lves upon his brow and never
more departed thence. Then he looked around him. All was new in the
Setch; all his old companions were dead. Not one was left of those who
had stood up for the right, for faith and brotherhood. And those who had
gone forth with the Koschevoi in pursuit of the Tatars, they also had
long since disappeared. All had perished. One had lost his head in
battle; another had died for lack of food, amid the salt marshes of the
Crimea; another had fallen in captivity and been unable to survive the
disgrace. Their former Koschevoi was no longer living, nor any of his
old companions, and the grass was growing over those once alert with
power. He felt as one who had given a feast, a great noisy feast. All
the dishes had been smashed in pieces; not a drop of wine was left
anywhere; the guests and servants had all stolen valuable cups and
platters; and he, like the master of the house, stood sadly thinking
that it would have been no feast. In vain did they try to cheer Taras
and to divert his mind; in vain did the long-bearded, grey-haired
guitar-players come by twos and threes to glorify his Cossack deeds. He
gazed grimly and indifferently at everything, with inappeasable grief
printed on his stolid face; and said softly, as he drooped his head, "My
son, my Ostap!"

The Zaporozhtzi assembled for a raid by sea. Two hundred boats were
launched on the Dnieper, and Asia Minor saw those who manned them, with
their shaven heads and long scalp-locks, devote her thriving shores to
fire and sword; she saw the turbans of her Mahometan inhabitants strewn,
like her innumerable flowers, over the blood-sprinkled fields, and
floating along her river banks; she saw many tarry Zaporozhian trousers,
and strong hands with black hunting-whips. The Zaporozhtzi ate up and
laid waste all the vineyards. In the mosques they left heaps of dung.
They used rich Persian shawls for sashes, and girded their dirty
gaberdines with them. Long afterwards, short Zaporozhian pipes were
found in those regions. They sailed merrily back. A ten-gun Turkish ship
pursued them and scattered their skiffs, like birds, with a volley from
its guns. A third part of them sank in the depths of the sea; but the
rest again assembled, and gained the mouth of the Dnieper with twelve
kegs full of sequins. But all this did not interest Taras. He went off
upon the steppe as though to hunt; but the charge remained in his gun,
and, laying down the weapon, he would