stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds
fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping wings, never recognising
each other, the dove seeing not the vulture, nor the vulture the dove,
and no one knowing how far he may be flying from destruction.

Ostap had long since attended to his duties and gone to the kuren.
Andrii, without knowing why, felt a kind of oppression at his heart.
The Cossacks had finished their evening meal; the wonderful July night
had completely fallen; still he did not go to the kuren, nor lie down
to sleep, but gazed unconsciously at the whole scene before him. In
the sky innumerable stars twinkled brightly. The plain was covered far
and wide with scattered waggons with swinging tar-buckets, smeared
with tar, and loaded with every description of goods and provisions
captured from the foe. Beside the waggons, under the waggons, and far
beyond the waggons, Zaporozhtzi were everywhere visible, stretched
upon the grass. They all slumbered in picturesque attitudes; one had
thrust a sack under his head, another his cap, and another simply made
use of his comrade's side. Swords, guns, matchlocks, short pipe-stems
with copper mountings, iron awls, and a flint and steel were
inseparable from every Cossack. The heavy oxen lay with their feet
doubled under them like huge whitish masses, and at a distance looked
like gray stones scattered on the slopes of the plain. On all sides
the heavy snores of sleeping warriors began to arise from the grass,
and were answered from the plain by the ringing neighs of their
steeds, chafing at their hobbled feet. Meanwhile a certain threatening
magnificence had mingled with the beauty of the July night. It was the
distant glare of the burning district afar. In one place the flames
spread quietly and grandly over the sky; in another, suddenly bursting
into a whirlwind, they hissed and flew upwards to the very stars, and
floating fragments died away in the most distant quarter of the