The Zaporozhians felt their strength mounting. This was no longer the emotion of a wild and careless group, but that of strong, sturdy men slow to flare up, but when they did, the fire within them raged resolute and long.

“Hang the Jews!” someone in the crowd yelled. “We will not have their women make skirts out of our priests’ cassocks! We will not have them mark our Easter cake. Drown the rascals in the Dnieper!”

These words darted like lightning through the crowd, and the Cossacks surged toward the settlement to slaughter the Jews.

The poor sons of Israel, losing the little courage they had, hid in empty vodka barrels and inside stoves; they even crawled beneath the skirts of their women. But the Cossacks found them all.

“Most exalted and illustrious gentlemen!” shouted one of the Jews, tall and thin as a stick, his pitiful face, twisted with fear, jutting out of a heap of people. “Illustrious gentlemen! Let us speak! Just a word or two! We will tell you things you have never yet heard, things so important, words cannot describe how important!”

“Let them speak!” Bulba said. He always liked to hear what the accused had to say.

“Illustrious gentlemen, gentlemen the like of which the world has never before seen,” the Jew spluttered, “no, by God, never ever before seen! The best, the kindest and most valiant gentlemen in the whole world!” His voice faltered and trembled with fear. “How can you even think we ever disliked the Zaporozhians? The men going about the Ukraine putting everything under pledge are not our people! By God, they are not! The devil knows who they might be, but they are not Jews in any way! They should be spat at and chased away! The men here next to me agree, don’t you, Shloyme, Shmul?”

“By God, he is right!” Shloyme and Shmul, white as chalk, their yarmulkes tattered, called from the crowd.

“We have never yet hobnobbed with your enemies,” the lanky Jew continued. “And as for the Catholics, we want nothing to do with them, may the devil visit them in their dreams! To us all Zaporozhians are like our very own brothers—”

“What! Zaporozhians your brothers!” someone yelled from the crowd. “You won’t live to see the day, you damn Jews! Into the Dnieper with them! Drown the whole lot!”

These words were like a signal. The Cossacks grabbed the Jews by the arms and hurled them into the river. Pitiful shouts came from all around, but the grim Zaporozhians only laughed at the sight of the Jews’ shod and stockinged legs flailing in the air. The poor orator, realizing that he had tightened the noose of disaster around his own neck, jumped out of his caftan, by which the Cossacks had grabbed him and, in his tight, brightly colored camisole, threw himself on the ground and grasped Bulba’s foot.

“Great lord and most illustrious gentleman! I knew your deceased brother, Dorosha! He was a soldier who was an ornament of chivalry! I gave him eight hundred gold ducats when he had to buy himself out of the Turk’s captivity!”

“You knew my brother?” Taras asked.

“By God, I did! He was a bighearted gentleman!”

“What is your name?”

“Yankel.”

“Very well,” Taras said, and then, after a moment’s thought, turned to the Cossacks. “There’ll be time enough to hang this Jew later if we need to, but for now give him to me.”

Taras took Yankel to his cart, beside which his Cossacks were standing.

“Crawl under there and don’t move! And you, brothers, don’t let the Jew get away.”

Taras Bulba headed for the square where all the Cossacks had gathered. As they were now to set out on a land campaign, they had all left the shore and the skiffs; they no longer needed boats, but rather carts and horses. Everyone, young and old, wanted to march on the campaign. All, together with the council of commanders, the captains, the Ataman, and the will of the whole Zaporozhian army, decided to march on Poland to avenge the evil that had come upon the Ukraine and the shaming of the True Faith and Cossack glory, to loot the towns, set fire to villages and granaries, and spread Cossack glory far over the steppes. Everyone was strapping on gear and armor. The Ataman had grown a good two feet in stature. He was no longer the soft-spoken executor of the erratic will of the men who had elected him. He was now the absolute ruler, the despot. All the headstrong, carousing knights now stood neatly in rows, their heads respectfully lowered. They did not dare raise their eyes when the Ataman gave his orders, and he gave them in a quiet and unruffled tone, never raising his voice, in the measured words of an old, experienced Cossack who was, not for the first time, executing a cleverly thought-out enterprise.

“Check everything, check everything well,” he said. “Check your carts and the tar for the wheels, try out your weapons. Do not take too many clothes with you, just a shirt and two trousers, and a pot of flour paste and one of ground millet. I don’t want anyone to take more with him. All the provisions we need will be kept on our supply carts. I want every Cossack to have two horses. And we will take two hundred pair of oxen, for we will need them when we get to river crossings and swamps. And what is most important, I want you to keep order! I know that there are those among you who, the moment God sends some loot your way, will drop everything to shred Chinese silks and precious velvets into foot wrappings.