While this was taking place at one end of the exercising ground, a horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers.  He was of middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike equipment, and followed by five noukers.  By their dusty dress, and the foam which covered their horses, it might be seen that they had ridden far and fast.  The first horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers, advanced slowly along the piles of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids of fire-arms.  The noukers, following the steps of their master, far from turning aside, coolly rode over the scattered weapons.  The sentry, who had challenged them while they were yet at some distance, and warned them not to approach, seized the bit of the steed bestridden by the mail-coated horseman, while the rest of the soldiers, enraged at such an insult from a Mussulman, assailed the party with abuse.  “Hold hard!  Who are you?” was the challenge and question of the sentinel.  “Thou must be a raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan Akhmet Khan of Avar,"[27] coolly answered the man in mail, shaking off the hand of the sentry from his reins.  “I think last year I left the Russians a keepsake at Bashli.  Translate that for him,” he said to one of his noukers.  The Avaretz repeated his words in pretty intelligible Russian.

     [27] The brother of Hassan Khan Djemontai, who became Khan of
     Avar by marrying the Khan’s widow and heiress.

“’Tis Akhmet Khan!  Akhmet Khan!” shouted the soldiers.  “Seize him! hold him fast! down with him! pay him for the affair of Bashli[28]—­the villains cut our wounded to pieces.”

[28] The Russian detachment, consisting on this occasion of 3000 men, was surrounded by 60,000.  These were, Ouizmi Karakaidakhsky, the Avaretzes, Akoushinetzes, the Boulinetzes of the Koi-Sou, and others.  The Russians fought their way out by night, but with considerable loss.

“Away, brute!” cried Sultan Akhmet Khan to the soldier who had again seized the bridle of his horse—­“I am a Russian general.”

“A Russian traitor!” roared a multitude of voices; “bring him to the Captain:  drag him to Derbend, to Colonel Verkhoffsky.”

“’Tis only to hell I would go with such guides!” said Akhmet, with a contemptuous smile, and making his horse rear, he turned him to the right and left; then, with a blow of the nogaik,[29] he made him leap into the air, and disappeared.  The noukers kept their eye on the movements of their chief, and uttering their warcry, followed his steps, and overthrowing several of the soldiers, cleared a way for themselves into the road.  After galloping off to a distance of scarce a hundred paces, the Khan rode away at a slow walk, with an expression of the greatest sang-froid, not deigning to look back, and coolly playing with his bridle.  The crowd of Tartars assembled round the blacksmith attracted his attention.  “What are you quarrelling about, friends?” asked Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining in his horse.