‘We must take care – I have been pursued,’ he said to a man who was putting out the fire.
This was Gamzálo, a Chechen. Gamzálo approached the búrka, took up a rifle that lay on it wrapped in its cover, and without a word went to that side of the glade from which Hadji Murád had come.
When Eldár had dismounted he took Hadji Murád’s horse, and having reined up both horses’ heads high, tied them to two trees. Then he shouldered his rifle as Gamzálo had done and went to the other side of the glade. The bonfire was extinguished, the forest no longer looked as black as before, but in the sky the stars still shone, though faintly.
Lifting his eyes to the stars and seeing that the Pleiades had already risen half-way up the sky, Hadji Murád calculated that it must be long past midnight and that his nightly prayer was long overdue. He asked Khanéfi for a ewer (they always carried one in their packs), and putting on his
Having taken off his shoes and performed his ablutions, Hadji Murád stepped onto the
When he had finished he returned to the place where the saddle-bags lay, and sitting down on the
Hadji Murád always had great faith in his own fortune. When planning anything he always felt in advance firmly convinced of success, and fate smiled on him. It had been so, with a few rare exceptions, during the whole course of his stormy military life; and so he hoped it would be now. He pictured to himself how – with the army Vorontsóv would place at his disposal – he would march against Shamil and take him prisoner, and revenge himself on him; and how the Russian Tsar would reward him and how he would again rule not only over Avaria, but over the whole of Chechnya, which would submit to him. With these thoughts he unwittingly fell asleep.
He dreamt how he and his brave followers rushed at Shamil with songs and with the cry, ‘Hadji Murád is coming!’ and how they seized him and his wives and how he heard the wives crying and sobbing. He woke up. The song,
He was awakened by the merry voice of Khan Mahomá returning from his mission with Bata. Khan Mahomá at once sat down beside Hadji Murád and told him how the soldiers had met them and had led them to the prince himself, and how pleased the prince was and how he promised to meet them in the morning where the Russians would be felling trees beyond the Mitchík in the Shalín glade. Bata interrupted his fellow-envoy to add details of his own.
Hadji Murád asked particularly for the words with which Vorontsóv had answered his offer to go over to the Russians, and Khan Mahomá and Bata replied with one voice that the prince promised to receive Hadji Murád as a guest, and to act so that it should be well for him.
Then Hadji Murád questioned them about the road, and when Khan Mahomá assured him that he knew the way well and would conduct him straight to the spot, Hadji Murád took out some money and gave Bata the promised three rubles. Then he ordered his men to take out of the saddle-bags his gold-ornamented weapons and his turban, and to clean themselves up so as to look well when they arrived among the Russians.
While they cleaned their weapons, harness, and horses, the stars faded away, it became quite light, and an early morning breeze sprang up.
V
EARLY in the morning, while it was still dark, two companies carrying axes and commanded by Poltorátsky marched six miles beyond the Shahgirínsk Gate, and having thrown out a line of sharpshooters set to work to fell trees as soon as the day broke. Towards eight o’clock the mist which had mingled with the perfumed smoke of the hissing and crackling damp green branches on the bonfires began to rise and the wood-fellers – who till then had not seen five paces off but had only heard one another – began to see both the bonfires and the road through the forest, blocked with fallen trees. The sun now appeared like a bright spot in the fog and now again was hidden.
