between them, but it was all in vain, everywhere stone was piled upon stone, firmly pressed and fitted and knocked together into a solid, impenetrable bulwark. The water gurgled. It pressed all its might against it then ceased, astonished, outwardly quiescent, but boiling with fury within its crystal depths. Like a bison who, preparing for a charge, stands with his head lowered, horns turned towards the ground, quietly awaiting the opportunity to make a sudden charge upon the enemy, the Tukholian stream, unaccustomed to being prisoned, halted for a moment, calmed itself as if it grew weary and napped in its shallow banks, meanwhile gathering sufficient force and boldness for a renewed and more resolute attack, at first only gently pressing itself against the wall as if trying out with its shoulders whether the barrier suddenly put in its way would not yield. But the wall stood firm, cold, smooth, disdainfully impervious in its impregnability.
The busy, attentive hands of the Tukholians kept on strengthening it laying down stone after stone block upon block cementing them together with sticky-smooth, impervious clay. Like a new mountain raised up out of the ground by an infinite power the dam of rock rose ever higher and higher under the hands of the Tukholians. The armed youths had long ago abandoned their position within the valley facing the Mongolian camp and exchanged their bows and battle-axes for cross-bars and adzes with which to trim the slabs of rock for fitting them together.
Happily Zakhar watched the progress of their work and in his eyes there glowed the certitude that they would defeat the enemy.
In the east, over the Mongols’ entrenched camp, the clouds were flushed with pink. It was dawning. The rosy glow enveloped the peak of Mt. Zelemenya extending its sparkling rays ever lower downward. The clouds parted a little more, then slowly, timidly, the sun rolled out into the sky and peeped
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