“Yes, it’s Biek-Agamalov,” replied sharp-sighted Lbov. “Look how beautifully he rides.”
“Yes, he does,” chimed in Romashov. “To my thinking, he rides better than any other of our cavalrymen. But just look at his horse dancing. Biek is showing off.”
An officer, wearing an Adjutant’s uniform and white gloves, was riding quietly along the causeway. He was sitting on a high, slim-built horse with a gold-coloured and short-clipped tail, after the English fashion. The spirited animal pirouetted under his rider, and impatiently shook its branch-bit by the violent tossings of its long and nobly formed neck.
“Pavel Pavlich, is it a fact that Biek is a Circassian by birth?” asked Romashov.
“Yes, I think so,” answered Viätkin. “Armenians pretend sometimes that they are Circassians or Lezghins,[1] but nobody can be deceived with regard to Biek. Only look how he carries himself on horseback.”
“Wait, I’ll call him,” said Lbov.
Lbov put his hands to his mouth, and tried to form out of them a sort of speaking-tube, and shouted in a suppressed voice, so as not to be heard by the Commander—
“Lieutenant Biek-Agamalov!”
The officer on horseback pulled the reins, stopped for a second, and swung in the saddle towards the right. Then he also turned his horse to the right, bent slightly forward, and, with a springy and energetic movement, jumped the ditch, and rode in a short gallop up to the officers.
He was a man somewhat below the medium height, lean, muscular, and very powerful. His countenance, with its receding forehead, delicate, aquiline nose, and strong, resolute lines about the mouth, was manly and handsome, and had not yet got the pale and sickly hue that is so characteristic of the Oriental when he is getting on in years.