With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz (big ebook reader .txt) 📕

he, “and jump on horseback suddenly⁠—it is night, and before they could see what happened I should be out of sight. It is hard enough to chase through the ravines and valleys by sunlight, but what must it be in the dark? God grant me an opportunity!”

But an opportunity was not to be obtained easily. It was necessary either to throw down the wall⁠—and to do that he would have to be Pan Podbipienta⁠—or to burrow under it like a fox; and then they would surely hear, discover, and seize the fugitive by the neck before he could touch the stirrup with his foot. A thousand stratagems crowded into Zagloba’s head; but for the very reason that they were a thousand no one of them presented itself clearly.

“It cannot be otherwise; only with my life can I pay,” thought he.

Then he went toward the third wall. All at once he struck his head against something hard. He felt; it was a ladder. The stable was not for pigs, but for buffaloes, and half the length it had a loft for straw and hay. Zagloba without a moment’s hesitation climbed up. Then he sat down, drew breath, and began slowly to pull up the ladder after him.

“Well, now I am in a fortress!” he muttered. “Even if they should find another ladder, they couldn’t bring it here very quickly; and if I don’t split the forehead of the man who comes here, then I’ll give myself to be smoked into bacon. Oh, devil take it!” he burst out after a while, “in truth they cannot only smoke me, but fry and melt me into tallow. But let them burn the stable if they wish⁠—all right! They won’t get me alive; and it is all the same whether the crows eat me raw or roasted. If I only escape those robber hands, I don’t care for the rest; and I have hope that something will happen yet.”

Zagloba passed easily, it is evident, from the lowest despair to hope⁠—in fact, such hope entered him as if he were already in the camp of Prince Yeremi. But still his position had not improved much. He was sitting on the loft, and he had a sabre in his hand; he might ward off an attack for some time, but that was all. From the loft to freedom was a road like jumping from the stove on your forehead⁠—with this difference, that below the sabres and pikes of the Cossacks watching around the walls were waiting for him.

“Something will happen!” muttered Zagloba; and approaching the roof he began to separate quietly and remove the thatch, so as to gain for himself an outlook into the world. This was easily done, for the Cossacks talked continually under the walls, wishing to kill the tedium of watching; and besides there sprang up a rather strong breeze, which deadened with its movement among the neighboring trees the noise which was made in removing the bundles. After a time the aperture was ready. Zagloba stuck his head through it and began to look around.

The night had already begun to wane, and on the eastern horizon appeared the first glimmer of day. By the pale light Zagloba saw the whole yard filled with horses; in front of the cottage rows of sleeping Cossacks, stretched out like long indefinite lines; farther on the well-sweep and the trough, in which water was glistening; and near it again a rank of sleeping men and a number of Cossacks with drawn sabres in their hands walking along that line.

“There are my men, bound with ropes,” muttered Zagloba. “Bah!” he added after a while, “if they were mine! But they are the prince’s. I was a good leader to them; there is nothing to be said on that point. I led them into the mouth of the dog. It will be a shame to show my eyes if God returns me freedom. And through what was all this? Through lovemaking and drinking. What was it to me that trash were marrying? I had as much business at this wedding as at a dog’s wedding. I will renounce this traitorous mead, which crawls into the legs, not the head. All the evil in the world is from drinking; for if they had fallen upon us while sober, I should have gained the victory in a trice and shut Bogun up in this stable.”

Zagloba’s gaze fell again on the cottage in which the chief was sleeping, and rested at its door.

“Sleep on, you scoundrel!” he muttered, “sleep! And may you dream that the devils are skinning you⁠—a thing which will not miss you in any case! You wanted to make a sieve out of my skin; try to crawl up to me here, and we shall see if I do not cut yours so that it wouldn’t do to make boots for a dog. If I could only get myself out of this place⁠—if I could only get out! But how?”

Indeed the problem was not to be solved. The whole yard was so packed with men and horses that even if Zagloba had got out of the stable, even if he had pushed through the thatch and sprung on one of the horses that stood right there, he could in no wise have pushed to the gate; and then how was he to get beyond the gate? Still, it seemed to him that he had solved more than half the problem. He was free, armed, and he sat in the loft as in a fortress.

“What the devil good is there,” thought he, “in getting out of the rope if you are to be hanged with it afterward?” And again stratagems began to bustle in his head; but there were so many of them that he could not choose.

Meanwhile the light increased, the places around the cottage began to emerge from the shadow; the thatch of the cottage was covered as if by silver. Zagloba could distinguish accurately particular