into the melee.  Quarter was neither asked nor given:  all fell before the bayonets of the Russians.  “Forward! follow me, Ammalat Bek,” cried Djemboulat, with fury, rushing into the combat which was to be his last—­“Forward! for us death is liberty.”  But Anmalat heard not his call; a blow from a musket on the back of the head stretched him on the earth, already sown with corpses, and covered with blood.

[Footnote 25:  “Hurrah” means strike in the Tartar language.]

CHAPTER.  V.

LETTER FROM COLONEL VERHOFFSKY TO HIS BETROTHED.

  From Derbend to Smolensk.  October, 1819.

Two months—­how easy to say it!—­two centuries have past, dearest Maria, while your letter was creeping to me.  Twice has the moon made her journey round the earth.  You cannot imagine, dearest, how dreary is this idle objectless life to me; with nothing to employ me—­not even correspondence.  I go out, I meet the Kazak [26] with a secret trembling of heart:  with what joy, with what exstacy do I kiss the lines traced by a pure hand, inspired by a pure heart—­yours, my Maria!  With a greedy rapture my eyes devour the letter:  then I am happy—­I am wild with joy.  But hardly have I reclosed it when unquiet thoughts again begin to haunt me.  “All this is well,” I think; “but all this is past, and I desire to know the present.  Is she well?  Does she love me yet?  Oh! will the happy time come soon—­soon—­when neither time nor distance can divide us?  When the expression of our love will be no longer chilled by the cold medium of the post!” Pardon, pardon, dearest, these black thoughts of absence.  When heart is—­with heart, the lover trusts in all; in separation he doubts all.  You command—­for such to me is your wish—­that I should describe my life to you, day by day, hour by hour.  Oh, what sad and tiresome annals mine would be, were I to obey you!  You know well, traitress, that I live not without you.  My existence—­’tis but the trace of a shadow on the desert sand.  My duty alone, which wearies at least, if it cannot amuse me, helps me to get rid of the time.  Thrown in a climate ruinous to health, in society which stifles the soul, I cannot find among my companions a single person who can sympathise with me.  Nor do I find among the Asiatics any who can understand my thoughts.  All that surrounds me is either so savage or so limited, that it excites sadness and discontent.  Sooner will you obtain fire by striking ice on stone, than interest from such an existence.  But your wish to me is sacred; and I will present you, in brief, with my last week.  It was more varied than usual.

[Footnote 26:  The Kazaks are employed in the Russian army frequently as couriers.]