thundered, trumpets and bugles sounded, and in concert
with them a song, sung by thousands of voices, rever-
berated through the air and the earth,--

"O steppes, our native steppes,
Ye are painted with beautiful flowers,
Ye are broad as the sea!"

The teorbanists dropped the reins, and bending back in
the saddles, with eyes turned to the sky, struck the strings
of their teorbans; the cymbalists, stretching their arms
above their heads, struck their brazen disks; the drummers
thundered with their kettledrums; and all these sounds,
together with the monotonous words of the song and the
shrill whistle of the tuneless Tartar pipes, mingled in a
kind of mighty note, wild and sad as the Wilderness itself.
Delight seized all the regiments; the heads bent in time
with the song, and at last it seemed as if the entire steppe,
infected with music, trembled together with the men and
the horses and the standards.

Frightened flocks of birds rose from the steppe and flew
before the army like another army, - an army of the air.
At times the song and music stopped; then could be heard
the rustling of banners, the tramping and snorting of
horses, the squeak of the tabor-wagons, - like the cry of
swans or storks.

At the head of the army, under a great red standard and
the bunchuk, rode Hmelnitski, in a red uniform, on a white
horse, holding a gilded baton in his hand.

The whole body moved on, slowly marching to the
north, covering like a terrible wave the rivers, groves,
and grave-mounds, filling with its noise and sound the
space of the steppe.

But from Chigirin, from the northern rim of the Wilder-
ness, there moved against this wave a wave of the armies
of the crown, under the leadership of young Pototski.
Here the Zaporojians and the Tartars went as if to a
wedding, with a joyful song on their lips; there the se-
rious hussars advanced in grim silence, going unwillingly
to that struggle without glory. Here, under the red ban-
ner, an old experienced leader shook his threatening baton,
as if certain of victory and vengeance; there in front rode a
youth with thoughtful countenance, as if knowing his sad
and approaching fate. A great expanse of steppe still
divided them.