Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/195

Rh you know, yourselves, what sort of a man the Tatár is. He will not pause with his stolen booty to await our coming, but will vanish in a twinkling, so that you can find no trace of him. Therefore, this is my counsel: Go. We have already diverted ourselves sufficiently here. The Lyakhs know what the kazáks are like. We have avenged our Faith to the extent of our powers; there's not much to satisfy greed in this famished city. And so my advice is: Go."

"Go!" rang heavily through the Zaporozhian kuréns. But such words did not suit Taras Bulba's mood at all; and he brought his frowning, iron-grey brows still lower down over his eyes, like bushes growing on a dark, lofty mountain, whose crests are suddenly covered with prickly northern frost.

"No, Koshevói, your counsel is not good," said he. "You have not spoken aright. Evidently, you have forgotten that our men captured by the Lyakhs will remain prisoners? Evidently you wish that we should not respect the first holy law of comradeship; that we should leave our brethren to be flayed alive, or to be carried about through the towns and villages after their kazák bodies have been quartered, as was done with the Hetman, and the bravest warriors in the Ukraina. Have not they already blasphemed sufficiently