The well-remembered voice of the beloved pierced her heart: Seltanetta raised her eyes glistening with tears—eyes full of woe; but on seeing Ammalát's dreadful face, spotted with blood, she covered them again with her hand. She pointed with her finger at her father's corpse, at the head of Verkhóffsky, and said, with firmness, "Farewell, Ammalát! I pity thee; but I cannot be thine!" With these words she fell senseless on her father's body.
All his native pride, all his blood, rushed to Ammalát's heart; his soul fired with fury. "Is it thus I am received?" casting a scornful glance at both the women; "is it thus that promises are fulfilled here? I am glad that my eyes are opened. I was too simple when I prized the light love of a fickle girl—too patient when I hearkened to the ravings of an old woman. I see, that with Sultan Akhmet Khan have died the honour and hospitality of his house!"
He left the room with a haughty step. He proudly gazed in the face of the Ouzdens, grasping the hilt of his dagger as if challenging them to combat. All, however, made way for him, but seemingly rather to avoid him than from respect. No one saluted him, either by word or sign. He went forth into the court-yard, called his nóukers together, silently mounted into the saddle, and slowly rode through the empty streets of Khounzákh.
From the road he looked back for the last time upon the Khan's house, which was blackening in the darkness, while the grated door shone with lights. His heart was full of blood; his offended pride fixed in its iron talons, while the useless crime, and the love henceforth despised and hopeless, poured venom on the wounds. Grief, anger, and remorse mingled in the glance which he threw on the harem where he first saw, and where he lost, all earthly joy. "And you, and you, Seltanetta!" he could utter no more. A mountain of lead lay on his breast; his conscience already felt that dreadful hand which was stretched forth against it. The past terrified him; the future made him tremble. Where will he rest that head on which a price is set? What earth will give repose to the bones of a traitor? Nor love, nor friendship, nor happiness, will ever again be his care; but a life of misery, a wanderer's bread....
Ammalát wished to weep, his eyes burned ... and, like the rich man tormented in the fire, his heart prayed for one drop, one tear, to quench his intolerable thirst.... He tried to weep, and could not. Providence has denied this consolation to the guilty.
And where did the murderer of Verkhóffsky hide himself? Whither did he drag his wretched existence? No one knew. In Daghestán it was reported that he wandered among the Tchetchenétzes and Koi-Sou-Boulinétzes, having lost his beauty, his health, and even his bravery. But who could say this with certainty? Little by little the rumours about Ammalát died away, though his villanous treachery is still fresh in the memory of Russians and Mussulmans who dwell in Daghestán. Even now his name is never pronounced without a reproach.
CHAPTER XIV.
Anápa, that manufactory of arms for the robbers of the mountains, that bazar where are sold the tears, the blood, the sweat of Christian slaves, that torch of rebellion to the Caucasus—Anápa, I say, was, in 1808, invested by the Russian armies, on the sea and on the mountain side. The gun-boats, the bomb-vessels, and all the ships that could approach the shore, were thundering against the fortifications. The land army had passed the river which falls into the Black Sea, under the northern wall of Anápa, and was posted in swampy ground around the whole city. Then they constructed wooden trenches, hewing down, for that purpose, the surrounding forest. Every night new works arose nearer and nearer to the walls of the town. The interior of the houses flamed from the effects of the shells; the outer walls fell under the cannon-balls. But the Turkish garrison, reinforced by the mountaineers, fought desperately, made fierce sorties, and replied to all proposals for surrender by the shots of their artillery. Meanwhile the besiegers were incessantly harassed by the Kabardinétz skirmishers, and the foot-archers of Abazékhs, Shamsóukhs, Natoukháitzes, and other wild mountaineers of the shores of the Black Sea, assembled, like the jackals, in hope of plunder and blood. Against them it was necessary to erect redans; and this double work, performed under the fire of cannon from the fortress and from the forest, on irregular and boggy ground, delayed long the capture of the town.
At length, on the eve of the taking of Anápa, the Russians opened a breaching-battery in a ravine on the south-east side of the town: its effect was tremendous. At the fifth volley the battlements and parapets were overthrown, the guns laid bare and beaten down. The balls, striking against the stone facing, flashed like lightning; and then, in a black cloud of dust, flew up fragments of shattered stone. The wall crumbled and fell to pieces; but the fortress, by the thickness of its walls, resisted long the shattering force of the iron; and the precipitous steepness of the ruins offered no opportunity for storming. For the heated guns, and for the weary artillerymen, worn out by incessant firing, repose was absolutely necessary. By degrees the firing from the batteries by land and sea began to slacken; thick clouds of smoke, floating from the shore, expanded over the waves, sometimes concealing, sometimes discovering, the flotilla. From time to time a ball of smoke flew up from the guns of the fortress, and after the rolling of the cannon-thunder, far echoing among the hills, a ball would whistle by at random. And now all was silent—all was still both in the interior of Anápa and in the trenches. Not one turban was seen between the battlements, not one carabineer's bayonet in the intrenchment. Only the Turkish banners on the towers, and the Russian ensign on board the ships, waved proudly in the air, now undimmed by a single stream of smoke—only the harmonious voices of the muezzins resounded from afar, calling the Mussulmans to their mid-day prayer. At this moment, from the breach opposite the battery on the plain, descended, or rather rolled down, supported by ropes, a horseman on a white horse, who immediately leaped over the half-filled ditch, dashed to the left between the batteries, flew over the intrenchments, over the soldiers dozing behind them, who neither expected nor guessed any thing like this, and, followed by their hasty shouts, plunged into the woods. None of the cavalry had time to glance at, much less to pursue him: all remained thunderstruck with astonishment and vexation; and soon forgot all about the brave cavalier, in the alarm of the renewed firing from the fortress, which was recommenced in order to give the bold messenger time to escape to the mountains. Towards evening the breaching battery, which had thundered almost incessantly, had accomplished its work of demolition. The prostrate wall formed a kind of bridge for the besiegers, who, with the impatience of bravery, prepared for the assault; when suddenly an unexpected attack of the Tcherkéss, who had driven in the Russian scouts and outposts, compelled the besiegers to direct the fire of the redans against the furious mountaineers. A thundering Allah-il-Allah, from the walls of Anápa, greeted their encounter: the volleys of cannon and musketry arose with redoubled violence from the walls, but the Russian grape tore asunder and arrested the crowds of horsemen and infantry of the Tcherkéss, as they were preparing to throw themselves upon the batteries with their sabres; and they, with furious cries of "Giaour, giaourla!" turned back, leaving behind them the dead and wounded. In a moment the whole field was strewn with their corpses and their disabled, who, staggering to their feet, fell back, struck by the balls and grape-shot; whilst the cannon-shot shattered the wood, and the grenades, bursting, completed the destruction. But from the beginning of the action, till the moment when not one of the enemy remained in sight, the Russians saw before them a well-built Tcherkéss on a white horse, who rode, at a slow pace, up and down before their redans. All recognized in him the same horseman who had leaped over the trenches at mid-day, probably in order to induce the Tcherkéss to fall upon the Russians from the rear, at the moment when the now unsuccessful sortie was to be made from the gate. Crashing and thundering danced the grape-shot around him. His horse strained at the bridle; but he, looking calmly at the batteries, rode along them as if they were raining flowers upon him. The artillerymen ground their teeth with vexation at the unpunished daring of the cavalier: shot after shot tore up the earth, but he remained unhurt as if enchanted. "Give him a cannon-ball!" shouted a young officer of artillery, but lately released from the military college, who was above all enraged at their want of success: "I would load the gun with my head, so glad would I be to kill that bragger: it is not worth while to waste grape upon one man—grape—look out! a cannon-ball will reach the guilty!" So saying, he screwed up the quoin and levelled the gun, looking through the sight; and having exactly calculated the moment when the horseman would ride through the line of aim, he stepped aside and ordered the fatal fire.