Volodyovski held in his horse suddenly. "I see the ravine," said he, "in the throat of which a rock is thrust, and in the rock there is a breach."
"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" muttered Jendzian.
"After me!" commanded Pan Michael, turning his horse. Soon they were at the breach, and passed through as under a stone arch. Before them opened a deep ravine, thickly overgrown with bushes at the sides, widening in the distance to a broad half-circle, – a small plain, enclosed as it were by gigantic walls.
Jendzian began to shout as loud as the power in his breast permitted: "Bogun! Bogun! Witch, come out! Bogun! Bogun!"
They halted and remained for some time in silence; then the youth began to shout again: "Bogun! Bogun!"
From a distance came the barking of dogs.
"Bogun! Bogun!"
On the left rim of the ravine on which the ruddy and golden rays of the sun were falling the thick branches of the plum and wild-cherry trees began to rustle; and after a while there appeared, almost at the very source of the spring, a human form, which bending forward and covering its eyes with its hand looked carefully at the travellers.
"That's Horpyna," said Jendzian; and putting his palms around his mouth, he began to shout a third time: "Bogun! Bogun!"
Horpyna began to descend, bending back to keep her balance. She came on quickly, and after her rolled along a sort of dumpy little man with a long Turkish gun in his hand. Twigs broke under the weighty step of the witch; stones rolled from under them and rattled to the bottom of the ravine. Bent in that fashion, in the ruddy glare she seemed really some gigantic superhuman creature.
"Who are you?" called she in a loud voice, when she had reached the bottom.
"How are you, bass-viol!" said Jendzian, to whom his usual deliberation returned at the sight of human beings instead of spirits.
"You are Bogun's servant? I know you, you fellow; but who are these?"
"Friends of Bogun."
"Ah, she is a handsome witch," muttered Pan Michael, under his mustaches.
"And what have you come for?"
"Here is the baton, the knife, and the ring for you, – you know what they mean?"
The giantess took them in her hands and began to examine them carefully; then she said, -
"They are the same! You have come for the princess?"
"Yes! Is she well?"
"She is. Why didn't Bogun himself come?"
"Bogun is wounded."
"Wounded? I saw that in the mill."
"If you saw it, why do you ask? You lie, you bugle-horn!" said Jendzian, confidently.
The witch showed in a smile teeth white as the teeth of a wolf, and doubling her hand nudged Jendzian in the side: "You are a boy, you are a fellow, you are."
"Be off!"
"You won't give a kiss, will you? And when will you take the princess?"
"Right away; we will only rest the horses."
"Well, take her! I will go with you."
"What do you want to go for?"
"Death is fated for my brother; the Poles will empale him on a stake. I will go with you."
Jendzian bent toward the saddle as if for easier conversation with the giantess, and his hand rested unobserved on the butt of a pistol.
"Cheremís! Cheremís!" said he, wishing to turn the attention of his comrades on the dwarf.
"Why do you call him? His tongue is cut out."
"I am not calling him, I'm only admiring his beauty. You will not leave him, – he is your husband."
"He is my dog!"
"And there are only two of you in the ravine?"
"Two, – the princess is the third."
"That's well. You will not leave him?"
"I will go with you," said she.
"But I tell you that you will remain."
There was something in the voice of the youth of such a character that the giantess turned on the spot with an alarmed face, for suspicion suddenly entered her mind.
"What do you mean?" asked she.
"This is what I mean!" answered Jendzian; and he thundered at her from the pistol so near that the smoke covered her completely for a moment.
Horpyna pushed back with open arms; her eyes protruded, a kind of unearthly yell rose out of her throat; she tottered and fell on her back, full length.
At the same moment Zagloba cut Cheremís through the head with a sabre so that the bone gritted under its edge. The deformed dwarf uttered no groan; he merely wound himself in a lump like a worm, and began to quiver. But the fingers of his hand opened and closed in succession like the claws of a dying wild-cat.
Zagloba wiped the steaming sabre with the skirt of his coat. Jendzian, springing from the horse and taking up a stone, threw it on the broad breast of Horpyna; then he began to look for something in his bosom.
The enormous body of the witch dug the ground yet with its feet, convulsions twisted her face terribly, on her grinning teeth came out a bloody foam, and dull rattles issued from her throat.
Meanwhile the youth got from his bosom a piece of consecrated chalk, drew a cross with it on the stone, and said: "Now she will not rise!" Then he sprang into the saddle.
"To horse!" commanded Volodyovski.