“May Cupid give you many happy moments!
Dear guests, crescite, multiplicamini!”
“Vivant, floreant!” cried the soldiers, when the little knight and Basia halted to read the inscription.
“For God’s sake!” said Zagloba, “I’m a guest too; but if that wish for multiplication concerns me, may the crows pluck me if I know what to do with it.”
But Pan Zagloba found a special transparency intended for himself, and with no small pleasure he read on it,—
“Long live our great mighty Onufry Zagloba,
The highest ornament of the whole knighthood!”
Pan Michael was very joyful; the officers were invited to sup with him; and for the soldiers he gave command to roll out one and another keg of spirits. A number of bullocks fell also; these the men began at once to roast at the fires. They sufficed for all abundantly. Long into the night the stanitsa was thundering with shouts and musket-shots, so that fear seized the bands of robbers hidden in the ravines of Ushytsa.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Pan Michael was not idle in his stanitsa, and his men lived in perpetual toil. One hundred, sometimes a smaller number, remained as a garrison in Hreptyoff; the rest were on expeditions continually. The more considerable detachments were sent to clear out the ravines of Ushytsa; and they lived, as it were, in endless warfare, for bands of robbers, frequently very numerous, offered powerful resistance, and more than once it was needful to fight with them regular battles. Such expeditions lasted days, and at times tens of days. Pan Michael sent smaller parties as far as Bratslav for news of the horde and Doroshenko. The task of these parties was to bring in informants, and therefore to capture them on the steppes. Some went down the Dniester to Mohiloff and Yampol, to maintain connection with commandants in those places; some watched on the Moldavian side; some built bridges and repaired the old road.