“You would have it,” said Kmita, taking position.
But Volodyovski did not hurry, and not taking his sabre out yet, he looked around on the sky. Day was already coming in the east. The first golden and azure stripes were extended in a belt of light, but in the yard it was still gloomy enough, and just in front of the house complete darkness reigned.
“The day begins well,” said Volodyovski, “but the sun will not rise soon. Perhaps you would wish to have light?”
“It is all one to me.”
“Gentlemen!” cried Volodyovski, turning to the nobles, “go for some straw and for torches; it will be clearer for us in this Orsha dance.”
The nobles, to whom this humorous tone of the young colonel gave wonderful consolation, rushed quickly to the kitchen. Some of them fell to collecting the torches trampled at the time of the battle, and in a little while nearly fifty red flames were gleaming in the semi-darkness of the early morning.
Volodyovski showed them with his sabre to Kmita. “Look, a regular funeral procession!”
And Kmita answered at once: “They are burying a colonel, so there must be parade.”
“You are a dragon!”
Meanwhile the nobles formed in silence a circle around the knights, and raised the burning torches aloft; behind them others took their places, curious and disquieted; in the centre the opponents measured each other with their eyes. A grim silence began; only burned coals fell with a crackle to the ground. Volodyovski was as lively as a goldfinch on a bright morning.