"Not so, there are some left still," said Mossy Sheelo, stepping forward. A strong Cossack was he; more than once had he been ataman in sea campaigns, and many had been the sufferings he had endured. He had been made prisoner by the Turks near Trebizond, and all his Cossacks had been brought prisoners on the Turkish galleys, with their hands and feet fettered in iron chains; whole weeks they had had no millet for food, and nothing but disgusting sea-water for drink. All this had the poor prisoners endured rather than forfeit the faith of their fathers. Not so their ataman, Mossy Sheelo; he trampled the holy faith under foot, put the accursed turban on his sinful head, acquired the confidence of the Pacha, was made gaoler in the galley, and overseer of the prisoners. Greatly were the poor prisoners aggrieved by this; for they knew that no tyranny can be heavier and more bitter than that of a man who has betrayed his faith and passed over to the persecutors. So it proved; Mossy Sheelo put them all into new triple chains, bound them with hard ropes, which cut through to their white bones. At his hands every one of them received strokes and blows. But when the Turks, glad to have acquired so good a servant, and unmindful of their law, all got drunk, Sheelo brought all the sixty-four keys, and gave them to the prisoners that they might unlock their fetters, throw them into the sea, and take in their stead sabres, with which to cut the Turks in pieces. Much booty did the Cossacks take then, with glory did they return home, and long afterwards did the musicians sing the praises of Mossy Sheelo. He might have been elected Koschevoï, but he was a strange Cossack; at one time he did such deeds as the wisest could never have planned, at others, he seemed possessed by madness. So he spent everything in drinking and feasting, went in debt to every one in the Ssiecha, and at last betook himself to robbing; one night he stole from another kooren a complete Cossack's equipment, and pawned it to the brandy-shop. For so base a deed he was tied to the pillory in the market, and a bludgeon placed beside him, in order that every one, according to his strength, might give him a blow; but not one was found among the Zaporoghians to raise the bludgeon against him, so highly did they value his past services. Such was the Cossack Mossy Sheelo.