It was a fair shot! It caught the Cossack with full force square on the back of the head and burst with a loud report.
Those below, now already turning their attention to the noise and the confusion on the second floor, heard the sharp explosion and saw the court flooded with light. In the midst of the glare there came a shriek that seemed to stir every corner of the courtyard, and almost immediately a man with hair flaming and garments streaked with fire sprang from the threshold of Pan Andrew’s lodging to the edge of the stairway that had not collapsed, and darted to the floor above. He stopped there only for one fleeting glance below. The court, blazing with torches and alive with tumult, was full of figures—students, watchmen, soldiers—so that escape that way was impossible. He leaped to the loft stairway and mounted it. Clutching at the roof which was not far above his head, he swung the low door back until it lay alongside the house and then climbed over it to the roofing. Along this he rushed like a meteor, his blazing hair streaming behind him in a trail of sparks—he leaped to an adjoining roof, and then to another, until he came to a place where the roofs sloped down to a wall, and there he was seen last.
A hue and cry was set up, but the man had escaped. Some said that he ran along the top of the wall and leaped into a monastery garden beyond—others that he only pretended to descend and had crept back among the housetops. At any rate he was not discovered.
When temporary stairs were finally put in place the watchmen released Joseph and his mother from the small room in their own quarters where they had lain bound, and brought Elzbietka down to them. Pan Kreutz, who had retired to his loft where he shed his torn gown and his mask, was bleeding and weak from his struggle and lost no time in getting into his bed. It was thought by all that the robbers had carried away nothing, but when Pan Andrew returned in the morning the house was searched thoroughly only to find that the treasure was missing. Spectators swore that Peter could not have carried anything with him when he made his perilous escape over the roofs, and a few said that they had noticed that his hands were empty.
However, hunt high or low as they did, the treasure was gone, and Pan Andrew, in spite of the views of the spectators, was fully convinced that the robber had stolen it.
Those of Peter’s band who had been injured in the fall of the stairs or had been unable to escape from the court were taken to jail and sentenced to various punishments. Several were put away into dungeons where they could do no more harm, two were banished “for a period of ninety-nine years,” and the rest were delivered to justice in other towns where they had committed previous crimes. But the most vigorous questioning could get no information from them, and it was concluded that they knew little of the designs of the leader upon Pan Andrew. As for Stas, his mother would have naught of him after this act of treachery. She lost little time in turning him out of her house and never would she receive him back again. It was heard some time later that he had become a waiter in the Inn of the Golden Elephant, but after the robbery of a guest there one night, he disappeared and was never heard of in Krakow again.
Pan Kreutz, although somewhat unnerved by his share in the encounter, met Pan Andrew in his lodging the next morning and described as fully as he could the man who had been leader in the events of the preceding night. He had scarcely finished when Pan Andrew sprang to his feet and struck the back of his chair with his fist.
“It is as I thought,” he exclaimed fiercely, “the man who has assailed me twice before. And now I know for a certainty that it is that half Mongol, half Cossack that calls himself Bogdan and is known as the Terrible throughout the Cossack lands. I have heard of his evil deeds many times, as has every dweller in the Ukraine. And it would be like him indeed to lead this villainy against me. He is a very devil, a man without pity, though I will say a man of the boldest breed that God ever benefited with the gift of breath. We, the Poles of the Ukraine, knew him as Peter of the Button Face, because of the scar which you have seen upon his right cheek, and by that scar I would doubtless have recognized him on the morning when he attacked me outside the Krakow Gate, had I not believed that he carried on his lawless deeds always nearer the border.”
Thus saying he went sorrowfully to his work of repairing the damage done by the Cossack band.