"Issue powder and balls to them."
"I have done so."
"We land during the night and go by the steppe in the greatest quiet. We will come upon them with a surprise."
"Gut! sehr gut! But mightn't we go on a little in the boats? It is twenty miles to the fortress,--rather far for infantry."
"The infantry will mount Cossack horses."
"Gut! sehr gut!"
"Let the men lie quietly in the reeds, not go on shore; make no noise, kindle no fires, for smoke would betray us. We must not be revealed."
"There is such a fog that the smoke will not be seen."
Indeed the river, the inlet overgrown with reeds, in which the boats were hidden, and the steppe were covered as far as the eye could see with a white, impenetrable fog. But it was only the beginning of day; so the fog might rise and uncover the expanse of the steppe.
Flick departed. The men in the boats woke gradually. Krechovski's commands to keep quiet and take the morning meal without tumult were made known. No person going along the shore or sailing in the middle of the river would have even imagined that in the adjoining thicket several thousand men were hidden. The horses were fed from the hand, so that they should not neigh. The boats, covered with fog, lay tied up in the reeds. Here and there only passed a small two-oared boat carrying biscuits and commands; with this exception, the silence of the grave reigned everywhere.