I leaned over my horse's neck, closed my eyes, and lost myself for a few minutes: then suddenly the regular hoof-beat[19] and rustling came into my consciousness again. I looked around, and it seemed to me as though I were standing still in one spot, and that the black shadow in front of me was moving down upon me; or else that the shadow stood still, and I was rapidly riding down upon it.
At one such moment I was more strongly than ever impressed by that incessantly approaching sound, the cause of which I could not fathom: it was the roar of water. We were passing though a deep gulch, and coming close to a mountain river, which at that season was in full flood.[20] The roaring became louder, the damp grass grew taller and thicker, bushes were encountered in denser clumps, and the horizon narrowed itself down to closer limits. Now and then, in different places in the dark hollows of the mountains, bright fires flashed out and were immediately extinguished.
"Tell me, please, what are those fires," I asked in a whisper of the Tatar riding at my side.
"Don't you really know?" was his reply.
"No," said I.
"That is mountain straw tied to a pole,[21] and the light is waved."
"What for?"
"So that every man may know the Russian is coming. Now in the Auls," he added with a smile, "aï, aï the tomásha[22] are flying about; every sort of khurda-murda[23] will be hurried into the ravines."
"How do they know so soon in the mountains that the expedition is coming?" I asked.
"Eï! How can they help knowing? It's known everywhere: that's the kind of people we are."