"Is it possible? Why, this is terrible," said the voevoda.
But young Pan Aksak clasped his boyish hands. "Ah, that is a mighty leader!" said he in ecstasy.
"Oh, there is milk under your nose!" snapped the voevoda. "Cunctator too was a great leader! Do you understand?"
At this moment the prince came in. "Gentlemen, to horse! We march."
The voevoda did not restrain himself. "Order something for us to eat. Prince, for I am hungry," cried he, in an outburst of ill-humor.
"Oh, my worthy voevoda," said the prince, laughing and taking hold of him by the shoulder, "forgive me, forgive me! With all my heart. But in war one forgets these things."
"Well, Pan Kryshtof, haven't I told you that they don't eat?" asked the voevoda, turning to the under-judge of Bratslav.
The supper did not last long, and a couple of hours later even the infantry had left Raigorod. The army marched through Vinnitsa and Litin to Hmelnik; on the way Vershul met a Tartar party in Saverovka, which he and Volodyovski destroyed, and freed a few hundred captives,--almost all young women. There began the ruined country; all around were traces of the hand of Krívonos. Strijavka was burned, and its population put to death in a terrible manner. Apparently the unfortunates had resisted Krívonos; therefore the savage chief had delivered them to sword and flame. On an oak-tree at the entrance to the village hung Pan Strijovski himself, whom Tishkyevich's men recognized at once. He was entirely naked, and had around his neck an enormous necklace of heads strung on a rope; they were the heads of his wife and six children. Everything in the village itself was burned to the ground. They saw on both sides of the road a long row of "Cossack candles,"--that is, people with hands raised above their heads, and tied to stakes driven into the ground, wound around with straw steeped in pitch and set on fire at the hands. The greater part of them had only their hands burned, for the rain had evidently stopped the further burning. But those bodies were terrible, with their distorted faces and black stumps of hands stretched to heaven. The odor of putrefaction spread round about. Above the stakes whirled circles of ravens and crows, which at the approach of the troops flew away with an uproar from the nearer stakes to sit on the farther ones. A number of wolves galloped off before the regiments to the thicket. The men marched on in silence through the alley, and counted the "candles." There were between three and four hundred of them.
They passed at length that unfortunate village, and breathed the fresh air of the field. But traces of destruction extended farther. It was the first half of July. The grain was almost ripe, for an early harvest was looked for. But entire fields were partly burned, partly trampled, tangled, trodden into the earth. It might have been thought that a hurricane had passed over the land. In fact, the most terrible of all hurricanes had passed,--civil war. The soldiers of the prince had seen more than once rich neighborhoods ruined by Tartar raids; but such a storm, such mad destruction, they had never seen. Forests were burned as well as grain. Where fire had not devoured the trees the bark and leaves were swept from them by a tongue of fire; they were scorched by its breath, smoked, blackened, and the tree-trunk stuck up like a skeleton. The voevoda of Kieff looked, and could not believe his eyes. Maidyanóe, Zbar,--villages, houses,--nothing but burned ruins! On one side and another the men had run off to Krívonos; the women and children had been taken captive by that part of the horde which Vershul and Volodyovski had crushed out. On the earth a wilderness; in the air flocks of ravens, crows, jackdaws, and vultures, which had flown hither, God knows whence, to the Cossack harvest. Fresher traces of the passage of troops were seen each moment. From time to time they came upon broken wagons, bodies of cattle and men not yet decayed, broken cups, brass kettles, bags of wet flour, ruins still smoking, stacks of grain recently begun and left unfinished.
The prince urged his regiments on to Hmelnik without drawing breath. The old voevoda seized himself by the head, repeating sadly,--