Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/127

Rh their droves of horses loose in the fields as yet untouched by the reaping-hook, where, as though intentionally prepared for them, waved the plump ears, the fruit of an unusual harvest, liberally rewarding all tillers of the soil that season.

With horror, the inhabitants, looking on from the city, beheld their means of subsistence destroyed. And, meanwhile, the Zaporozhtzi, having formed a double cordon of their wagons around the city, disposed themselves as in the Syech in their barracks, smoked their pipes, bartered their booty for weapons, played at leap-frog, at odd-and-even, and gazed at the city with deadly cold-bloodedness. At night they lighted their camp-fires: the cooks boiled the porridge for each kurén in huge copper kettles; an unsleeping sentinel stood all night long beside the blazing fires. But the Zaporozhtzi soon began to tire of inactivity and prolonged sobriety, unaccompanied by any fighting. The Koshevói even ordered the allowance of liquor to be doubled, which was sometimes done in the army when difficult enterprises or operations were under way. The young men in general, and Taras Bulba's sons in particular, did not like this life. Andríi was visibly bored. "You silly head!" said Taras to him: "Be patient, kazák, you will be Atamán some day. And he is not a good warrior who loses his spirit in an