"Allah pluck thy skin from off thee, thou drunken Giaour," murmured the baffled Tartar to himself, as he found all his aiming useless; for just as he was about to apply the lunt, the csikós was no longer there, and the next moment he stood at the very end of his musket. "May all the seven-and-seventy hells have a little bit of thee! Why canst thou not remain still for a moment that I may fire at thee?"
Meanwhile the shape had gradually come up to the very gate.
"Don't come any nearer," cried the Tartar, "or I shan't be able to shoot thee."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the other. "Then why didn't you tell me so sooner? But don't hold your musket so near to me, it may go off of its own accord."
We recognise in the csikós Kökényesdi, whose horse now began to prance about to such an extent that it was impossible for the Tartar to take a fair aim at it.
"I bring a letter for Haly Pasha, from the Defterdar of Lippa," said the csikós, searching for something in the pocket of his fur pelisse, so far as his caracolling steed would allow him. "Catch it if you don't want to come through the gate for it."
"Well, fling it up here," murmured the sentinel, "and then be off again, but ride decently that I may have a shot."
"Thank you, my worthy Mr. Dog-headed Hero; but look out and catch what I throw to you."
And with that he drew out a roll of parchment and flung it up to the top of the gate. The Tartar, with his eyes fixed on the missive, did not perceive that the csikós, at the same time, threw up a long piece of cord, and the sense of the joke did not burst upon him until the csikós drew in the noose, and he felt it circling round his body. Kökényesdi turned round suddenly, twisted the cord round the forepart of his horse, and clapping the spurs to its side, began galloping off.
Naturally, in about a moment the Tartar had descended from the top of the gate without either musket or lunt, and the cord being well lassoed round his body, he plumped first into the moat, a moment afterwards reappeared on the top of the trench, and was carried with the velocity of lightning through bushes and briars. Being quite unused to this mode of progression, and vainly attempting to cling by hand or foot to the trees and shrubs which met him in his way, he began to bellow with all his might, at which terrible uproar the other sentries behind the ramparts were aroused, and, perceiving that some horseman or other was compelling one of their comrades to follow after him in this merciless fashion, they mounted their horses, and throwing open the gate, plunged after him.