Her pure, fair, beautiful form was wrapped in a horse-rug, and buried by the rough hands of Cossack pioneers, at the foot of a rock on the left bank of the Kuban.
The grave of my love lay but a pistol shot distant from the tent of her destroyer; yet his iron heart never smote him, and never reproached him with his cruelty; he smoked, he drank the wine of the Tcherkesses, and played at cards and chess, and with his brother officers sang as merrily as ever, and no more regarded the death he had caused and the misery he had wrought, than the ashes of his last cigar.
Where then was I?
Forced to lead my troop against my own people, and watched by a chosen few of my own soldiers, I had been sent towards Azov in pursuit of fugitive Circassians. One whom we had tracked the livelong day, riding over steep mountains, through pathless forests and deep rivers, was taken at nightfall by his horse falling under him. He was brought in, exhausted with fatigue and faint with hunger, covered with blood, with scars, brambles, and heavily fettered. The poor fugitive we had pursued so long, and taken at last, proved to be my brother Selim, who had failed to reach the camp of our confederated princes, and had wandered long on the Russian side of Mount Shapsucka.
I was filled with new dismay. It seemed that I required but this to complete my misery. I rent my beard, and threw myself on the ground; I cursed myself and Ivan Carlovitch in the same breath, and daringly upbraided the Prophet with injustice to a Mussulman so devout as I.
Poor Selim heard my words with terror. He raised me from the ground; he kissed me on both cheeks, and besought me to be composed, and then we were separated. I had to continue my march towards the shores of the sea of Azov, while Selim, the miserable Selim, was dragged before Carlovitch, who tried him as a deserter, had him degraded, and his sword and commission trodden under foot; after which he was sentenced to die—to die under the knout—"a terror to other Tcherkesses who trifled with the service of their beneficent lord and father the emperor."
Three weeks afterwards I heard of his fate, and to nerve my soul for the coming vengeance, I drank in the terrible description of the poor boy's dying scene. I was told by my sergeant how the troops were formed in a hollow square—ten thousand Russian slaves, misnamed as soldiers, with bayonets fixed and colours flying; I was told how the noble prisoner stood amid them, with the kingly air of a true Circassian cavalier, though stripped of every article of attire, save a pair of tattered drawers; how he was bound by the wrists, the neck, and ancles, to a large gun-carriage, and how the executioner, a gigantic Kalmuck, stood six feet distant to give his infernal weapon a swing more full and heavy. I was told how Selim—for he was the youngest of us—screamed in agony as each successive blow fell on his bare and quivering shoulders, from which the flesh was torn in pieces by every lash of the dreadful whip; how between every stroke this giant Kalmuck dipped its bloody ends in brimstone, and how the victim sank beneath the strokes, until at last their sound came dull and dead, for poor Selim had expired with four words on his lips; they were, "My brothers—my brothers."
I did not shed a tear for him; a fiend seemed to possess me; a devilish joy swelled within me, as I lay that night in the bivouac beside the feet of Zupi, rolled in my mantle, with my sword and pistols at my side.
"Woe to thee, whining cur of the Czar, woe!" I repeated again and again; "to-morrow I will see thee, Carlovitch—to-morrow shall thy soul answer to heaven and to hell for these atrocities; and to-morrow Mostapha's son shall cease to be the serf of this dog Emperor, Nicholas Paulovitch!"
The sunny morrow came, and loud and shrill rang the trumpets which summoned the Hussars and Grenadiers of Tenginski to a general parade. I examined my saddle girths, my bridle, and my arms, with scrupulous exactness, for this would be the last parade I was ever to attend. I threw away everything that might serve to encumber my motions or overload my horse, and by my advice Karolyi did the same.