“Why are they doing it?”
“So that everyone should know the Russians have come. Oh! oh! what a bustle is going on now in the aouls ; everybody’s dragging his belongings into the ravine,” he said, laughing.
“Why, do they already know in the mountains that a detachment is on its way?” I asked him.
“Eh, how can one help knowing? They always know; our people are like that.”
“Then Shamil too is preparing for action?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, shaking his head, “Shamil won’t go into action; Shamil will send his naibs , and he himself will look on through a telescope from above.”
“Does he live far away?”
“Not far. To the left, some eight miles.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Have you been there?”
“I have; our people have all been.”
“Have you seen Shamil?”
“Eh! such as we don’t see Shamil! There are a hundred, three hundred, a thousand murids , all round him, and Shamil’s in the centre,” he said, with an expression of servile admiration.
Looking up, it was possible to discern that the sky, now cleared, was beginning to grow lighter in the East, and the Pleiades to sink towards the horizon; but the ravine through which we were marching was still damp and gloomy.