Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/287

Rh won't let those devilish Lyakhs have my pipe!" And the old atamán bent down, and searched in the grass for his pipe full of tobacco, his inseparable companion on all his expeditions on sea and land and at home.

But, in the meantime, a band of Lyakhs suddenly dashed up and seized him by his mighty shoulders. He tried to struggle with all his limbs; but he failed to scatter the heydukes over the ground as he had been wont to do. "O, old age, old age!" he said: and the stalwart old kazák wept. But it was not his age that was to blame: nearly thirty men were hanging on his arms and legs.

"The raven is caught!" shouted the Lyakhs. "Now it is only necessary to think how we can best show him honour, the dog!" and they decided, with the permission of the Hetman, to burn him alive in the sight of every one. Near by stood a naked tree, whose crest had been blasted by lightning. They bound him with iron chains to the trunk of the tree, driving nails through his hands, and raising him as high as possible, that the old kazák might be everywhere visible; and they immediately began to build a pyre of faggots at the foot of the tree. But Taras did not look at the pyre, nor did he think of the fire with which they were preparing to burn him: he gazed