“But you feel contempt for the man, of course, since he let you rob him. Oh, Jendzian, you will not die your own death!”
“What is written for each man, my master, that he’ll have; but to deceive an enemy is praiseworthy, and pleasing to God.”
“I do not blame you for that, but for greed, which is the feeling of a peasant, unworthy of a noble; for this you will be damned without fail.”
“I will not spare money for candles in the church when I succeed in gaining anything, so that God too should have some profit from me and bless me; and it is no sin to help my parents.”
“What a rascal, what a finished scoundrel!” cried Zagloba to Volodyovski. “I thought my tricks would go with me to the grave; but I see that this is a still greater rogue. So through the cunning of this youth we shall free our princess from Bogun’s captivity, with Bogun’s permission, and on Burlai’s horses! Has any man ever seen such a thing? And to look at him you wouldn’t give three copper coins for the fellow!”
Jendzian laughed with satisfaction, and said: “Will that be bad for us, my master?”
“You please me, and were it not for your greed I should take you into my service; but since you have tricked Bogun in such style, I forgive you for having called me a sot.”
“It was not I who called you that, but Bogun.”
“Well, God has punished him.”
In such conversation the morning passed; but when the sun had rolled up high on the vault of heaven they became serious, for in a few hours they were to see Valadinka. After a long journey they were near their object at last; and disquiet, natural in such cases, crept into their hearts. Was Helena still alive? And if alive, would they find her? Horpyna might have taken her out, or might at the last moment have hidden her somewhere else among the secret places of the ravine, or have killed her. Obstacles were not all overcome yet, dangers were not all passed. They had, it is true, all the tokens by which Horpyna was to recognize them as Bogun’s messengers, carrying out his will; but would the devils or the spirits forewarn her? Jendzian feared this most; and even Zagloba, though pretending to be an expert in the black art, did not think of this without alarm. In such a case they would find the ravine empty or (what was worse) Cossacks from Rashkoff ambushed in it. Their hearts beat more strongly; and when finally, after some hours yet of travelling, they saw from the lofty rim of the ravine the glittering ribbon of water, the plump face of Jendzian paled a little.
“That is the Valadinka,” said he, in a suppressed voice.
“Already?” inquired Zagloba, in an equally low voice. “Are we so near as that?”
“May God guard us!” replied Jendzian. “Oh, my master, begin your exorcisms, for I am awfully afraid.”
“Exorcisms are folly. Let us bless the river and the secret places,—that will help more.”
Volodyovski was the calmest of all, but he kept silent, examining however his pistols carefully, and added new powder; then he felt to see if his sabre would come out of the scabbard easily.
“I have a consecrated bullet too in this pistol here,” said Jendzian. “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Let us move on!”
“Move on! move on!” said Volodyovski.
After a time they found themselves on the bank of the little river, and turned their horses in the direction of its course. Here Volodyovski stopped them, and said,—
“Let Jendzian take the baton, for the witch knows him, and let him be the first to talk with her, so that she may not get frightened at us and run off with the princess into some hiding-place.”
“I will not go first, no matter what you do,” said Jendzian.
“Then go last, you drone!”
Having said this, Volodyovski went first, after him Zagloba, and in the rear with the pack-horses clattered Jendzian, looking around with apprehension on every side. The hoofs of the horses rattled over the stones, around about reigned the dull silence of the desert; but grasshoppers and crickets hidden in the cliff chirped, for it was a sultry day, though the sun had passed the meridian considerably. Night had come at last to the eminence, rounded like an upturned shield, on which rocks fallen apart and burnt from the sun presented forms like ruins, tumble-down houses, and church-steeples; you might have thought it a castle or a place stormed by an enemy.
Jendzian looked at Zagloba and said: “This is the Devil’s Mound; I know it from what Bogun told me. No living thing passes here by night.”
“If it does not, it can,” answered Zagloba. “Tfu! what a cursed land! But at least we are on the right road.”
“The place is not far,” said Jendzian.
“Praise be to God!” answered Zagloba; and his mind was turned to the princess.
He had wonderful thoughts, and seeing those wild banks of the Valadinka, that desert and silent wilderness, he scarcely believed that the princess could be so near,—she for whose sake he had passed through so many adventures and dangers, and loved so that when the news of her death came he knew not what to do with his life and his old age. But on the other hand a man becomes intimate, even with misfortune. Zagloba, who had grown familiar with the thought that she had been taken away and was far off in Bogun’s power, did not dare to say now to himself: “The end of grief and search has come, the hour of success and peace has arrived.” Besides other thoughts crowded to his brain: “What will she say when she sees him? Will she not dissolve into tears when like a thunderbolt comes to her that rescue, after such long and painful captivity? God has his wonderful ways,” thought Zagloba, “and so succeeds in correcting everything that from this come the triumph of virtue and the shame of injustice. It was God who first gave Jendzian into the hands of Bogun, and then made friends of them. God arranged that War, the stern mother, called away the wild ataman from the fastnesses to which like a wolf he had carried his plunder. God afterward delivered him into the hands of Volodyovski, and again brought him into contact with Jendzian. All is so arranged that now, when Helena may have lost her last hope and when she expects aid from no side, aid is at hand! Oh, cease your weeping, my daughter! Soon will joy come to you without measure! Oh, she will be grateful, clasp her hands, and return thanks!” Then she stood before the eyes of Zagloba as if living, and he was filled with emotion and lost altogether in thinking of what would happen in an hour.
Jendzian pulled him by the sleeve from behind. “My master!”
“Well!” said Zagloba, displeased that the course of his thoughts was interrupted.
“Did you not see a wolf spring across before us?”
“What of that?”
“But was it only a wolf?”
“Kiss him on the snout.”
At this moment Volodyovski reined in his horse. “Have we lost the road,” he asked, “for it should be here?”
“No, we have not,” answered Jendzian; “we are going as Bogun directed. I wish to God it were all over.”
“It will not be long, if we ride well.”
“I want to tell you another thing. When I am talking to the witch keep an eye on Cheremís; he must be a terribly nasty fellow, but shoots fearfully with his musket.”
“Oh, cavalry, don’t be afraid!”
They had barely gone some yards when the horses pricked up their ears and snorted. Jendzian’s skin began to creep at once; for he expected that at any moment the howling of vampires might be heard from the cliffs in the rocks, or some unknown and repulsive form would creep out. But it appeared that the horses snorted only because they were passing near the retreat of that wolf who had so disturbed the youth a little while before. Round about was silence; even the grasshoppers had ceased chirping, for the sun had already inclined to the other side of the sky. Jendzian made the sign of the cross and calmed himself.
Volodyovski held in his horse suddenly. “I see the ravine,” said he, “in the throat of which a rock is thrust, and in the rock there is a brea
ch.”
“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!” muttered Jendzian.
“After me!” commanded Pan Michael, turning his horse. Soon they were at the breach, and passed through as under a stone arch. Before them opened a deep ravine, thickly overgrown with bushes at the sides, widening in the distance to a broad half-circle,—a small plain, enclosed as it were by gigantic walls.
Jendzian began to shout as loud as the power in his breast permitted: “Bogun! Bogun! Witch, come out! Bogun! Bogun!”
They halted and remained for some time in silence; then the youth began to shout again: “Bogun! Bogun!”
From a distance came the barking of dogs.
“Bogun! Bogun!”
On the left rim of the ravine on which the ruddy and golden rays of the sun were falling the thick branches of the plum and wild-cherry trees began to rustle; and after a while there appeared, almost at the very source of the spring, a human form, which bending forward and covering its eyes with its hand looked carefully at the travellers.
“That’s Horpyna,” said Jendzian; and putting his palms around his mouth, he began to shout a third time: “Bogun! Bogun!”
Horpyna began to descend, bending back to keep her balance. She came on quickly, and after her rolled along a sort of dumpy little man with a long Turkish gun in his hand. Twigs broke under the weighty step of the witch; stones rolled from under them and rattled to the bottom of the ravine. Bent in that fashion, in the ruddy glare she seemed really some gigantic superhuman creature.
“Who are you?” called she in a loud voice, when she had reached the bottom.
“How are you, bass-viol!” said Jendzian, to whom his usual deliberation returned at the sight of human beings instead of spirits.
“You are Bogun’s servant? I know you, you fellow; but who are these?”
“Friends of Bogun.”
“Ah, she is a handsome witch,” muttered Pan Michael, under his mustaches.
“And what have you come for?”
“Here is the baton, the knife, and the ring for you,—you know what they mean?”
The giantess took them in her hands and began to examine them carefully; then she said,—
“They are the same! You have come for the princess?”
“Yes! Is she well?”
“She is. Why didn’t Bogun himself come?”
“Bogun is wounded.”
“Wounded? I saw that in the mill.”
“If you saw it, why do you ask? You lie, you bugle-horn!” said Jendzian, confidently.
The witch showed in a smile teeth white as the teeth of a wolf, and doubling her hand nudged Jendzian in the side: “You are a boy, you are a fellow, you are.”
“Be off!”
“You won’t give a kiss, will you? And when will you take the princess?”
“Right away; we will only rest the horses.”
“Well, take her! I will go with you.”
“What do you want to go for?”
“Death is fated for my brother; the Poles will empale him on a stake. I will go with you.”
Jendzian bent toward the saddle as if for easier conversation with the giantess, and his hand rested unobserved on the butt of a pistol.
“Cheremís! Cheremís!” said he, wishing to turn the attention of his comrades on the dwarf.
“Why do you call him? His tongue is cut out.”
“I am not calling him, I’m only admiring his beauty. You will not leave him,—he is your husband.”
“He is my dog!”
“And there are only two of you in the ravine?”
“Two,—the princess is the third.”
“That’s well. You will not leave him?”
“I will go with you,” said she.
“But I tell you that you will remain.”
There was something in the voice of the youth of such a character that the giantess turned on the spot with an alarmed face, for suspicion suddenly entered her mind.
“What do you mean?” asked she.
“This is what I mean!” answered Jendzian; and he thundered at her from the pistol so near that the smoke covered her completely for a moment.
Horpyna pushed back with open arms; her eyes protruded, a kind of unearthly yell rose out of her throat; she tottered and fell on her back, full length.
At the same moment Zagloba cut Cheremís through the head with a sabre so that the bone gritted under its edge. The deformed dwarf uttered no groan; he merely wound himself in a lump like a worm, and began to quiver. But the fingers of his hand opened and closed in succession like the claws of a dying wild-cat.
Zagloba wiped the steaming sabre with the skirt of his coat. Jendzian, springing from the horse and taking up a stone, threw it on the broad breast of Horpyna; then he began to look for something in his bosom.
The enormous body of the witch dug the ground yet with its feet, convulsions twisted her face terribly, on her grinning teeth came out a bloody foam, and dull rattles issued from her throat.
Meanwhile the youth got from his bosom a piece of consecrated chalk, drew a cross with it on the stone, and said: “Now she will not rise!” Then he sprang into the saddle.
“To horse!” commanded Volodyovski.
They rushed like a whirlwind along the brook running through the middle of the ravine; they passed the oaks scattered thinly along the road, and a cottage appeared before their eyes. Farther on was the lofty mill, the moist wheel of which glittered like a ruddy star in the rays of the sun. Under the cottage two enormous black dogs, tied with ropes at the corner, sprang at the men, barking with rage and howling.
Volodyovski, riding in advance, arrived first, sprang from his horse, ran to the entrance, kicked in the door, and rushed to the anteroom with clattering sabre.
In the anteroom on the right through an open door was seen a wide room, with shavings scattered about and a smoking fireplace; on the left the door was closed. “She must be there!” thought Volodyovski; and he sprang toward the door. He pushed; it opened. He stepped on the threshold and stood there as if fastened.
In the depth of the room, with head resting on the edge of a couch, was Helena Kurtsevichovna, pale, with hair falling on her neck and shoulders. With frightened eyes fixed on Volodyovski, she asked: “Who are you? What do you want?” for she had never seen the little knight before.
He was astonished at the sight of that beauty and that room covered with silk and brocade. At last he came to his speech, and said hurriedly: “Have no fear, we are the friends of Skshetuski.”
That moment the princess threw herself on her knees: “Save me!” she cried, clasping her hands.
Just then Zagloba, trembling, purple, and out of breath, rushed in. “It is we!” cried he,—"it is we with succor!”
Hearing these words and seeing the familiar face, the princess bent over like a cut flower, her hands dropped, her eyes were covered with their bordered curtains. She had fainted.
CHAPTER LVI.
The horses were given barely time to rest, and the return was begun with such speed that when the moon had risen on the steppe the party was already in the neighborhood of Studenka, beyond the Valadinka. Volodyovski rode in front, looking carefully on every side. Next came Zagloba at the side of Helena; and Jendzian closed the procession, driving the pack animals and two saddle-horses, which he had not failed to take from Horpyna’s stable. Zagloba’s mouth was not closed; and in truth he had something to tell the princess, who shut up in the wild ravine knew nothing of what was passing in the world. He told her how they had looked for her at first; how Skshetuski, without knowing of the duel, had sought Bogun as far as Pereyasláv; how finally Jendzian gained the secret of her concealment from the ataman and brought it to Zbaraj.
“Merciful God!” said Helena, raising her beautiful pale face to the moon; “then Pan Sk
shetuski went beyond the Dnieper for me?”
“To Pereyasláv, as I tell you. And surely he would have come with us now, but we had no time to send for him as we wished to hurry to your aid at once. He knows nothing as yet of your safety, and offers prayers for your soul every day; but have no sorrow for him now. Let him suffer a while longer since such a reward is awaiting him.”
“And I thought that all had forgotten me, and I was only imploring the Lord for death.”
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