Half the Nezamaikovsky kuren was as if it had never been. As the hail
suddenly beats down a field where every ear of grain shines like
purest gold, so were they beaten down.

How the Cossacks hastened thither! How they all started up! How raged
Kukubenko, the hetman, when he saw that the best half of his kuren was
no more! He fought his way with his remaining Nezamaikovtzi to the
very midst of the fray, cut down in his wrath, like a cabbage, the
first man he met, hurled many a rider from his steed, piercing both
horse and man with his lance; and making his way to the gunners,
captured some of the cannons. Here he found the hetman of the Oumansky
kuren, and Stepan Guska, hard at work, having already seized the
largest cannon. He left those Cossacks there, and plunged with his own
into another mass of the foe, making a lane through it. Where the
Nezamaikovtzi passed there was a street; where they turned about there
was a square as where streets meet. The foemen's ranks were visibly
thinning, and the Lyakhs falling in sheaves. Beside the waggons stood
Vovtuzenko, and in front Tcherevitchenko, and by the more distant ones
Degtyarenko; and behind them the kuren hetman, Vertikhvist.
Degtyarenko had pierced two Lyakhs with his spear, and now attacked a
third, a stout antagonist. Agile and strong was the Lyakh, with
glittering arms, and accompanied by fifty followers. He fell fiercely
upon Degtyarenko, struck him to the earth, and, flourishing his sword
above him, cried, "There is not one of you Cossack dogs who has dared
to oppose me."

"Here is one," said Mosiy Schilo, and stepped forward. He was a
muscular Cossack, who had often commanded at sea, and undergone many
vicissitudes. The Turks had once seized him and his men at Trebizond,
and borne them captives to the galleys, where they bound them hand and