Gosyevski himself rode up on a gallop, and when he had seen this, he knew that it was impossible for one living man to reach the opposite bank.
And still that might decide the fate of the battle. Then the forehead of the hetman frowned sternly. For a while he looked through his glass along the whole line of the enemy’s troops, and cried to the orderly—
“Rush to Hassan Bey; let the horde pass the deep bank as it can, and strike the tabor. What they find in the wagons will be theirs! There are no cannon there; it will be only hand to hand.”
The horseman sprang forward with what breath was in his horse; but the hetman advanced to where under willows on the meadow stood the Lauda squadron, and halted before it.
Volodyovski was at the head of the squadron, gloomy and silent; but he looked in the eyes of the hetman, and his mustaches quivered.
“What do you think?” asked the hetman; “will the Tartars cross?”
“The Tartars will cross, but Kmita will perish!” answered the little knight.
“As God lives!” cried the hetman, suddenly; “this Kmita, if he had a head on his shoulders, might win the battle, not perish!”
Volodyovski said nothing; still he thought: “It was necessary either not to send any regiment across the river, or to send five.”
The hetman looked awhile yet through his glass at the distant confusion which Kmita was making beyond the river; but the little knight, not being able to endure any longer, drew near him, and holding his sabre-point upward, said—
“Your worthiness, if there were an order, I would try the ford again.”
“Stop!” said Gosyevski, rather sharply; “it is enough that those will perish.”
“They are perishing already,” replied Volodyovski.
And in truth the uproar was becoming more definite and greater every moment. Evidently Kmita was retreating to the river.
“As God lives, I wanted that!” cried the hetman, suddenly; and he sprang like a thunderbolt to Voynillovich’s squadron.
In fact, Kmita was retreating. After they had met the red dragoons, his men fought with their last strength; but the breath was already failing in their breasts, their wearied hands were drooping, and bodies were falling faster and faster; only hope that aid might come any moment from beyond the river kept courage in them yet.
Half an hour more passed, and the cry of “Strike!” was heard no longer; but to the aid of the red dragoons sprang Boguslav’s regiment of heavy cavalry.
“Death is coming!” thought Kmita, seeing them approaching from the flank.
But he was a soldier who never had a doubt, for a moment, not only of his life, but of victory. Long and hazardous practice had given him also great knowledge of war; therefore lightning at dusk does not flash and then die out so quickly as the following thought flashed to the head of Pan Andrei: Evidently the Poles could not cross the ford to the enemy; and since they could not, he would lead the enemy to them.
Boguslav’s regiment was coming on at full sweep, and not more than a hundred yards distant; in a moment they could strike and scatter his Tartars. Pan Andrei raised the pipe to his mouth, and whistled so shrilly that the nearest dragoon horses rose on their haunches.
That instant other pipes of the Tartar leaders repeated the whistle; and not so swiftly does the whirlwind twist the sand as that chambul turned its horses in flight.
The remnant of the mailed cavalry, the red dragoons, and Boguslav’s regiment sprang after them with all speed.
The shouts of the officers—“Naprzod (Forward)!” and “Gott mit uns (God with us)!”—rang like a storm, and a marvellous sight was seen then. Over the broad meadow rushed the disordered and confused chambul of Tartars, straight to the ford, which was rained on with bullets and balls; and they tore onward, as if carried with wings. Every Tartar lay on the horse, flattened himself, hid himself in the mane and the neck, in such fashion that had it not been for the cloud of arrows flying back toward the cavalry, it might be said that the horses were rushing on riderless; after them, with roaring, shouting, and trampling, followed gigantic men, with upraised swords gleaming in their right hands.
The ford was nearer and nearer; there was half a furlong left yet, and evidently the Tartar horses were using their last strength, for the distance between them and the cavalry was quickly decreasing.
A few moments later the front ranks of the pursuers began to cut with their swords the Tartars closing the rear. The ford was right there; it seemed that in a few springs the horses would be in it.
Suddenly something wonderful happened.
Behold, when the chambul had run to the ford, a shrill whistle of pipes was heard again on the wings, and the whole body, instead of rushing into the river to seek safety on the other bank, opened in two, and with the speed of swallows sprang to the right and left, with and against the flow of the river.
But the heavy regiments, rushing right on their shoulders with the highest horse-speed, raced into the ford with the same force, and only when in the water did the horsemen begin to hold in their furious beasts.
The cannon, which up to that moment had been showering a rain of iron on the gravel, were silent in a second; the gunners had to spare their own army.
But Gosyevski was waiting for precisely that instant as for salvation.
The cavalry were hardly in the water when the terrible royal squadron of Voynillovich rushed at it like a hurricane; then the Lauda, the Korsak, the two squadrons of the hetman, and the volunteer squadron; after that, the armored squadron of Prince Michael Radzivill.
A terrible shout, “Kill,
