Kosciuszko's Rising. Three Polish boatmen came to the town hall
to offer Kosciuszko twenty of their primitive flat-bottomed barges.
Hearing of their arrival, Kosciuszko pushed his way through the crowds
thronging the building, till he reached the ante-room where stood the
peasants in their rough sheepskin coats and mud-stained top-boots, "Come
near me, Wojciech Sroki, Tomasz Brandys, and Jan Grzywa," he cried,
"that I may thank you for your offering. I regret that I cannot now
satisfy the wish of your hearts [by using the barges]; but, God helping
and as the war goes on, then will our country make use of your gift."
The peasants were not to be baulked of their desire to give their all to
Poland. The spokesman of the trio, followed by his comrades, shook into
his sheepskin cap the little sum of money that they had managed to
scrape together and, smiling, handed it to Kosciuszko, apologizing in
his homely dialect for the poorly stuffed cap. Kosciuszko flung the cap
to an officer who stood by his side, crying, "I must have my hands free
to press you, my beloved friends, to my heart." Drawn by that personal
fascination which, united to the patriot's fire, invariably captivated
all those who came into contact with Kosciuszko, the simple boatmen fell
on their knees before him, kissing his hands and feet.

Kosciuszko remained in Cracow until the jest of April , overwhelmed from
six in the morning till far into the night by the affairs of the Rising,
collecting his army, sending broadcast secret letters hidden in
pincushions or otherwise concealed by the officers to whom they were
entrusted, directing the supremely important task of concentrating the
scattered Polish regiments that were with varying success fighting their
way towards him. He was working against time with the Russians forming
up against his scanty numbers. "For the love of our country make haste,"
is his ever-recurrent cry in his directions to his subordinates. On the
1st of April he left Cracow at the head of his small army, prepared to
take the field against the enemy who was about to attack Madalinski. At
his camp outside Cracow his long-cherished desire was fulfilled; bands
of peasants, some two thousand strong, marched in, armed "with their
pikes and the scythes that won them the name, famous in Polish annals,
of the "Reapers of Death." Mountaineers, too, came down in their
brilliantly coloured garb from the Polish Carpathians. To all these men
from the fie