woe did they cause. For more than one Cossack
wailed the aged mother, beating with bony hands her feeble breast;
more than one widow was left in Glukhof, Nemirof, Chernigof, and other
cities. The loving woman will hasten forth every day to the bazaar,
grasping at all passers-by, scanning the face of each to see if there
be not among them one dearer than all; but though many an army will
pass through the city, never among them will a single one of all their
dearest be.

Half the Nezamaikovsky kuren was as if it had never been. As the hail
suddenly beats down a field where every ear of grain shines like purest
gold, so were they beaten down.

How the Cossacks hastened thither! How they all started up! How raged
Kukubenko, the hetman, when he saw that the best half of his kuren was
no more! He fought his way with his remaining Nezamaikovtzi to the very
midst of the fray, cut down in his wrath, like a cabbage, the first man
he met, hurled many a rider from his steed, piercing both horse and man
with his lance; and making his way to the gunners, captured some of
the cannons. Here he found the hetman of the Oumansky kuren, and Stepan
Guska, hard at work, having already seized the largest cannon. He left
those Cossacks there, and plunged with his own into another mass of the
foe, making a lane through it. Where the Nezamaikovtzi passed there was
a street; where they turned about there was a square as where streets
meet. The foemen's ranks were visibly thinning, and the Lyakhs
falling in sheaves. Beside the waggons stood Vovtuzenko, and in front
Tcherevitchenko, and by the more distant ones Degtyarenko; and behind
them the kuren hetman, Vertikhvist. Degtyarenko had pierced two Lyakhs
with his spear, and now attacked a third, a stout antagonist. Agile and
strong was the Lyakh, with glittering arms, and accompanied by fifty
followers. He fell fiercely upon Degtyarenko, struck him to the earth,
and, flourishing his sword above him, cried, "There is not one of you
Cossack dogs who has dared to oppose me."

"Here is one," said Mosiy Schilo, and stepped forward. He was a
muscular Cossack, who had often commanded at sea, and undergone many
vicissitudes. The Turks had once seized him and his men at Trebizond,
and borne them captives to the galleys, where they bound them hand and
foot with iron chains, gave them no food for a week at a time, and made
them drink sea-water. The poor prisoners endured and suffered all, but
would not re