Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/130

124 masses, and at a distance looked like grey stones scattered on the slopes of the plain. On all sides the heavy snores of sleeping warriors had already begun to rise from the grass, and were answered from the plain by the ringing neighs of their steeds, chafing at their hobbled feet. Meanwhile, a certain grim magnificence was mingled with the beauty of the July night. It was the distant glare of conflagrations from the country round about. In one place the flames spread tranquilly and grandly over the sky; in another, having encountered something else on fire, they suddenly burst into a whirlwind, and flew, hissing, upwards, to the very stars, and torn fragments faded away in the most distant quarter of the heavens. There a black monastery like a grim Carthusian monk stood threatening, and displaying its dark magnificence at every flash; yonder burned the monastery garden. It seemed as though the trees could be heard hissing, as they wrapped themselves in smoke; and when the fire leaped aside, it suddenly lighted up with a phosphorescent lilac-rose-hued gleam the ripe plums, or turned the yellowing pears here and there to ruddy gold; and there, among them all, on the wall of a building or against the trunk of a tree, a black blot, hung the body of a poor Jew or monk who had perished in the flames with the building. Far away, high