In fact, the hussars did not pursue, but struck on the main body of infantry, which all the other squadrons were cutting to pieces. The broken detachment fled over the field like a scattered herd of deer.
Boguslav, on Kmita’s black steed, is rushing like the wind, striving in vain by cries to gather around him even a few tens of men. No one obeys him; each man flees on his own account, glad that he has escaped from the disaster, and that he has no enemy in front of him. But rejoicing was vain. They had not gone a thousand yards when howling was heard in front, and a gray host of Tartars sprang forth from the river, near which they had been lurking till then.
This was Kmita with his men. Leaving the field, after he had brought the enemy to the ford, he turned so as to cut off retreat to the fugitives.
The Tartars, seeing the cavalry scattered, scattered themselves in a moment to catch them more easily, and a murderous pursuit began. Two or three Tartars cut off one trooper, and he rarely defended himself; more frequently he seized his rapier by the point, and extended the hilt to the Tartars, calling for mercy. But the Tartars, knowing that they could not lead these prisoners home, took only officers who could give ransom; the common soldiers received a knife in the throat, and died, unable to say even “God!” Those who fled to the last were stabbed in the back and shoulders; those under whom the horses did not fall were caught with lariats.
Kmita rushed for a time over the field, hurling down horsemen and seeking Boguslav with his eyes; at last he beheld him, and knew him at once by the horse, by the blue ribbon, and the hat with black ostrich feathers.
A cloud of white steam surrounded the prince; for just the moment before two Nogais had attacked him. One he killed with a pistol-shot, and the other he thrust through with a rapier; then seeing a larger party rushing from one side, and Kmita from the other, he pressed his horse with spurs, and shot on like a hunted deer followed by hounds.
More than fifty men rushed in a body after him; but not all the horses ran equally, so that soon the fifty formed a long serpent, the head of which was Boguslav and the neck Kmita.
The prince bent forward in his saddle; the black horse appeared not to touch the earth with his feet, but was black over the green grass, like a swallow sweeping close to the ground; the chestnut stretched his neck like a crane, put back his ears, and seemed as if trying to spring from his skin. Single willows, clumps of them, groups of alder, shot past; the Tartars were behind, a furlong, two, three furlongs, but they ran and ran. Kmita threw his pistols from the holsters to lighten the horse’s burden; with eyes fastened on Boguslav, with fixed lips, he almost lay on the neck of the horse, pricked his foaming sides with spurs, till soon the foam falling to the earth became rose-colored.
But the distance between him and the prince not only did not decrease a single inch, but began to increase.
“Woe!” thought Pan Andrei, “no horse on earth can overtake that one.”
And when after a few springs the distance increased still more, he straightened himself in the saddle, let the sword drop on its pendant, and putting his hands around his mouth, shouted in a trumpet-like voice: “Flee, traitor, flee before Kmita! I will get you, if not today, tomorrow.”
These words had barely sounded in the air, when on a sudden the prince, who heard them, looked around, and seeing that Kmita alone was pursuing, instead of fleeing farther described a circle, and with rapier in hand rushed upon him.
Pan Andrei gave forth a terrible cry of joy, and without lessening speed raised his sabre for a blow.
“Corpse! corpse!” shouted the prince; and wishing to strike the more surely, he restrained his horse.
Kmita, when he had come up, held in his own beast till his hoofs sank in the earth, and rapier met sabre.
They closed in such fashion that the two horses formed almost one body. A terrible sound of steel was heard, quick as thought; no eye could catch the lightning-like movement of rapier and sabre, nor distinguish the prince from Kmita. At times Boguslav’s hat appeared black, at times Kmita’s steel morion gleamed. The horses whirled around each other. The swords clinked more and more terribly.
Boguslav, after a few strokes, ceased to despise his opponent. All the terrible thrusts which he had learned from French masters were parried. Sweat was now flowing freely from his face with the rouge and white; he felt weariness in his right arm already. Wonder seized him, then impatience, then rage; therefore he determined to finish, and he thrust so terribly that the hat fell from his head.
Kmita warded with such force that the prince’s rapier flew to the side of the horse; and before Boguslav could defend himself again, Kmita cut him with the very end of the sabre in the forehead.
“Christ!” cried the prince in German, rolling to the earth.
He fell on his back.
Pan Andrei was as if stunned for the moment, but recovered quickly. He dropped his sabre on its pendant, made the sign of the cross, sprang from his horse, and seizing the hilt, again approached the prince.
He was terrible; for pale as a sheet from emotion, his lips were pressed, and inexorable hatred was in his face.
Behold his mortal enemy, and such a powerful one, lying now at his feet in blood, still alive and conscious, but conquered, and not with foreign weapons nor with foreign
