rim Guska, Mykola Gustyi, Zodorozhnii, Metelitza, Ivan Zakrutyguba, Mosii Shilo, Degtyarenko, Sydorenko, Pisarenko, a second Pisarenko, and still another Pisarenko, and many other good kazáks. All of them had had great experience and had travelled far and wide; they had been on the shores of Anatolia, on the salt marshes and the steppes of the Crimea, on all the rivers, great and small which empty into the Dnyeper, and on all the fords and islands of the Dnyeper: they had been in Moldavia, Valakhia, and the Turkish land; they had sailed all over the Black Sea in their double-ruddered kazák boats; they had attacked with fifty skiffs in line the tallest and richest ships; they had sunk many a Turkish galley, and had burned much, very much powder in their day; more than once had they torn up velvets and rich stuffs of cotton and silk for foot-wrappers; many a time had they beaten out buckles for the straps which confined their full trousers, from the sequins of pure gold. And every one of them had drunk up and revelled away as much as would have sufficed any other man for a whole lifetime, and there was nothing to show for it. They had squandered it all, like kazáks, in treating all the world, and in hiring music so that every one might be merry. Even now rare was the man among them who had not some property: tankards, silver porringers, bracelets,
