Pan Michael

Then he felt that men were das.h.i.+ng cold water on his head, and then for a long time they were pouring gorailka into his mouth. After that he recovered entirely. Above him was a starry night, and around him many torches were gleaming. To his ears came the words,--

"Is he conscious?"

"Conscious. He seems in his mind."

And that moment he saw above him the face of Lusnia.

"Well, brother," said the sergeant, in a calm voice, "the hour is on thee!"

Azya was lying on his back and breathing freely, for his arms were stretched upward at both sides of his head, by reason of which his expanded breast moved more freely and received more air than when he was lying lashed to the back of the horse. But he could not move his hands, for they were tied above his head to an oak staff which was placed at right angles to his shoulders, and were bound with straw steeped in tar. Azya divined in a moment why this was done; but at that moment he saw other preparations also, which announced that his torture would be long and ghastly. He was undressed from his waist to his feet; and raising his head somewhat, he saw between his naked knees a freshly trimmed, pointed stake, the larger end of which was placed against the b.u.t.t of a tree. From each of his feet there went a rope ending with a whiffletree, to which a horse was attached. By the light of the torches Azya could see only the rumps of the horses and two men, standing somewhat farther on, who evidently were holding the horses by the head.

The hapless man took in these preparations at a glance; then, looking at the heavens, it is unknown why, he saw stars and the gleaming crescent of the moon.

"They will draw me on," thought he.

And at once he closed his teeth so firmly that a spasm seized his jaws.

Sweat came out on his forehead, and at the same time his face became cold, for the blood rushed away from it. Then it seemed to him that the earth was fleeing from under his shoulders, that his body was flying and flying into some fathomless abyss. For a while he lost consciousness of time, of place, and of what they were doing to him.

The sergeant opened Azya's mouth with a knife, and poured in more gorailka.

He coughed and spat out the burning liquor, but was forced to swallow some of it. Then he fell into a wonderful condition: he was not drunk; on the contrary, his mind had never been clearer, nor his thought quicker. He saw what they were doing, he understood everything; but an uncommon excitement seized him, as it were,--impatience that all was lasting so long, and that nothing was beginning yet.

Next heavy steps were heard near by, and before him stood Pan Adam. At sight of him all the veins in the Tartar quivered. Lusnia he did not fear; he despised him too much. But Pan Adam he did not despise; indeed, he had no reason to despise him; on the contrary, every look of his face filled Azya's soul with a certain superst.i.tious dread and repulsion. He thought to himself at that moment, "I am in his power; I fear him!" and that was such a terrible feeling that under its influence the hair stiffened on the head of Tugai Bey's son.

"For what thou hast done, thou wilt perish in torment," said Pan Adam.

The Tartar gave no answer, but began to pant audibly.

Novoveski withdrew, and then followed a silence which was broken by Lusnia.

"Thou didst raise thy hand on the lady," said he, with a hoa.r.s.e voice; "but now the lady is at home with her husband, and thou art in our hands. Thy hour has come!"

With those words the act of torture began for Azya. That terrible man learned at the hour of his death that his treason and cruelty had profited nothing. If even Basia had died on the road, he would have had the consolation that though not in his, she would not be in any man's, possession; and that solace was taken from him just then, when the point of the stake was at an ell's length from his body. All had been in vain. So many treasons, so much blood, so much impending punishment for nothing,--for nothing whatever!

Lusnia did not know how grievous those words had made death

But there was no time for regrets then; everything must give way before the execution. Lusnia stooped down, and taking Azya's hips in both his hands to give them direction, called to the men holding the horses,--

"Move! but slowly and together!"

The horses moved; the straightened ropes pulled Azya's legs. In a twinkle his body was drawn along the earth and met the point of the stake. Then the point commenced to sink in him, and something dreadful began,--something repugnant to nature and the feelings of man. The bones of the unfortunate moved apart from one another; his body gave way in two directions; pain indescribable, so awful that it almost bounds on some monstrous delight, penetrated his being. The stake sank more and more deeply. Azya fixed his jaws, but he could not endure; his teeth were bared in a ghastly grin, and out of his throat came the cry, "A! a! a!" like the croaking of a raven.

"Slowly!" commanded the sergeant.

Azya repeated his terrible cry more and more quickly.

"Art croaking?" inquired the sergeant.

Then he called to the men,--

"Stop! together! There, it is done," said he, turning to Azya, who had grown silent at once, and in whose throat only a deep rattling was heard.

The horses were taken out quickly; then men raised the stake, planted the large end of it in a hole prepared purposely, and packed earth around it. The son of Tugai Bey looked from above on that work. He was conscious. That hideous species of punishment is in this the more dreadful, that victims drawn on to the stake live sometimes three days.

Azya's head was hanging on his breast; his lips were moving, smacking, as if he were chewing something and tasting it. He felt then a great faintness, and saw before him, as it were, a boundless, whitish mist, which, it is unknown wherefore, seemed to him terrible; but in that mist he recognized the faces of the sergeant and the dragoons, he saw that he was on the stake, that the weight of his body was sinking him deeper and deeper. Then he began to grow numb from the feet, and began to be less and less sensitive to pain.

At times darkness hid from him that whitish mist; then he blinked with his one seeing eye, wis.h.i.+ng to see and behold everything till death.

His gaze pa.s.sed with particular persistence from torch to torch, for it seemed to him that around each flame there was a rainbow circle.

But his torture was not ended; after a while the sergeant approached the stake with an auger in his hand, and cried to those standing near,--

"Lift me up."

Two strong men raised him aloft. Azya began to look at him closely, blinking, as if he wished to know what kind of man was climbing up to his height. Then the sergeant said,--

"The lady knocked out one eye, and I promised myself to bore out the other."

When he had said this, he put the point into the pupil, twisted once and a second time, and when the lid and delicate skin surrounding the eye were wound around the spiral of the auger, he jerked.

Then from the two eye-sockets of Azya two streams of blood flowed, and they flowed like two streams of tears down his face. His face itself grew pale and still paler. The dragoons extinguished the torches in silence, as if in shame that light had shone on a deed of such ghastliness; and from the crescent of the moon alone fell silvery though not very bright rays on the body of Azya. His head fell entirely on his breast; but his hands, bound to the oak staff, and enveloped in straw steeped in tar, were pointing toward the sky, as if that son of the Orient were calling the vengeance of the Turkish crescent on his executioners.

"To horse!" was heard from Pan Adam.

Before mounting the sergeant ignited, with the last torch, those uplifted hands of the Tartar; and the detachment moved toward Yampol.

Amid the ruins of Rashkoff, in the night and the desert, Azya, the son of Tugai Bey, remained on the lofty stake, and he gleamed there a long time.

CHAPTER LI.

Three weeks later, at midday, Pan Adam was in Hreptyoff. He had made the journey from Rashkoff so slowly because he had crossed to the other side of the Dnieper many times, while attacking chambuls and the perkulab's people along the river, at various stanitsas. These informed the Sultan's troops afterward that they had seen Polish detachments everywhere, and had heard of great armies, which surely would not wait for the coming of the Turks at Kamenyets, but would intercept their march, and meet them in a general battle.

The Sultan, who had been a.s.sured of the helplessness of the Commonwealth, was greatly astonished; and sending Tartars, Wallachians, and the hordes of the Danube in advance, he pushed forward slowly, for in spite of his measureless strength, he had great fear of a battle with the armies of the Commonwealth.

Pan Adam did not find Volodyovski in Hreptyoff, for the little knight had followed Motovidlo to a.s.sist the starosta of Podlyasye against the Crimean horde and Doroshenko. There he gained great victories, adding new glory to his former renown. He defeated the stern Korpan, and left his body as food to beasts on the open plain; he crushed the terrible Drozd, and the manful Malyshka, and the two brothers Siny, celebrated Cossack raiders, also a number of inferior bands and chambuls.

But when Pan Adam arrived, Pani Volodyovski was just preparing to go with the rest of the people and the tabor to Kamenyets, for it was necessary to leave Hreptyoff, in view of the invasion. Basia was grieved to leave that wooden fortalice, in which she had experienced many evils, it is true, but in which the happiest part of her life had been pa.s.sed, with her husband, among loving hearts, famous soldiers.

She was going now, at her own request, to Kamenyets, to unknown fortunes and dangers involved in the siege. But since she had a brave heart, she did not yield to sorrow, but watched the preparations carefully, guarding the soldiers and the tabor. In this she was aided by Zagloba, who in every necessity surpa.s.sed all in understanding, together with Pan Mushalski, the incomparable bowman, who was besides a soldier of valiant hand and uncommon experience.

All were delighted at the arrival of Pan Adam, though they knew at once, from the face of the knight, that he had not freed Eva or the sweet Zosia from Pagan captivity. Basia bewailed the fate of the two ladies with bitter tears, for they were to be looked on as lost. Sold, it was unknown to whom, they might be taken from the markets of Stambul to Asia Minor, to islands under Turkish rule, or to Egypt, and be confined there in harems; hence it was not only impossible to ransom them, but even to learn where they were.

Basia wept; the wise Pan Zagloba wept; so did Pan Mushalski, the incomparable bowman. Pan Adam alone had dry eyes, for tears had failed him already. But when he told how he had gone down to Tykich near the Danube, had cut to pieces the Lithuanian Tartars almost at the side of the horde and the Sultan, and had seized Azya, the evil enemy, the two old men rattled their sabres, and said,--

"Give him hither! Here, in Hreptyoff, should he die."

"Not in Hreptyoff," said Pan Adam. "Rashkoff is the place of his punishment, that is the place where he should die; and the sergeant here found a torment for him which was not easy."

He described then the death which Azya had died, and they listened with terror, but without pity.