whose leaders, seeing this, gave command to withdraw toward the cavalry. The German crossbows now gave answer, and from moment to moment a Jmud man hidden among branches fell to the earth like a ripe pine cone, and dying, tore with his hands the moss of the forest, or squirmed like a fish when 't is swept out of water. Surrounded on all sides, the Germans could not indeed count on victory; seeing, however, the seriousness of their own defence, they thought that even a handful might push out of those straits and escape to the riverside.
The thought came to no man to yield himself, for never having spared prisoners themselves, they knew that they could not count on the pity of a people brought to despair and to uprising. Hence they retreated in silence, man at the side of man, shoulder to shoulder, now raising, now lowering their lances and halberds, cutting, thrusting, or shooting from crossbows in so far as the confusion of battle permitted, approaching always their cavalry, which was fighting a life and death battle with other legions of the enemy.
Then something unlooked-for took place, something which settled the fate of the desperate struggle. That noble of Lenkavitsa, whom frenzy had seized at the death of his brother, bent forward, without dismounting, and raised the corpse from the earth, wishing evidently to secure it and put it somewhere in safety, so as to find it more easily when the battle was over. But that same moment a new wave of frenzy rushed to his head and deprived him entirely of reason; for, instead of leaving the road, he struck straight on the Germans and hurled the corpse onto their lance points, which, fastened now in its breast, sides, and bowels, went down beneath the burden. Before the soldiers could pull out their lances, the madman had rushed through the gap in their ranks unresisted, overturning men in his course like a tempest.
In a twinkle tens of hands were stretched toward him, tens of spears pierced the flanks of his horse; but meanwhile the ranks were broken, and before they could close again, one of the Jmud men, the one happening nearest, rushed in, after him Zbyshko, after him Hlava; and the awful struggle grew and increased every instant. Other nobles grasped also dead bodies and whirled them on to the German lance points. Jmud men attacked again from the two flanks. The whole detachment, up to that time well--
