"Ah! we'll see. Get up, will you! Prick him with the point of your lance, Ivanovich. Come, move yourself," added the officer, as McKay slowly yielded to this painful persuasion, "move yourself, or you shall feel this," and the officer cracked the long lash of his riding-whip.
"You shall answer for this barbarity," said McKay "I demand to be taken before the General at once."
"You shall see him, never fear, sooner than you might wish, perhaps."
"Take me at once before him; I am not afraid."
"You will wait till it suits us, dog; meanwhile, lie there."
They had reached a rough shelter built of mud and long reeds. It was the picket-house, the headquarters of the troop of Cossacks, and a number of them were lying and hanging about, their horses tethered close by.
The officer pointed to a corner of the hut, and, giving peremptory instructions to a couple of sentries to watch the prisoner, for whom they would have to answer with their lives, he disappeared.
Greatly dejected and cast down at the failure of his enterprise, and in acute physical pain from his recent ill-usage and the tightness of his bonds, McKay passed the rest of the night very miserably.
Dawn came at length, but with it no relief. On the contrary, daylight aggravated his sufferings. He could see now the cruel scowling visages of his captors, and the indescribable filth and squalor of the den in which he lay.
"Get up!" cried a voice; but McKay was too much dazed and distracted by all he had endured to understand that the command was addressed to him.