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Updated: July 16, 2025
"Who ever saw the like!" he exclaimed; and the old man rejoiced, and began to thank all the Oumantzi for the honour they had conferred upon his son. The Cossacks retired, preparing to go into camp; but the Lyakhs showed themselves again on the city ramparts with tattered mantles. Many rich caftans were spotted with blood, and dust covered the brazen helmets.
You think that you passed for a common Cossack? No, they have offered a reward of two thousand ducats for your head." "And Ostap!" cried Taras suddenly, and tried to rise; for all at once he recollected that Ostap had been seized and bound before his very eyes, and that he was now in the hands of the Lyakhs. Grief overpowered him.
Then the Cossacks took leave of each other to the last man, knowing that there was a great deal of work before them all. Yet they were not obliged to part at once: they would have to wait until night in order not to let the Lyakhs perceive the diminution in the Cossack army. Then all went off, by kurens, to dine.
The beaten Lyakhs ran in all directions and hid themselves. "No, the victory is not yet complete," said Taras, glancing at the city gate; and he was right. The gates opened, and out dashed a hussar band, the flower of all the cavalry. Every rider was mounted on a matched brown horse from the Kabardei; and in front rode the handsomest, the most heroic of them all.
And the old hetman stooped down, and felt in the grass for his pipe full of tobacco, his inseparable companion on all his expeditions by sea and land and at home. But in the meantime a band of Lyakhs suddenly rushed up, and seized him by the shoulders. He struggled with all might; but he could not scatter on the earth, as he had been wont to do, the heydukes who had seized him.
The Cossacks glanced around, and there was Metelitza on one side, entertaining the Lyakhs by dealing blows on the head to one and another; on the other side, the hetman Nevelitchkiy was attacking with his men; and Zakrutibuga was repulsing and slaying the enemy by the waggons.
"This is a mass for the soul of Ostap, you heathen Lyakhs," was all that Taras said. And such masses for Ostap he had sung in every village, until the Polish Government perceived that Taras's raids were more than ordinary expeditions for plunder; and Pototzky was given five regiments, and ordered to capture him without fail.
They dug graves with swords and spears, brought earth in their caps and the skirts of their garments, laid the Cossacks' bodies out decently, and covered them up in order that the ravens and eagles might not claw out their eyes. But binding the bodies of the Lyakhs, as they came to hand, to the tails of horses, they let these loose on the plain, pursuing them and beating them for some time.
When your father the devil was raging thus, what were you doing yourselves? Had you no swords? How came you to permit such lawlessness?" "Eh! how did we come to permit such lawlessness? You would have tried when there were fifty thousand of the Lyakhs alone; yes, and it is a shame not to be concealed, when there are also dogs among us who have already accepted their faith."
But the Cossacks would not have succeeded in effecting both these movements if Ostap had not dashed into the middle of the foe and wrenched the linstocks from six cannoneers. But he could not wrench them from the other four, for the Lyakhs drove him back.
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