Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/193

 VIII

HE sun had not scaled half the height of heaven when all the kazáks assembled in a group. News had arrived from the Syech that the Tatárs, during the kazáks' absence, had plundered it thoroughly, had dug up the treasures which the kazáks kept buried in the ground, had killed or carried away into captivity all who remained, and had straightway set out, with all the flocks and droves of horses they had collected, for Perekop.

One kazák only, Maksim Golodukha, had torn himself out of the Tatárs' hands on the road, had stabbed the Mirza, had unbound his bag of sequins, and on a Tatár horse, in Tatár garments, had fled before his pursuers for two nights and a day and a half, ridden his horse to death, changed to another, killed that one also, and arrived at the Zaporozhian camp upon a third, having learned on the way that the Zaporozhtzi were before Dubno. He only succeeded in informing them that this misfortune had happened, but how it had happened,—whether the Zaporozhtzi who had remained behind had been carousing in kazák