better who come after us than we have lived; and may our Russian land,
beloved by Christ, flourish forever!" and his young spirit fled. The
angels took it in their arms and bore it to heaven: it will be well
with him there. "Sit down at my right hand, Kukubenko," Christ will
say to him: "you never betrayed your comrades, you never committed a
dishonourable act, you never sold a man into misery, you preserved and
defended my church." The death of Kukubenko saddened them all. The
Cossack ranks were terribly thinned. Many brave men were missing, but
the Cossacks still stood their ground.

"How now, gentles," cried Taras to the remaining kurens: "is there
still powder in your flasks? Are your swords blunted? Are the Cossack
forces wearied? Have the Cossacks given way?"

"There is still an abundance of powder; our swords are still sharp;
the Cossack forces are not wearied, and the Cossacks have not yet
yielded."

And the Cossacks again strained every nerve, as though they had
suffered no loss. Only three kuren hetmans still remained alive. Red
blood flowed in streams everywhere; heaps of their bodies and of those
of the enemy were piled high. Taras looked up to heaven, and there
already hovered a flock of vultures. Well, there would be prey for
some one. And there the foe were raising Metelitza on their lances,
and the head of the second Pisarenko was dizzily opening and shutting
its eyes; and the mangled body of Okhrim Guska fell upon the ground.
"Now," said Taras, and waved a cloth on high. Ostap understood this
signal and springing quickly from his ambush attacked sharply. The
Lyakhs could not withstand this onslaught; and he drove them back, and
chased them straight to the spot where the stakes and fragments of