"There will be two of us in the Ukraine, and above us the king, and no man else."
Krechovski turned to the boats. Old Barabash, Flick, and the elders waited for him with impatience. "What's going on? What's going on?" he was asked on every side.
"Come out on the shore!" answered Krechovski, with a commanding voice.
Barabash raised his sleepy lids; a certain wonderful fire was gleaming in his eyes. "How is that?" asked he.
"Come to the shore; we yield!"
A wave of blood rushed to the pale and faded face of Barabash. He rose from the kettle on which he had been sitting, straightened himself up, and suddenly that bent and decrepit old man was changed into a giant full of life and power.
"Treason!" roared he.
"Treason!" repeated Flick, grasping after the hilt of his rapier.
But before he could draw it Krechovski's sabre whistled, and with one blow Flick was stretched on the ground. Then Krechovski sprang into the scout-boat standing there, in which four Zaporojians were sitting with oars in their hands, and cried: "To the boats!"
The scout-boat shot on like an arrow. Krechovski, standing in the centre of it, with his cap on his bloody sabre, his eyes like flames, cried with a mighty voice,--