Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/75

Rh kazáks lay down to sleep, after hobbling their horses, and turning them out to graze. They lay down on their cloth coats. The nocturnal stars gazed directly down upon them. They heard the countless myriads of insects which filled the grass; all their rasping, whistling, and whirring resounded clearly through the night, purified by the cool air, and lulled the drowsy ear. If one of them rose and stood for a while, the steppe presented itself to him spangled with the sparks of glow-worms. At times the night sky was illumined in spots by the glare of dry reeds which were burning along pools or river-bank; and a dark file of swans flying northward, was suddenly lighted up by the silvery-rose hued gleam, and then it seemed as though crimson kerchiefs were floating across the dark heavens.

The travellers rode onward without any adventures. They came across no villages. There was nothing but the same boundless, undulating, wondrously beautiful steppe. At intervals the crests of forests loomed blue in the distance, on one hand, where they stretched along the banks of the Dnyeper. But once Taras pointed out to his sons a small black speck far away in the grass, saying, "Look, boys! yonder gallops a Tatár." The tiny moustached head fixed its eyes straight upon them, from the distance, sniffing the air like