The rider, knowing that were he to fall he would be torn to bits the next moment, seized hold of his saddle-bow, but dropped his pot the same instant; the light sank in the snow deeply; the flame threw out sparks and was extinguished. The light of the moon was alone on that plain then.
The driver, a Russ from Pomorani, began to pray; the Mazovian attendants fell to cursing.
Emboldened by darkness, the wolves pressed on with more insolence, and from the direction of the wild boars some fresh ones ran up to them. A few came rather near, with snapping teeth, and the hair standing straight on their shoulders. Their eyes were all bloodshot, and a greenish light flashed from them.
A moment had come which was really terrible.
"Shall we shoot?" inquired one of the escort.
"Frighten them with shouts," said Pan Gideon.
Thereupon rose with keenness, "A-hu! a-hu!" The horses gained courage, and the wolves, impressed by the voices of men, withdrew some tens of paces.
Then a still greater wonder was manifest.
All at once forest echoes from behind repeated the shouts of the attendants, but with rising force, ever louder and louder, as it were outbursts of wild laughter; and some moments later a crowd of dark horsemen appeared at both sides of the carriage and shot past with all the speed of their beasts toward the wild boars and the wolves which encircled them.
In the twinkle of an eye neither wolves nor boars held the snow plain; they had scattered as if a whirlwind had struck them. Gunshots were heard, also shouts, and again those strange outbursts of laughter. Pan Gideon's attendants rushed after the horsemen, so that there remained at the sleigh only the postilion and the driver.
Inside the sleigh there was such mighty amazement that no one dared move a lip for some moments.
"But the word became flesh!" called out Pani Vinnitski, at last. "That must be help from above us."
"May it be blessed, whencesoever it came. Our plight was growing evil," said Pan Gideon.
"God sent those young knights!" said Panna Anulka, who wished to add her word.
It would have been difficult to divine how this maiden could have seen that those men were knights and young, in addition, for they shot past like a whirlwind; but no person asked for her reasons, since the older man and woman were occupied overmuch with what was happening before them.