“God grant Mellehovich to come up! He is on a good horse. God grant him!” repeated he, in despair.
But his fears were ill founded, and the danger was not so great as it seemed to the loving knight. The question of their own skins was too near to the robbers; they felt the Lithuanian Tartars too close to their shoulders to pursue a single rider, even were that rider the most beautiful houri in the Mohammedan paradise, escaping in a robe set with jewels. Basia needed only to turn toward Hreptyoff to escape from pursuit; for surely the fugitives would not return to the jaws of the lion for her, while they had before them a river, with its reeds in which they could hide. The Lithuanian Tartars had better horses, and Basia was sitting on a pony incomparably swifter than the ordinary shaggy beasts of the horde, which were enduring in flight, but not so swift as horses of high blood. Besides, she not only did not lose presence of mind, but her daring nature asserted itself with all force, and knightly blood played again in her veins. The pony stretched out like a deer; the wind whistled in Basia’s ears, and instead of fear, a certain feeling of delight seized her.
“They might hunt a whole year, and not catch me,” thought she. “I’ll rush on yet, and then turn, and either let them pass, or if they have not stopped pursuing, I will put them under the sabre.”
It came to her mind that if the ravagers behind her were scattered greatly over the steppe, she might, on turning, meet one of them and have a hand-to-hand combat.
“Well, what is that?” said she to her valiant soul. “Michael has taught me so that I may venture boldly; if I do not, they will think that I am fleeing through fear, and will not take me on another expedition; and besides, Pan Zagloba will make sport of me.”
Saying this to herself, she looked around at the robbers, but they were fleeing in a crowd. There was no possibility of single combat; but Basia wished to give proof before the eyes of the whole army that she was not fleeing at random and in frenzy. Remembering that she had in the holsters two excellent pistols carefully loaded by Michael himself before they set out, she began to rein in her pony, or rather to turn him toward Hreptyoff, while slacking his speed. But, oh, wonder! at sight of this the whole party of ravagers changed the direction of their flight somewhat, going more to the left, toward the edge of the eminence. Basia, letting them come within a few tens of steps, fired twice at the nearest horses; then, turning, urged on at full gallop toward Hreptyoff.
But the pony had run barely some yards with the speed of a sparrow, when suddenly there darkened in front a cleft in the steppe. Basia pressed the pony with her spurs without hesitation, and the noble beast did not refuse, but sprang forward; only his fore feet caught somewhat the bank opposite. For a moment he strove violently to find support on the steep wall with his hind feet; but the earth, not sufficiently frozen yet, fell away, and the horse went down through the opening, with Basia. Fortunately the horse did not fall on her; she succeeded in freeing her feet from the stirrups, and, leaning to one side with all force, struck on a thick layer of moss, which covered the bottom of the chasm as if with a lining; but the shock was so violent that she fainted.
Pan Michael did not see the fall, for the horizon was concealed by the Lithuanian Tartars; but Mellehovich shouted with a terrible voice at his men to pursue the ravagers without stopping, and running himself to the cleft, disappeared in it. In a twinkle he was down from the saddle, and seized Basia in his arms. His falcon eyes saw her all in one moment, looking to see if there was blood anywhere; then they fell on the moss, and he understood that this had saved her and the pony from death. A stifled cry of joy was rent from the mouth of the young Tartar. But Basia was hanging in his arms; he pressed her with all his strength to his breast; then with pale lips he kissed her eyes time after time, as if wishing to drink them out of her head. The whole world whirled with him in a mad vortex; the passion concealed hitherto in the bottom of his breast, as a dragon lies concealed in a cave, carried him away like a storm.
But at that moment the tramp of many horses was heard in an echo from the lofty steppe, and approached more and more swiftly. Numerous voices were crying, “Here! in this cleft! Here!” Mellehovich placed Basia on the moss, and called to those riding up—
“This way, this way!”
A moment later, Pan Michael was at the bottom of the cleft; after him Pan Zagloba, Mushalski, and a number of other officers.
“Nothing is the matter,” cried the Tartar. “The moss saved her.”
Pan Michael grasped his insensible wife by the hands; others ran for water, which was not near. Zagloba, seizing the temples of the unconscious woman, began to cry—
“Basia, Basia, dearest! Basia!”
“Nothing is the matter with her,” said Mellehovich, pale as a
