Suddenly I heard a low cry and a choking gurgle that filled my heart with misery. I looked back; Karolyi, struck by a bullet, had sunk from his saddle, and a spurred boot alone was visible, as horse and rider was swept over a cataract, and borne away towards the Dnieper.
Forcing Zupi up a bank where the reeds grew at least twelve feet high, I still rode recklessly on; but brave as they were, not one of the Cossacks dared to cross that foaming torrent in pursuit. Night came down to shroud my flight; there was no moon. I reached a wood, and flung myself down exhausted in mind and body. I was now dead to the fear of discovery, and I cared not for wolves, or other wild animals.
The presence of Karolyi, his companionship and our brotherly love, had alone sustained me thus far; now he was gone, and I was alone in the world; but there was at least one consolation: he had died the death of a warrior, with one hand on his bridle, and the other on his weapon; he had fallen, like his father's son, in battle with the enemies of his country, but he had found a tomb far from his father's grave, and far from the banks of the Kisselbash River.
Three days I lay without food, save a little wild honey, and without repose in that Lithuanian forest, and careless whether I lived or died; for want, misery, privation and mental agony had broken my spirit, and destroyed alike every purpose, hope, and reflection. There I prayed to the only Prophet of God, and remembered with growing trust that in the blessed Koran, he enjoins us to seek aid with perseverance; and I implored him to deliver me, even as the Lord divided the sea of Kolzom with his hand to let his people pass, and thereafter drowned the Egyptian host; and the Prophet heard me; for even while I prayed with my bare head in the dust, there chanced to pass that way a poor Tartar who dwelt on the skirts of the forest, and who had come hither to cut wood.
He heard me address the Prophet, and remembering the faith of his fathers, felt his heart moved within him; so he had compassion upon me, and took me to his hut, which, like all the Tartar dwellings, was little better than a rabbit-hole, burrowed on the face of a hill, with a rude verandah in front. Fortunately it lay in a wild and secluded place; so I dwelt for some days in safety with this good man, who guided me across the plains of Grodno, until I passed the Prussian frontier, when I knelt with my face to the east, and gave thanks to Heaven--thanks that I was safe from Russia, although eight hundred miles lay between me and the hills of my beloved Circassia.