their camp fires, and the cooks
boiled the porridge for each kuren in huge copper cauldrons; whilst
an alert sentinel watched all night beside the blazing fire. But the
Zaporozhtzi soon began to tire of inactivity and prolonged sobriety,
unaccompanied by any fighting. The Koschevoi even ordered the allowance
of wine to be doubled, which was sometimes done in the army when no
difficult enterprises or movements were on hand. The young men, and
Taras Bulba's sons in particular, did not like this life. Andrii was
visibly bored. "You silly fellow!" said Taras to him, "be patient, you
will be hetman one day. He is not a good warrior who loses heart in an
important enterprise; but he who is not tired even of inactivity, who
endures all, and who even if he likes a thing can give it up." But hot
youth cannot agree with age; the two have different natures, and look at
the same thing with different eyes.

But in the meantime Taras's band, led by Tovkatch, arrived; with him
were also two osauls, the secretary, and other regimental officers: the
Cossacks numbered over four thousand in all. There were among them many
volunteers, who had risen of their own free will, without any summons,
as soon as they had heard what the matter was. The osauls brought to
Taras's sons the blessing of their aged mother, and to each a picture
in a cypress-wood frame from the Mezhigorski monastery at Kief. The two
brothers hung the pictures round their necks, and involuntarily grew
pensive as they remembered their old mother. What did this blessing
prophecy? Was it a blessing for their victory over the enemy, and then
a joyous return to their home with booty and glory, to be everlastingly
commemorated in the songs of guitar-players? or was it...? But the
future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising
from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping
wings, never recognising each other, the dove seeing not the vulture,
nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be flying
from destruction.

Ostap had long since attended to his duties and gone to the kuren.
Andrii, without knowing why, felt a kind of oppression at his heart. The
Cossacks had finished their evening meal; the wonderful July night had
completely fallen; still he did not go to the kuren, nor lie down to
sleep, but gazed unconsciously at the whole scene before him. In the sky
innumerable stars twinkled brightly. The plain was covered far