“Take them alive!” cried Kmita.
The biting of steel ceased. The Tartars were commanded to bind the enemy, and with the skill peculiar to them they did this in a twinkle; then the squadrons pushed back hastily from the cannon-fire. The colonels marched toward the sheds,—the Lauda men in advance, Vankovich in the rear, and Kmita, with the prisoners, in the centre, all in perfect readiness to repulse attack should it come. Some of the Tartars led prisoners on leashes; others of them led captured horses. Kmita, when he came near the sheds, looked carefully into the faces of the prisoners to see if Boguslav was among them; for though one of them had sworn under a sword-point that the prince was not in the detachment, still Kmita thought that perhaps they were hiding him purposely. Then some voice from under the stirrup of a Tartar cried to him,—
“Pan Kmita! Colonel! Rescue an acquaintance! Give command to free me from the rope on parole.”
“Hassling!” cried Kmita.
Hassling was a Scot, formerly an officer in the cavalry of the voevoda of Vilna, whom Kmita knew in Kyedani, and in his time loved much.
“Let the prisoner go free!” cried he to the Tartar, “and down from the horse yourself!”
The Tartar sprang from the saddle as if the wind had carried him off, for he knew the danger of loitering when the “bagadyr” commanded.
Hassling, groaning, climbed into the Tartar’s lofty saddle. Kmita then caught him above the palm, and pressing his hand as if he wished to crush it, began to ask insistently,—
“Whence do you come? Tell me quickly, whence do you come? For God’s sake, tell quickly!”
“From Taurogi,” answered the officer.