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You have emerged from the country of ravines into the broad valley of the Bialka, and the bright sun shines full into your eyes. If the earth is a table on which Providence has spread a banquet for creation, then the valley of the Bialka is a gigantic, long-shaped dish with upturned rim.
Slimak had stacked his hay in the backyard, but the Germans were still driving in stakes and throwing up dams. The summer of that year was remarkable for great heat; the bees swarmed, the corn was ripening fast, the Bialka was shallower than usual, and three of the workmen died of sunstroke. Experienced farmers feared either prolonged rain during the harvest or hail before long.
In the winter this dish is white, but at other seasons it is like majolica, with forms severe and irregular, but beautiful. The Divine Potter has placed a field at the bottom of the dish and cut it through from north to south with the ribbon of the Bialka sparkling with waves of sapphire blue in the morning, crimson in the evening, golden at midday, and silver in moonlit nights.
The wind whistled the reveille, the rain beat the drum; like hounds released from the leash the clouds bounded forward...downward, following the direction to which the flashes of lightning pointed. The evil spirit had put out the sun. After an hour's downpour the exhausted storm calmed down, and now the roar of the Bialka could be distinctly heard.
Slimak saw two forms, one tall, the other oblong; the oblong was walking behind the tall one and nodding its head. 'Who's sending a cow to market? he thought, ... well, the boy must be thrashed...if only I could have another cow and that bit of field. He drove the horses down the hill towards the Bialka, where he caught sight of Stasiek, but could see nothing more of his farm or of the road.
'It's a monstrous thing', he said, 'to heap up so much sand on the fields near the river, and narrow the bed; when the Bialka swells, it will overflow. Slimak saw that the ends of the embankment were touching the river, but as they had been strengthened by brick walls he took no alarm. Nevertheless, it struck him that the Hamers were hurriedly throwing up dams on their fields in the lower places.
So he told Slimakowa to put some butter and a speckled hen into his cart and returned home. The thieving stopped for a while, and winter came on. The ground was warmly covered as with a sheepskin; ice as hard as flint froze on the Bialka, the Lord wrapped the branches of the trees securely in shirts of snow. But Slimak was still meditating on hasps and bolts.
Szymanski, to MM. Zeromski, Reymont, Kaden-Bandrowski, and to Mme Rygier-Nalkowska, all of Warsaw. The river Bialka springs from under a hill no bigger than a cottage; the water murmurs in its little hollow like a swarm of bees getting ready for their flight. For the distance of fifteen miles the Bialka flows on level ground.
If only it could be otherwise, if only I could manage to have another cow and perhaps get that little meadow.... His whip was pointed at the green field by the Bialka. But the sparrows only twittered 'You fool! and the earth groaned: 'You are starving me! He stopped the horses and looked around him to divert his thoughts.
Maciek had discovered at dawn one morning that a crowd had reached the river-bank by the ravines, and Slimak, hurrying thither, found some gospodarze from the village among the men. 'What is happening? 'They are going to throw up a dam and build a bridge across the Bialka, Wisniewski replied. 'And what are you doing here? 'We have been taken on to cart sand.
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