and his face scorched and weatherbeaten, he
had fallen down, and a deep sleep had overpowered him.

In such cases it was customary for the Cossacks to pursue the robbers at
once, endeavouring to overtake them on the road; for, let the prisoners
once be got to the bazaars of Asia Minor, Smyrna, or the island of
Crete, and God knows in what places the tufted heads of Zaporozhtzi
might not be seen. This was the occasion of the Cossacks' assembling.
They all stood to a man with their caps on; for they had not met to
listen to the commands of their hetman, but to take counsel together as
equals among equals. "Let the old men first advise," was shouted to the
crowd. "Let the Koschevoi give his opinion," cried others.

The Koschevoi, taking off his cap and speaking not as commander, but as
a comrade among comrades, thanked all the Cossacks for the honour, and
said, "There are among us many experienced men and much wisdom; but
since you have thought me worthy, my counsel is not to lose time in
pursuing the Tatars, for you know yourselves what the Tatar is. He will
not pause with his stolen booty to await our coming, but will vanish in
a twinkling, so that you can find no trace of him. Therefore my advice
is to go. We have had good sport here. The Lyakhs now know what Cossacks
are. We have avenged our faith to the extent of our ability; there is
not much to satisfy greed in the famished city, and so my advice is to
go."

"To go," rang heavily through the Zaporozhian kurens. But such words
did not suit Taras Bulba at all; and he brought his frowning, iron-grey
brows still lower down over his eyes, brows like bushes growing on dark
mountain heights, whose crowns are suddenly covered with sharp northern
frost.

"No, Koschevoi, your counsel is not good," said he. "You cannot say
that. You have evidently forgotten that those of our men captured by the
Lyakhs will remain prisoners. You evidently wish that we should not heed
the first holy law of comradeship; that we should leave our brethren to
be flayed alive, or carried about through the towns and villages after
their Cossack bodies have been quartered, as was done with the hetman
and the bravest Russian warriors in the Ukraine. Have the enemy not
desecrated the holy things sufficiently without that? What are we? I
ask you all what sort of a Cossack is he who would desert his comrade in
misfortune, and let him perish like a dog in a foreign land? If it has
come to such a pass th