Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/242

236 But Taras still strove to collect his thoughts, and to recall what had taken place. "Well, but the Lyakhs must have surrounded me completely, and captured me? I hadn't a chance to fight myself free from the mob?"

"Hold your tongue! I tell you, you devil's brat!" shouted Tovkach angrily, as a nurse, driven beyond her patience, cries out at her naughty, fractious young charge. "What good will it do you to know how you got away? It's enough that you did get away. Some people were found who didn't betray you. That's enough for you to know! You and I must still gallop on together for many a night! Think you that you are accounted a common kazák? No, they have offered a reward of two thousand ducats for your head."

"And Ostap!" cried Taras suddenly, making a tremendous effort to rise; and then, all at once, he recollected that Ostap had been seized and bound before his very eyes, and that he was now in the hands of the Lyakhs. And grief overpowered his aged head. He tugged at his bandages, and tore them all from his wounds; he threw them far from him; he tried to say something aloud—and uttered something incoherent. Fever and delirium took possession of him afresh, and he chattered foolish speeches, devoid of rhyme or reason.