158 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



villains shout behind me, and before me was a thick 

 forest. I bent down in the saddle, commended myself 

 to Allah, and for the first time in my life dealt my horse 

 a blow with my whip. He darted like a bird through 

 the branches, my clothes were torn in shreds, and the 

 twigs lashed me in the face. My horse leaped over 

 the stumps of trees, and burst the thick underwood 

 asunder with his chest. As far as myself was con- 

 cerned, I should have done better to have turned my 

 horse loose in the copse, and hid myself in the wood, 

 but I could not part from him, and the prophet 

 rewarded me. Some bullets whistled over my head, 

 and I heard my pursuers close behind me. Suddenly 

 a deep chasm yawned before me my courser recoiled 

 on his haunches and leaped. His hind feet slipped 

 on the further bank, and he hung on by his fore feet. 

 I dropped the rein, and let myself fall into the chasrn : 

 that saved him, he regained his footing. The Cossacks 

 saw the whole affair, but none of them thought of 

 descending in search of me. They believed, no doubt, 

 I must have broken my neck, and I heard them dash 

 after my horse to catch him. The blood curdled in 

 my breast. I crept through the deep grass along the 

 bottom of the channel, and looked out : the wood 

 ended there, and some of the Cossacks were just riding 

 out of it into the open country, and I saw my 



