sometimes like a column, rising to the sky; and sunset flooded all with
its airy purple, and light mists began to rise from the narrow gorges:
every thing breathed the freshness of evening. Our travellers were now
near the village of Aki, and separated only by a hill from Khounzákh. A
low crest alone divided them from that village, when the report of a gun
resounded from the mountain, and, like an ominous signal, was repeated
by the echoes of the cliffs. The travellers halted irresolute: the
echoes by degrees sank into stillness. "Our hunters!" cried Sultan
Akhmet Khan, wiping the sweat from his face: "they expect me not, and
think not to meet me here! Many tears of joy, and many of sorrow, do I
bear to Khounzákh!" Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in the face of Akhmet
Khan. Vividly does every soft and every savage sentiment play on the
features of the Asiatic.

[41] Tchinár, the palmated-leaved plane.

Another report soon interrupted his meditation; then another, and
another. Shot answered shot, and at length thickened into a warm fire.
"'Tis the Russians!" cried Ammalát, drawing his sabre. He pressed his
horse with the stirrup, as though he would have leaped over the ridge at
a single bound; but in a moment his strength failed him, and the blade
fell ringing on the ground, as his arm dropped heavily by his side.
"Khan!" said he, dismounting, "go to the succour of your people; your
face will be worth more to them than a hundred warriors."

The Khan heard him not; he was listening intently for the flight of the
balls, as if he would distinguish those of the Russian from the Avárian.
"Have they, besides the agility of the goat, stolen the wings of the
eagle of Kazbéc? Can they have reached our inaccessible fastnesses?"
said he, leaning to the saddle, with his foot already in the stirrup.