burn the old sorcerer so that the crows have nothing to peck at. Besides, I think he has no lack of gold and other goods. Here is where the devil lives. If he has gold… Now we're going to pass the crosses-it's the cemetery! here his unclean forebears rot. They say they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan, souls and tattered jackets, for money. If indeed he has gold, there's no point in delaying now: war can't always bring…'
'I know what you are plotting. No good does the encounter with him promise me. But you are breathing so hard, you look so stern, your eyes are so grim under their scowling brows!…'
'Silence, woman!' Danilo said angrily. 'Whoever deals with you becomes a woman himself. Lad, give me a light for my pipe!' Here he turned to one of the oarsmen, who knocked hot ashes from his pipe and transferred them to his master's pipe. 'Frightening me with a sorcerer!' Master Danilo went on. 'A Cossack, thank God, fears neither devils nor ksiedzy. Much good there'd be if we started listening to our wives. Right, lads? Our wife is a pipe and a sharp saber!'
Katerina fell silent, looking down into the slumbering water; and the wind sent ripples over the water, and the whole Dnieper silvered like a wolf's fur in the night.
The boat swung and began to hug the wooded bank. On the bank a cemetery could be seen: decrepit crosses crowded together. Guelder rose does not grow among them, there is no green grass, only the moon warms them from its heavenly height.
'Do you hear cries, my lads? Someone's calling us for help!' said Master Danilo, turning to his oarsmen.
'We hear the cries, and they seem to come from that direction,' the lads said together, pointing to the cemetery.
But all grew still. The boat swung and began to round the jutting bank. Suddenly the oarsmen lowered their oars and stared fixedly. Master Danilo also stopped: fear and chill cut into their Cossack fibers.
The cross on one tomb swayed and out of it quietly rose a withered dead man. Beard down to his waist; claws on his fingers, long, longer than the fingers themselves. Quietly he raised his arms. His whole face twisted and trembled. He obviously suffered terrible torment. 'I can't breathe! I can't breathe!' he moaned in a wild, inhuman voice. Like a knife blade his voice scraped at the heart, and the dead man suddenly sank under the ground. Another cross swayed, and again a dead man came out, still taller, still more terrible than the first; all overgrown, beard down to his knees, and still longer, bony nails. Still more wildly he cried: 'I can't breathe!' and sank under the ground. A third cross swayed, a third dead man rose. It seemed as if nothing but bones rose high over the ground. Beard down to his very heels; fingers with long claws stuck into the ground. Terribly he stretched his arms upwards, as if trying to reach the moon, and cried out as if someone were sawing at his yellow bones…
The baby asleep in Katerina's arms gave a cry and woke up. The mistress herself gave a cry. The oarsmen dropped their hats into the Dnieper. The master himself shook.
Suddenly it all disappeared as if it had never been; nevertheless, the lads did not take up their oars for a long time.
Anxiously did Burulbash look at his young wife, who fearfully rocked the crying baby in her arms; he pressed her to his heart and kissed her on the brow.
'Don't be afraid, Katerina! Look, there's nothing!' he said, pointing all around. 'It's the sorcerer trying to frighten people, so that no one gets into his unclean nest. He'll only frighten women with that! Give my son here!' With these words, Master Danilo raised his son to his lips. 'What, Ivan, you're not afraid of sorcerers? No, papa, he says, I'm a Cossack. Enough, then, stop crying! We'll go home! we'll go home-mother will feed you porridge, put you to bed in your cradle, and sing:
Lullay, lullay, lullay,
Lullay, little son, lullay,
Grow up, grow up wise,
Win glory in the Cossacks' eyes
And punish their enemies.
Listen, Katerina, it seems to me your father doesn't want to live in accord with us. He arrived sullen, stern, as if he's angry… Well, if you're displeased, then why come? He didn't want to drink to Cossack freedom, he didn't rock the baby in his arms! First I wanted to confide everything in my heart to him, but it didn't come out, and my speech stumbled. No, his is not a Cossack's heart! Cossack hearts, when they meet, never fail to go out to each other! What, my sweet lads, it's soon the shore? Well, I'll give you new hats. To you, Stetsko, I'll give a velvet one with gold. I took it from a Tartar, along with his head. I got all his gear; only his soul I let go free. Well, tie up! Here, Ivan, we've come home and you keep on crying! Take him, Katerina!'
They all got out. A thatched roof showed from behind the hill: the ancestral mansion of Master Danilo. Beyond it another hill, then a field, and then you could walk for a hundred miles and not find even one Cossack.
III
Master Danilo's farmstead lies between two hills, in a narrow valley that runs down to the Dnieper. His mansion is not tall: a cottage by the looks, like those of simple Cossacks, and only one room in it; but there is enough space inside for him, and his wife, and the old serving woman, and ten choice youths. There are oak shelves up on the walls all around. They are laden with bowls and pots for eating. There are silver goblets among them and glasses trimmed with gold-gifts or the plunder of war. Below them hang costly muskets, sabers, harquebuses, lances. Willingly or unwillingly they were passed on from Tartars, Turks, and Polacks; and so they are not a little nicked. Looking at them, Master Danilo recalled his battles as if by banners. Along the wall, smoothly hewn oak benches. Next to them, before the stove seat, 4 a cradle hangs on ropes put through a ring screwed into the ceiling. The floor of the room is beaten smooth and covered with clay. On the benches Master Danilo sleeps with his wife. On the stove seat sleeps the old serving woman. In the cradle the little baby sports and is lulled to sleep. On the floor the youths lie side by side. But it is better for a Cossack to sleep on the level ground under the open sky; he needs no down or feather beds; he puts fresh hay under his head and sprawls freely on the grass. It delights him to wake up in the middle of the night, to gaze at the tall, star-strewn sky and shiver from the cool of the night that refreshes his Cossack bones. Stretching and murmuring in his sleep, he lights his pipe and wraps himself tighter in his warm sheepskin.
It was not early that Burulbash woke up after the previous day's merrymaking, and when he did wake up, he sat in the corner on the bench and began to sharpen a new Turkish saber he had taken in trade; and Mistress Katerina started to embroider a silken towel with gold. Suddenly Katerina's father came in, angry, scowling, with an outlandish pipe in his teeth, approached his daughter, and began to question her sternly: What was the reason for her coming home so late?
