The sky was so bright, the air so clear, and life played so joyously in Nazárov’s soul as, becoming one with his fine strong horse, he flew along the smooth road behind Hadji Murád, that the possibility of anything sad or dreadful happening never occurred to him. He rejoiced that with every step he was gaining on Hadji Murád.
Hadji Murád judged by the approaching tramp of the big horse behind him that he would soon be overtaken, and seizing his pistol with his right hand, with his left he began slightly to rein in his Kabardá horse which was excited by hearing the tramp of hoofs behind it.
‘You mustn’t, I tell you!’ shouted Nazárov, almost level with Hadji Murád and stretching out his hand to seize the latter’s bridle. But before he reached it a shot was fired. ‘What are you doing?’ he screamed, clutching at his breast. ‘At them, lads!’ and he reeled and fell forward on his saddle-bow.
But the mountaineers were beforehand in taking to their weapons, and fired their pistols at the Cossacks and hewed at them with their swords.
Nazárov hung on the neck of his horse, which careered round his comrades. The horse under Ignátov fell, crushing his leg, and two of the mountaineers, without dismounting, drew their swords and hacked at his head and arms. Petrakóv was about to rush to his comrade’s rescue when two shots – one in his back and the other in his side – stung him, and he fell from his horse like a sack.
Míshkin turned round and galloped off towards the fortress. Khanéfi and Bata rushed after him, but he was already too far away and they could not catch him. When they saw that they could not overtake him they returned to the others.
Petrakóv lay on his back, his stomach ripped open, his young face turned to the sky, and while dying he gasped for breath like a fish.
Gamzálo having finished off Ignátov with his sword, gave a cut to Nazárov too and threw him from his horse. Bata took their cartridge-pouches from the slain. Khanéfi wished to take Nazárov’s horse, but Hadji Murád called out to him to leave it, and dashed forward along the road. His murids galloped after him, driving away Nazárov’s horse that tried to follow them. They were already among rice-fields more than six miles from Nukhá when a shot was fired from the tower of that place to give the alarm.
* * *
‘O good Lord! O God! my God! What have they done?’ cried the commander of the fort seizing his head with his hands when he heard of Hadji Murád’s escape. ‘They’ve done for me! They’ve let him escape, the villains!’ cried he, listening to Míshkin’s account.
An alarm was raised everywhere and not only the Cossacks of the place were sent after the fugitives but also all the militia that could be mustered from the pro-Russian aouls. A thousand rubles reward was offered for the capture of Hadji Murád alive or dead, and two hours after he and his followers had escaped from the Cossacks more than two hundred mounted men were following the officer in charge at a gallop to find and capture the runaways.
After riding some miles along the high road Hadji Murád checked his panting horse, which, wet with sweat, had turned from white to grey.
To the right of the road could be seen the sáklyas and minarets of the aoul Benerdzhík, on the left lay some fields, and beyond them the river. Although the way to the mountains lay to the right, Hadji Murád turned to the left, in the opposite direction, assuming that his pursuers would be sure to go to the right, while he, abandoning the road, would cross the Alazán and come out onto the high road on the other side where no one would expect him – ride along it to the forest, and then after recrossing the river make his way to the mountains.
Having come to this conclusion he turned to the left; but it proved impossible to reach the river. The rice-field which had to be crossed had just been flooded, as is always done in spring, and had become a bog in which the horses’ legs sank above their pasterns. Hadji Murád and his henchmen turned now to the left, now to the right, hoping to find drier ground; but the field they were in had been equally flooded all over and was now saturated with water. The horses drew their feet out of the sticky mud into which they sank, with a pop like that of a cork drawn from a bottle, and stopped, panting, after every few steps. They struggled in this way so long that it began to grow dusk and they had still not reached the river. To their left lay a patch of higher ground overgrown with shrubs and Hadji Murád decided to ride in among these clumps and remain there till night to rest their exhausted horses and let them graze. The men themselves ate some bread and cheese they had brought with them. At last night came on and the moon that had been shining at first, hid behind the hill and it became dark. There were a great many nightingales in that neighbourhood and there were two of them in these shrubs. As long as Hadji Murád and his men were making a noise among the bushes the nightingales had been silent, but when they became still the birds again began to call to one another and to sing.
Hadji Murád, awake to all the sounds of night, listened to them involuntarily, and their trills reminded him of the song about Hamzád which he had heard the night before when he went to get water. He might now at any moment find himself in the position in which Hamzád had been. He fancied that it would be so, and suddenly his soul became serious. He spread out his búrka and performed his ablutions, and scarcely had he finished before a sound was heard approaching their shelter. It was the sound of many horses’ feet plashing through the bog.
The keen-sighted Bata ran out to one edge of the clump, and peering through the darkness saw black shadows, which were men on foot and on horseback. Khanéfi discerned a similar crowd on the other side. It was Kargánov, the military commander of the district, with his militia.
‘Well, then, we shall fight like Hamzád,’ thought Hadji Murád.
When the alarm was given, Kargánov with a troop of militiamen and Cossacks had rushed off in pursuit of Hadji Murád, but had been unable to find any trace of him. He had already lost hope and was returning home when, towards evening, he met an old man and asked him if he had seen any horsemen about. The old man replied that he had. He had seen six horsemen floundering in the rice-field, and then had seen them enter the clump where he himself was getting wood. Kargánov turned back, taking the old man with him, and seeing the hobbled horses he made sure that Hadji Murád was there. In the night he surrounded the clump and waited till morning to take Hadji Murád alive or dead.
Having understood that he was surrounded, and having discovered an old ditch among the shrubs, Hadji Murád decided to entrench himself in it and to resist as long as strength and ammunition lasted. He told his comrades this, and ordered them to throw up a bank in front of the ditch, and his henchmen at once set to work to cut down branches, dig up the earth with their daggers, and make an entrenchment. Hadji Murád himself worked with them.
As soon as it began to grow light the commander of the militia troop rode up to the clump and shouted:
‘Hey! Hadji Murád, surrender! We are many and you are few!’
In reply came the report of a rifle, a cloudlet of smoke rose from the ditch and a bullet hit the militiaman’s horse, which staggered under him and began to fall. The rifles of the militiamen who stood at the outskirt of the clump of shrubs began cracking in their turn, and their bullets whistled and hummed, cutting off leaves and twigs and striking the embankment, but not the men entrenched behind it. Only Gamzálo’s horse, that had strayed from the others, was hit in the head by a bullet. It did not fall, but breaking its hobbles and rushing among the bushes it ran to the other horses, pressing close to them and watering the young grass with its blood. Hadji Murád and his men fired only when any of the militiamen came forward, and rarely missed their aim. Three militiamen were wounded, and the others, far from making up their minds to rush the entrenchment, retreated farther and farther back, only firing from a distance and at random.