ithout drawing breath--the rear
ranks doing nothing but loading the guns and handing them to those in
front, thus creating amazement among the enemy, who could not understand
how the Cossacks fired without reloading. Amid the dense smoke which
enveloped both armies, it could not be seen how first one and then
another dropped: but the Lyakhs felt that the balls flew thickly, and
that the affair was growing hot; and when they retreated to escape from
the smoke and see how matters stood, many were missing from their ranks,
but only two or three out of a hundred were killed on the Cossack
side. Still the Cossacks went on firing off their matchlocks without a
moment's intermission. Even the foreign engineers were amazed at tactics
heretofore unknown to them, and said then and there, in the presence of
all, "These Zaporozhtzi are brave fellows. That is the way men in other
lands ought to fight." And they advised that the cannons should at once
be turned on the camps. Heavily roared the iron cannons with their wide
throats; the earth hummed and trembled far and wide, and the smoke lay
twice as heavy over the plain. They smelt the reek of the powder among
the squares and streets in the most distant as well as the nearest
quarters of the city. But those who laid the cannons pointed them too
high, and the shot describing too wide a curve flew over the heads
of the camps, and buried themselves deep in the earth at a distance,
tearing the ground, and throwing the black soil high in the air. At
the sight of such lack of skill the French engineer tore his hair, and
undertook to lay the cannons himself, heeding not the Cossack bullets
which showered round him.

Taras saw from afar that destruction menaced the whole Nezamaikovsky
and Steblikivsky kurens, and gave a ringing shout, "Get away from the
waggons instantly, and mount your horses!" But the Cossacks would not
have succeeded in effecting both these movements if Ostap had not
dashed into the middle of the foe and wrenched the linstocks from six
cannoneers. But he could not wrench them from the other four, for the
Lyakhs drove him back. Meanwhile the foreign captain had taken the lunt
in his own hand to fire the largest cannon, such a cannon as none of the
Cossacks had ever beheld before. It looked horrible with its wide mouth,
and a thousand deaths poured forth from it. And as it thundered,
the three others followed, shaking in fourfold earthquake the dully
responsive earth. Much