Page:Pantadeuszorlast00mick.djvu/71

the lady; the cook and two turnspits, all three drunk; the parish priest, a servingman, and four footmen, all bold fellows. So to arms and to the windows! Here a throng of Muscovites came streaming across the terrace to the door, shouting ‘Hurrah!’ But we met them with bullets from ten guns, ‘Back with you!’ Nothing could be seen; the servants shot without cessation from the lower stories, and my lord and I from the balcony. All went finely, although amid such great alarm. Twenty guns lay here on this floor; we shot one and they handed us another; the parish priest attended diligently to this task, and the lady and her daughter, and the serving maids: there were but three marksmen, yet the fire was unceasing. The Muscovite boors showered on us a hail of bullets from below; we replied from above sparsely, but with better aim. Three times that rabble pressed up to the door, but each time three of them bit the dust: so they fled behind the storehouse. It was already early dawn; with a cheerful face the Pantler came out on the balcony with his gun, and whenever a Muscovite thrust forth his brow from behind the storehouse he at once fired—and he never missed; each time a black helmet fell on the grass; so that at length scarcely a man crept out from behind the wall. The Pantler, seeing his enemies in confusion, thought of making a sally; he seized his sabre, and, shouting from the balcony, gave orders to the servants; turning to me he said: ‘Follow me, Gerwazy!’ At that instant there was a shot from behind the gate; the Pantler's speech faltered, he turned red, turned pale, tried to speak, spat blood. Then I perceived that he had received the bullet full in the breast; my lord, tottering, pointed towards the gate. I recognised that villain Soplica, I