“Oh, I am well, as I have not been for a long time.”
The whole day passed in a march of this kind. The sun, growing red at last and seeming immense, was descending on the Moldavian side; the Dnieper was gleaming like a fiery ribbon, and from the east, from the Wilderness, darkness was moving on slowly.
Hreptyoff was not far away, but it was necessary to give rest to the horses, therefore they stopped for a considerable halt. This and that dragoon began to chant prayers; the Tartars dismounted, spread sheepskins on the ground, and fell to praying on their knees, with faces turned eastward. At times “Allah! Allah!” sounded through all the ranks; then again they were quiet; holding their palms turned upward near their faces, they continued in attentive prayer, repeating only from time to time drowsily and as if with a sigh, “Lohichmen ah lohichmen!” The rays of the sun fell on them redder and redder; a breeze came from the west, and with it a great rustling in the trees, as if they wished to honor before night Him who brings out on the dark heavens thousands of glittering stars. Basia looked with great curiosity at the praying of the Tartars; but at the thought that so many good men, after lives full of toil, would go straightway after death to hell’s fire, her heart was oppressed, especially since they, though they met people daily who professed the true faith, remained of their own will in hardness of heart.
Zagloba, more accustomed to those things, only shrugged his shoulders at the pious considerations of Basia, and said, “These sons of goats are not admitted to heaven, lest they might take with them vile insects.”
Then, with the assistance of his attendant, he put on a coat lined with hanging threads—an excellent defence against evening cold—and gave command to move on; but barely had the march begun when on the opposite heights five horsemen appeared. The Tartars opened ranks at once.
“Michael!” cried Basia, seeing the man riding in front.
It was indeed Volodyovski, who had come out with a few horsemen to meet his wife. Springing forward, they greeted each other with great joy, and then began to tell what had happened to each.
Basia related how the journey had passed, and how Pan Mellehovich had “sprained his reason17 against a stone.” The little knight made a report of his activity in Hreptyoff, in which, as he stated, everything was ready and waiting to receive her, for five hundred axes had been working for three weeks on buildings. During this conversation Pan Michael bent from the saddle every little while, and seized his young wife in his arms; she, it was clear, was not very angry at that, for she rode at his side there so closely that the horses were nearly rubbing against each other.
The end of the journey was not distant; meanwhile a beautiful night came down, illuminated by a great golden moon. But the moon grew paler as it rose from the steppes to the sky, and at last its shining was darkened by a conflagration which blazed up brightly in front of the caravan.
“What is that?” inquired Basia.
“You will see,” said Volodyovski, “as soon as you have passed that forest which divides us from Hreptyoff.”
“Is that Hreptyoff already?”
“You would see it as a thing on your palm, but the trees hide it.”
They rode into a small forest; but they had not ridden halfway through it when a swarm of lights appeared on the other edge like a swarm of fireflies, or glittering stars. Those stars began to approach with amazing rapidity; and suddenly the whole forest was quivering with shouts—
“Vivat the lady! Vivat her great mightiness! vivat our commandress! vivat, vivat!”
These were soldiers who had hastened to greet Basia. Hundreds of them mingled in one moment with the Tartars. Each held on a long pole a burning taper, fixed in a split at the end of the pole. Some had iron candlesticks on pikes, from which burning rosin was falling in the form of long fiery tears.
Basia was surrounded quickly with throngs of mustached faces, threatening, somewhat wild, but radiant with joy. The greater number of them had never seen Basia in their lives; many expected to meet an imposing person; hence their delight was all the greater at sight of that lady, almost a child in appearance, who was riding on a white palfrey and bent in thanks to every side her wonderful, rosy face, small and joyous, but at the same time greatly excited by the unlooked-for reception.
“I thank you, gentlemen,” said she; “I know that this is not for me.” But her silvery voice was lost in the vivats, and the forest was trembling from shouts.
The officers from the squadron of the starosta of Podolia and the chamberlain of Premysl, Motovidlo’s Cossacks and the Tartars, mingled together. Each wished to see the lady commandress, to approach her; some of the most urgent kissed the edge of her skirt or her foot in the stirrup. For these half-wild partisans, inured to raids and man-hunting, to bloodshed and slaughter, that was a sight so unusual, so new, that in presence of it their hard hearts were moved, and some kind of feeling, new and unknown to them, was roused in their breasts. They came to meet her out of love for Pan Michael, wishing to give him pleasure, and perhaps to flatter him; and behold! sudden tenderness seizes them. That smiling, sweet, and innocent face, with gleaming eyes and distended nostrils, became dear to them in one moment. “That is our child!” cried old Cossacks, real wolves of the steppe. “A cherub, Pan Commander.” “She is a morning dawn! a
