"But the Jews. The Jews, those----" curses the colonel.
"Just as black and just as hungry--but good patriots."
The colonel lifts his head, gazes thoughtfully for a while into the flickering flame of the slowly melting candle. Then he begins to laugh.
"Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't I think of it before? Ah, Little Brother, what asses we have been!"
The Cossack's eyes snap. He, too, has a plan which in all this orgy of bloodthirstiness appeals to him with an even bloodier zest.
"Do you know what we shall do with them--with all these patriots?"
"Drive them together somewhere and sabre them," suggests the sotnik.
"So that they can fill the newspapers again with their tale of martyrdom," laughs Gabriel Gabrilovitch, scornfully. "Beware, Little Brother, beware! We shall leave that to their countrymen this time."
The blank eyes of the Cossack follow the colonel questioningly--like the eyes of a hunting dog.
"So," laughs the latter, softly stroking his cheek. "We'll drive these patriots to the Austrian wire entanglements. What do you think? Will those people over there shoot down their own subjects?"
"But they are non-combatants, Gabriel Gabrilovitch----"
The young man suppressed the thought before he had put it into words. There was something in the voice of his superior which cowered him. And, like a hunting dog, he merely listened.
"Don't you see, Little Brother?" continues Gabriel Gabrilovitch, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "And just because in that case they will not fire, we shall rush in on the enemy. We shall have cover and can excuse ourselves for using it."
"It would take the devil himself to think of that!" exclaims the sotnik, full of submissiveness and admiration.
"I am a good Christian," declares Gabriel Gabrilovitch with bitter humor. "And now I must have an intermediary; for, naturally, I must inform the enemy so that they will not shoot down so many patriots."
The young Cossack rocked his body as if already in the saddle.
"Muttonhead! Shall I send one on whose face are the imprints of all the Devil's ten fingers? Pick out the youngest, the handsomest and the stupidist of the sotnia and send him over. The kind that believes anything anybody tells him. Then they over there will believe him. And what we are going to do nobody but you and I will know. Well, have you any such 'steed of God?'"