Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/210

 water any who happened to have found a higher place to stand on, a stone or corpse of a comrade. A third roared like a bull and butted the sinking from the back. Another folded his hands over his head and screwing up his face whimpered and bawled like a child. Some of them, seeing nothing but their inevitable death, clung to their comrades trying to climb on their shoulders, hanging on to their hair, forcing them down to the bottom and sinking along with them.

Like fish on their way to spawn, caught in a narrow stream, splashing and sticking their open mouths above the surface of the water to catch a breath of air, so here in the middle of the enormous, muddy, whirling lake, spluttering, fighting, sinking, rising to the top a moment, waving their arms and jerking their heads and sinking again, the Mongols drowned by the hundreds and thousands.

Hushed and motionless like wooden posts the Tukholians stood on the banks. Not even the stoutest and hardest-hearted could go on watching without shuddering, shedding a tear or emitting cries of pity at the wholesale drowning of human beings.

Paralyzed by boundless woe, Burunda-Behadir, watched the scene of horror. Although he was himself threatened by no lesser danger, though the water reached to the shoulders of his own select division of men and the swift currents which appeared in the stream tugged at their legs and reminded them of an urgent need to return to their position of safety, still Burunda stood for sometime tearing at his hair, emitting terrible, unrestrained cries, bemoaning the disaster which had befallen his army. No one dared to speak to him in that awful moment. All stood around him shivering, buffeted by the infinitely powerful enemy, water.

“Let’s go back!” said Burunda at last and they made straight for the pile of stones which the Turkomen had gathered in front of their post. They were just in time. The