Jack pointed them out. ‘Those fellows used their whips upon me,’ he said. The count uttered a few words in a terrible voice, and one of the guilty Cossacks called two others to him. Then the count gave another curt order, six of his orderly Dragoons, big men in dark-green, with tall, red felt shakos, dismounted; the wretched Cossacks were seized and their upper garments stripped off them. The Dragoons, who seemed to enjoy the task, then taking some of the Cossacks’ whips, laid them about the men’s shoulders till they howled again with pain. ‘We need not wait to see this,’ said the count to Jack; ‘my men will carry out their task properly. Now, are you able to sit a horse?’ ‘I think so,’ said Jack. ‘Then away.’ Jack was wrapped in the coat of one of the Dragoons, mounted on his horse, and they rode off at once for Sebastopol. On the way the count told Jack how he came to know what had happened to him. He was one of Prince Mentschikoff’s aides-de-camp, he said, and he had been on duty at daybreak that morning. Captain Kirchoff, of the Black Sea Cossacks, had come in to make his report; but the Prince was engaged and he had to wait. He entered into conversation with Count Pauloff, and in a blustering, braggart fashion told a tale of having met several English cavalrymen, of having killed two and taken one prisoner. On his prisoner he had found a golden cross, which the English soldier had admitted having taken from a dead or wounded Russian officer on the field of Inkermann. Kirchoff had the man a prisoner, and was going to bring him into Sebastopol when his men were relieved at noon that day. Though personally disliking Captain Kirchoff, Count Pauloff had been interested in the tale, and when Kirchoff produced the cross in proof of his words had taken it in his hands to examine it. To his intense surprise he had then recognised his own cross, which he had given to Jack on the day of the Alma. He had immediately taxed Kirchoff with falsehood; but the man had persisted, though with evident signs of confusion. Count Pauloff had then demanded to be instantly informed where the prisoner was; and the count, taking the cross and mounting a dozen Dragoons, galloped off, finding Jack as described. ‘And now I must settle with Captain Kirchoff,’ said the count sternly. ‘A thief of a Cossack must not lie with impunity to a hereditary nobleman.’ Entering Sebastopol, they made for the military prison, where it was necessary for Jack’s name, regiment, and other particulars to be entered on the prison books. While this was being done Count Pauloff sent an orderly to find Captain Kirchoff and bring him at once to the prison. Meanwhile the count had armed himself with a Russian artillery driver’s whip, a terrible-looking weapon.