Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/220

214 in fourfold earthquake the dully responsive earth,—and much woe did they cause. For more than one kazák wails an aged mother, beating with bony hands her feeble breast; more than one widow will be left in Glukhov, Nemirov, Chernigov, and other towns. Every day will the loving woman hasten forth to the bazaar, catching at all passers-by, scanning the face of each to see if there be not among them one dearer than all; but many troops of all sorts will pass through the town, yet never among them will appear the single one who is dearest of all to her.

And half the Nezamaikovsky kurén was as though it had never been! As hail suddenly beats down a field where every ear of grain shines like a ducat of full weight, so were they beaten down.

How hastened the kazáks thither! how they all started up! How raged the atamán of the kurén, Kukubenko, when he saw that the best half of his kurén was no more! He fought his way, with his remaining Nezamaikovtzi, to the very heart of the fray, hewed down, in his wrath, like a cabbage, the first man he encountered, hurled many a rider from his horse, impaling both horse and rider with his spear; made his way to the gunners and captured a cannon; but there he beheld the atamán of the Umansky kurén and Stepan Guska hard at work, having already seized the chief cannon. He left