They had not sailed very far when, behold ! on the bank there stood something like a city, and there was an army that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see; and the whole army was surrounded by a ditch, and the ditch was protected by a palisade.
The Cossacks came to a pause. They began to feel dubious. Yermak called a council.
“ Well, boys, what shall be done ? “
The Cossacks were disheartened. Some said :
“ We must sail by.” Others said :
“We must go back.”
And they grew desperate, and blamed Yermak, saying :
“ Why did you bring us hither ? Already they have killed so many of us, and wounded still more, and here we shall all perish.”
And they began to shed tears.
And Yermak said to his sub-ataman, Ivan Koltso :
“ Well, now, Vanya, what do you think about it ? “
And Koltso replied :
“What do I think about it? If we are not killed to-day, then we shall be to-morrow, and if not to-morrow, then we shall die ingloriously in our beds. My advice is, leap on shore and make straight for the Tartars and God will decide.”
And Yermak exclaimed :
“AY! brave fellow, Vanya ! That is what we must do! Ekh! you boys! You aren’t Cossacks, but old women! Of course it was to catch sturgeon and to scare Tartar women; simply for that that I brought you hither. Don’t you yourselves see ? If we go back we shall be killed ! If we row by, we shall be killed ! If we stay here, we shall be killed ! Where, then, shall we betake ourselves ? First labor, then rest !
Boys, you are like a healthy mare that my father had. When she was going downhill she would draw, and on level ground she would draw; but when it came to going up-hill, she would balk and back and try to find something easier. Then my father took a stake, beat her and beat her with the stake. And the mare jumped around, and kicked and tipped over the cart. Then father took her out of the thills and put her through the mill. Now, if she had pulled, she would not have got the thrashing. So it is with you, boys. There ‘s only one thing left for us, to go straight for the Tartars.” ….
The Cossacks laughed, and said :
“ It is plain that you are wiser than we are, Timo-fei’tch. We fools have no right to give advice. Take us wherever you wish. We can’t die twice, but we must die once.”
And Yermak said :
“ Now listen, boys. This is the way that we must do it. They have n’t yet seen the whole of us. We will divide ourselves into three bands. Those in the middle will march straight at them, and the other two divisions will make a flank movement to the right and left. Now when the middle division begins to engage them, they will think that we are all there they will come out. And then we will give it to them from the flanks. That ‘s the way, boys. And if we beat these, there will be nothing left to fear. We shall be tsars ourselves.”
That was the way that they did.
As soon as the middle division went forward under Yermak, the Tartars began to yell and rushed out.
Then the wings joined battle, the right under Ivan Koltso, the left under the ataman Meshcheryak.
The Tartars were panic-stricken, and took to their heels. The Cossacks slaughtered them. And no one at all dared to oppose Yermak any longer. And thus they made their entrance into the very city of Sibir. And there Yermak took up his abode exactly as if he had been Tsar.
The neighboring princes l began to come to Yermak with salutations, and the Tartars came back and began to settle down in Sibir. Kuchum and his son-in-law, however, dared not make a direct attack on Yermak, but wandered round and round, and laid their plans to capture him.
In the spring, at the time for the freshets, some Tar-tars came to Yermak, saying :
“ Mametkul is coming against you again, and he has collected a great army, and is now on the Vagaya River.”
Yermak hastened over rivers, swamps, streams, and forests, crept up with his Cossacks, fell on Mametkul, and killed many of the Tartars, and took Mametkul him-self prisoner and brought him back to Sibir. And now there remained few Tartars who were not subdued, and that summer Yermak marched against those that would not submit, and_ on the Irtuish and on the Obi rivers Yermak brought so much land under subjection that you could not go around it in two months.
After he had conquered all this land, he sent a mes-senger to the Strogonof s with a letter, in which he said :
“ I have taken Kuchum’s city, and have Mametkul in captivity, and I have brought all the people round about under my sway. But it has cost me many Cossacks. Send us people, so that we may be more lively. And the wealth in this land is limitless in extent.”
And he sent also costly furs, foxskins and martens and sable.
After this two years passed. Yermak still held Sibir,
1 Tsar’ki, petty tsar; it is a moot question whether the word tsar is de-rived from the Latin Caesar, or whether Coesar may not itself be an Oriental title of similar derivation. The spelling of “ czar “ is not Russian.
but no reinforcements arrived from Russia, and Yermak’s Russian forces were growing small.
One time the Tartar Kachara sent a messenger to Yermak, saying :
“We have submitted to your sway, but the Nogai are harassing us; let some of your braves come to our aid. We will conquer the Nogai’ together. And we give you our oath that we will do no manner of harm to your braves.”
Yermak had faith in their oath, and he sent to them Ivan Koltso with forty men. As soon as these forty men came to them, the Tartars fell on them and killed them; and this still further reduced the Cossacks.
Another time some Bukhara traders sent word to Yermak that they were on their way with merchandise which they wished to give him in his city of Sibir, but that Kuchum and his army were in their way, and would not let them pass.
Yermak took fifty men and went out to clear the road for the Bukharians. But when he reached the Irtuish River he did not find any merchants. So they prepared to bivouac there.
The night was dark and rainy.
No sooner had the Cossacks lain down for the night, than the Tartars rushed in from every side, threw themselves on the sleeping Cossacks, and began to hew them down. Yer-mak leaped up and began to fight. He was wounded in the arm by a knife. Then he ran to the river and threw himself into it the Tartars after him. He was already in the water. But he was never seen again, and his body was never found, and no one knows how he died.
The End
