Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/218

212 The heavy detonations resounded through the distant fields and meadows, merging into one continuous roar. The whole plain was shrouded in smoke, but the Zaporozhtzi went on firing without stopping to draw breath: the rear ranks did nothing but load and hand to those in front, creating amazement among the enemy who could not understand how the kazáks fired without loading their guns. Amid the dense smoke which enveloped both armies, it could no longer be seen how one and another dropped out of the ranks: but the Lyakhs felt that the bullets were flying thickly, and that the engagement was growing hot: and when they retreated to escape from the smoke and to take an observation, many were missing from the ranks, but only two or three out of a company had been killed on the kazák side. And still the kazáks went on firing their arquebuses without a moment's intermission. Even the foreign engineer was amazed at tactics heretofore unknown to him, and said, then and there, in the presence of all, "Those Zaporozhtzi are brave lads. That's the way men in other lands ought to fight." And he advised that the cannon should immediately be trained on the camps. Heavily roared the iron cannon, with their wide throats; the earth hummed and trembled far and wide, and the smoke lay twice as heavy over the plain. The reek of the