aporozhtzi.

And here, above all, did our young Cossacks, disgusted with pillage,
greed, and a feeble foe, and burning with the desire to distinguish
themselves in presence of their chiefs, seek to measure themselves in
single combat with the warlike and boastful Lyakhs, prancing on their
spirited horses, with the sleeves of their jackets thrown back and
streaming in the wind. This game was inspiriting; they won at it many
costly sets of horse-trappings and valuable weapons. In a month the
scarcely fledged birds attained their full growth, were completely
transformed, and became men; their features, in which hitherto a trace
of youthful softness had been visible, grew strong and grim. But it was
pleasant to old Taras to see his sons among the foremost. It seemed
as though Ostap were designed by nature for the game of war and the
difficult science of command. Never once losing his head or becoming
confused under any circumstances, he could, with a cool audacity almost
supernatural in a youth of two-and-twenty, in an instant gauge the
danger and the whole scope of the matter, could at once devise a means
of escaping, but of escaping only that he might the more surely conquer.
His movements now began to be marked by the assurance which comes from
experience, and in them could be detected the germ of the future leader.
His person strengthened, and his bearing grew majestically leonine.
"What a fine leader he will make one of these days!" said old Taras. "He
will make a splendid leader, far surpassing even his father!"

Andrii gave himself up wholly to the enchanting music of blades and
bullets. He knew not what it was to consider, or calculate, or to
measure his own as against the enemy's strength. He gazed on battle with
mad delight and intoxication: he found something festal in the moments
when a man's brain burns, when all things wave and flutter before his
eyes, when heads are stricken off, horses fall to the earth with a sound
of thunder, and he rides on like a drunken man, amid the whistling of
bullets and the flashing of swords, dealing blows to all, and heeding
not those aimed at himself. More than once their father marvelled too
at Andrii, seeing him, stirred only by a flash of impulse, dash at
something which a sensible man in cold blood never would have attempted,
and, by the sheer force of his mad attack, accomplish such wonders as
could not but amaze even men grown old in battle. Old Taras admired and
said, "A