and oftentimes both sinking together below the surface, from weakness or from 25 struggles, and perishing in each other’s arms.  Did the Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the sake of giving impetus to the assault?  Thither were the camels driven in fiercely by those who rode them, generally women or boys; and even these quiet creatures were 30 forced into a share in this carnival of murder by trampling down as many as they could strike prostrate with the lash of their fore-legs.  Every moment the water grew more polluted; and yet every moment fresh myriads came up to the lake and rushed in, not able to resist their frantic thirst, and swallowing large draughts of water, visibly contaminated with the blood of their slaughtered compatriots.  Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there, 5 for scores of acres, were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of death, and the fear of death—­revenge, and the lunacy of revenge—­until the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a few, now descending the eastern side of the lake, at length 10 averted their eyes in horror.  This horror, which seemed incapable of further addition, was, however, increased by an unexpected incident.  The Bashkirs, beginning to perceive here and there the approach of the Chinese cavalry, felt it prudent—­wheresoever they were sufficiently 15 at leisure from the passions of the murderous scene—­to gather into bodies.  This was noticed by the governor of a small Chinese fort built upon an eminence above the lake; and immediately he threw in a broadside, which spread havoc among the Bashkir tribe.  As often 20 as the Bashkirs collected into globes and turms as their only means of meeting the long line of descending Chinese cavalry, so often did the Chinese governor of the fort pour in his exterminating broadside; until at length the lake, at its lower end, became one vast seething 25 caldron of human bloodshed and carnage.  The Chinese cavalry had reached the foot of the hills; the Bashkirs, attentive to their movements, had formed; skirmishes had been fought; and, with a quick sense that the contest was henceforward rapidly becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs 30 and Kirghises began to retire.  The pursuit was not as vigorous as the Kalmuck hatred would have desired.  But, at the same time, the very gloomiest hatred could not but find, in their own dreadful experience of the Asiatic deserts, and in the certainty that these wretched Bashkirs had to repeat that same experience a second time, for thousands of miles, as the price exacted by a retributary Providence for their vindictive cruelty—­not the very gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, 5 but found in all this a retaliatory chastisement more complete and absolute than any which their swords and lances could have obtained or human vengeance could have devised.