“I have not, for I have had no time. Who has a head for anything but the storm?”
“Then let us go now.”
“Go to sleep first,” said Zagloba.
“True! true! I am barely standing on my feet.”
So when he came to his own quarters Pan Andrei followed Zagloba’s advice, especially as he found Hassling asleep. But Zagloba and Volodyovski came to see him in the evening; they sat down in the broad summer-house which the Tartars had made for their “bagadyr.” The Kyemliches poured out for them mead a hundred years old, which the king had sent to Kmita; and they drank it willingly, for the air was hot outside. Hassling, pale and emaciated, seemed to draw life and strength from the precious liquid. Zagloba clicked with his tongue, and wiped perspiration from his forehead.
“Hei! how the great guns are thundering!” said the young Scot, listening. “To-morrow you will go to the storm—it is well!—for the healthy—God give you blessing! I am of foreign blood, and serve him whom it was my duty to serve, but you have my best wishes. Ah, what mead this is! Life enters me.”
Thus speaking, he threw back his golden hair and raised his blue eyes toward heaven; he had a wonderful face, half childlike as yet. Zagloba looked at him with a certain emotion.
“You speak Polish as well as any of us,” said he. “Become a Pole, love this our country, and you will do an honorable deed, and mead will not be lacking to you. It is not difficult for a soldier to receive naturalization with us.”
“All the more easy since I am a noble,” answered Hassling. “My name is Hassling-Kettling of Elgin. My family come from England, though settled in Scotland.”
“Those countries beyond the sea are far away, and somehow it is more decent for a man to live here,” said Zagloba.