CHAPTER XLVI.
For Matsko and Zbyshko, who had served formerly under Vitold, and had seen warriors enough from Jmud and Lithuania, this camp had no new sight; but Hlava looked at it curiously, as he considered what might be expected of those men in battle, and compared them with the knighthood of Germany and Poland.
The camp stood on a plain surrounded by swamps and a pine forest, hence defended from attack perfectly, since no other army could wade through those treacherous morasses. The plain itself on which the huts stood was muddy and sticky, but they had covered it with fir and pine branches crosswise, and so thickly that men rested on them as firmly as on dry earth. For Prince Skirvoillo they had built hurriedly "numi," or Lithuanian huts of round logs and earth; for the more considerable people a number of huts had been made of branches; common men, warriors, were sitting around fires beneath the open sky, having as defence against changes of weather and rain only sheepskins and hides which they wore on their naked bodies. In the camp no one was sleeping yet, for the men, having no work to do since the last defeat, had slept in the daytime. Some were sitting or lying around bright fires, fed by dry wood and the branches of briars; others were digging in the half-dead and ash-covered embers, from which came the odor of the usual food of Lithuanians, roasted turnips, and also the odor of partly cooked flesh. Between the fires were seen piles of arms, placed conveniently, so that in case of need it would be easy for each man to grasp his own weapon. Hlava looked curiously at spears with long, narrow heads forged of tempered metal; at clubs of young oak-trees, into which spikes or flints had been driven, at short-handled axes, like those of Poland, which mounted knights used, and axes with handles almost as long as those of a halberd, with which men on foot fought. There were also bronze weapons handed down from old times when iron was little used in those remote regions. Some swords were of bronze also, but most were of good steel brought from Novgorod. Hlava took in his hands spears,
