what happened to them?"

"I saw," answered Sanderus, "and I will tell everything. They fought at first savagely, but when they knew that they were surrounded on all sides, they began to think how to burst through. The knight Arnold, who is a real giant, was the first to break the ring and open such a road that he made a way for the old comtur, and also some people, with the cradle borne by two horses."

"And was there no pursuit? How did it happen that no one caught up with them?"

"There was pursuit, but it could do nothing, for when it came near the knight Arnold faced around and engaged it. May God not grant any man to meet him, for he has strength so dreadful that it is nothing for him to fight alone with a hundred. Three times did he turn, and three times was pursuit stopped. The men who were with him perished—all of them. He was alone at last, wounded, it seems to me, and his horse wounded also, but he survived, and gave time to the old comtur for safe escape."

Matsko, listening to this narrative, could not help thinking that Sanderus was speaking truly, for he remembered that, beginning with the place where Skirvoillo had fought, the road in its further continuation was covered with bodies of Jmud men, slashed as dreadfully as if the hand of a giant had slain them.

"But how couldst thou have seen all this?" inquired he.

"I saw it," answered the vagrant, "because I slipped in behind the tail of one of the horses which was carrying the cradle, and I fled with those beasts till a hoof struck my