Meanwhile the birds, croaking louder and louder, approached considerably; therefore Pan Mushalski turned to the little knight and said, striking his palm on the bow, “Pan Commandant, will it be forbidden to bring down one, to please the lady? It will make no noise.”
“Bring down even two,” said Volodyovski, seeing how the old soldier had the weakness of showing the certainty of his arrows.
Thereupon the incomparable bowman, reaching behind his shoulder, took out a feathered arrow, put it on the string, and raising the bow and his head, waited.
The flock was drawing nearer and nearer. All reined in their horses and looked with curiosity toward the sky. All at once the plaintive wheeze of the string was heard, like the twitter of a sparrow; and the arrow, rushing forth, vanished near the flock. For a while it might be thought that Mushalski had missed, but, behold, a bird reeled head downward, and was dropping straight toward the ground over their heads, then tumbling continually, approached nearer and nearer; at last it began to fall with outspread wings, like a leaf opposing the air. Soon it fell a few steps in front of Basia’s pony. The arrow had gone through the raven, so that the point was gleaming above the bird’s back.
“As a lucky omen,” said Mushalski, bowing to Basia, “I will have an eye from a distance on the lady commandress and my great benefactress; and if there is a sudden emergency, God grant me again to send out a fortunate arrow. Though it may buzz near by, I assure you that it will not wound.”
“I should not like to be the Tartar under your aim,” answered Basia.
Further conversation was interrupted by Volodyovski, who said, pointing to a considerable eminence some furlongs away, “We will halt there.”
After these words they moved forward at a trot. Halfway up, the little knight commanded them to lessen their pace, and at last, not far from the top, he held in his horse.
“We will not go to the very top,” said he, “for on such a bright morning the eye might catch us from a distance; but dismounting, we will approach the summit, so that a few heads may look over.”
When he had said this, he sprang from his horse, and after him Basia, Pan Mushalski, and a number of others. The dragoons remained below the summit, holding their horses; but the others pushed on to where the height descended in wall form, almost perpendicularly, to the valley. At the foot of this wall, which was a number of tens of yards in height, grew a somewhat dense, narrow strip of brushwood, and farther on extended a low level steppe; of this they were able to take in an enormous expanse with their eyes from the height. This plain, cut through by a small stream running in the direction of Kalusik, was covered with clumps of thicket in the same way that it was near the cliff. In the thickest clumps slender columns of smoke were rising to the sky.