After a moment the cap fell to the earth from his fingers, his head dropped to the mane of the horse, and his eyes closed.
"But he is wounded!" cried Lukash Bukoyemski.
CHAPTER XXIV
Yatsek was really wounded. One of those robbers, who defended themselves to the utmost, cut him, with a scythe in the left shoulder, and since he and the men marched without mail, the very end of the iron had cut into his arm rather deeply from the shoulder to the elbow. The wound was not over grievous, but it bled quite profusely; because of this the young man had then fainted. The experienced Father Voynovski commanded to put him in a wagon, and, when the wound had been dressed, he left him in care of the women. Yatsek opened his eyes somewhat later, and began again to look, as at a rainbow, into the face of Panna Anulka, which was there bending over him.
Meanwhile the attendants filled the ditch and removed all obstructions. The wagons and the men passed to the dry road beyond, where they halted to bring the train into order, take some rest, and question the prisoners. From Tachevski the priest went to the Bukoyemskis to see if they had suffered. But they had not. The horses were torn and even stabbed with forks, but not seriously; the men themselves were in excellent humor, for all were admiring their valor, since they had crushed before war, more opponents than had many others during years of campaigning.
"Now, gentlemen, ye may join Pan Zbierhovski," said the hussars here and there. "From of old it is known, and God grant that men will see soon, that our regiment is the first even among hussars. Pan Zbierhovski admits no common men, or any man easily, but he will accept you with gladness, and we shall be charmed from our hearts to find you in our company."
The Bukoyemskis knew that this might not be, for they could not have the attendants, or the outfit demanded in such a high regiment, but they listened to those speeches with rapture, and when cups went the round, they let no man surpass them.
When that part was ended, the captured bandits were seized by their heads, and led from the mud to Zbierhovski and the priest and Pan Serafin. No bandit had escaped, for with a detachment of twelve hundred there were men to surround the whole quagmire and both ends of the ridgeway. The appearance of the prisoners astonished Pan Serafin. He had thought to find Martsian among them, as he had told Stanislav, and Martsian's Radom outcasts also; meanwhile he saw before him a ragged rabble reeking with turf and bespattered with mud of the ridgeway, a company made up, like all bodies of that kind, of deserters from the infantry, of runaway servants and serfs, in a word, of all kinds of wicked, wild scoundrels working at robbery in remote places and forests. Many such parties were raging, especially in the wooded region of Sandomir, and since they were strengthened by men who were eager for anything, men who if captured were threatened with terrible punishment, their attacks were uncommonly daring, and they fought savage battles.
The search through the quagmire continued for a time yet, then Pan Serafin turned to Zbierhovski.
"Gracious colonel," said he. "These are highway robbers. We thought them quite different. This was an attack of common bandits. We thank you, and all your men with grateful hearts for effective assistance, without which, as is possible, we should not have seen the sun rise this morning."