"It is they! Only let them come nearer! Nobody can warn them of their danger—nobody!"
But suddenly the approaching line of dust stops, remains stationary for some moments, and then suddenly begins to start off sideways, and, so far from slowly creeping on nearer, darts aside among the hedges with dart-like rapidity.
Badrul Beg looked furiously around him. "Which of you can have betrayed us to them?" he cried.
As if suddenly answering his question, the whole forest fell a-soughing. The tall, slim birch trees began to rustle and shiver; a frightful hurricane had arisen over the plain, howling and roaring, and enveloping the whole firmament with clouds of yellow dust.
Badrul was not used to fear the tempest—Kuczuk Pasha did not allow him to.
"Forward with your lances!" he cried to his horsemen. "Split the tempest with the points of them! After those fugitives! Out upon the open plain!"
Hah! but out on the plain there it was another Master who commanded now. In the midst of the open country, midway between pursuers and pursued, came scudding along the bride of the tempest, the wild whirlwind, that slim fairy who dances so majestically right over the smooth plain with her comet-like head among the clouds, as if her scattered locks were floating there, while her legs, like spindles, were twirling in the dust. She sways to the left, curtseying with her slim body, and throwing back her defiant head ever higher and higher. Woe to all frail and perishable creatures who come in her way, for she will tear them to pieces and scatter them abroad. The roofs of houses, haystacks, prominent trees, if once they are caught in the savage sweep of her garment, she hurls up to the sky, and then dashes to the earth again with furious caprice. After her, murmuring and growling, comes her angry bridegroom—the thunderstorm—who pursues his defiant bride with a fiery whip in his hand; with his whip he will scourge her if he catches her. Ah! the love of the elemental spirits is terrible.
The whirlwind in an instant enveloped the band of Badrul Beg in such a cloud of dust that nobody knew from thenceforth whether he were going backwards or forwards. The air was darkened. One horseman could not see his next fellow for the whirling dust, in whose murkiness he could not even distinguish the lightning flashes, he could only hear the approaching thunder as it rolled along the sky, shook the earth, and silenced the savage howl of the tempest.
Badrul Beg's charger reared beneath him, the wind took the turban from his head and tore the pennant from his lance.
"Ah, thou god—thou God of the Magyars!" thundered the Moor, shaking his fist at the sky. "Thou hast taken the part of Thine own people, but for all that Thou shalt not save them from me!"