They hurled up their caps with bloody hands.
“Vivat Charnyetski!”
“God grant another speedy meeting. Vivat! vivat!”
And the castellan said: “You will go to the rear for rest. But who took the standard?”
“Give the lad this way!” cried Shandarovski; “where is he?”
The soldiers sprang for him, and found him sitting at the wall of the stable near the colt, which had fallen from wounds and was just breathing out his last breath. At the first glance it did not seem that the lad would last long, but he held the standard with both hands to his breast.
They bore him away at once, and brought him before Charnyetski. The youth stood there barefoot, with disordered hair, with naked breast, his shirt and his jacket in shreds, smeared with Swedish blood and his own, tottering, bewildered, but with unquenched fire in his eyes.
Charnyetski was astounded at sight of him. “How is this?” asked he. “Did he take the royal standard?”
“With his own hand and his own blood,” answered Shandarovski. “He was the first also to let us know of the Swedes; and afterward, in the thickest of the whirl, he did so much that he surpassed me and us all.”
“It is truth, genuine truth, as if some one had written it!” cried others.