Immediately some of the men crossed the Dnieper to fetch the treasure of the Ssiecha, and part of the arms taken from their enemies; they were kept in inaccessible hiding-places, in the reeds along the banks of the river. All the other Cossacks rushed to the boats to inspect them, and to put them in readiness for use. In a minute the banks of the river were covered with people; carpenters came with axes in their hands; young Zaporoghians as well as elderly ones; the latter, sunburnt, broad-shouldered, thick-footed, with gray hair in their mustachios, stood knee deep in the water, and dragged the boats into the river by means of strong cords. Others were bringing timber and balks ready dried. Here some were nailing planks on a boat; there a boat, keel upwards, was being caulked and pitched; in another place, according to the Cossack custom, long bundles of reeds were bound to the sides of the boats, to prevent them from being capsized by the sea waves; and still farther all along the river fires were kindled and tar boiled in copper kettles for tarring the boats. The experienced and elderly Cossacks gave their advice to the young ones. Noise and clamours arose from every side. The banks of the river were all alive with the stir and bustle. At this moment a great ferry-boat came near the island. The men who were standing in it had already, at a distance, begun to wave their arms. They were Cossacks and dressed in coats falling to rags. The miserable dress which they wore (some of them had nothing about them but their shirt and a short pipe in their mouth) showed at once that they had recently escaped from misfortune, or that they had been feasting until they had spent all that they had about their persons. From among them came forward, a short, thickset, broad-shouldered Cossack, some fifty years old. He shrieked louder than any, and waved his arms in the most discordant manner. But the cries and the talking of the workmen prevented him from being heard. "What brings you here?" asked the Koschevoï, while the ferry-boat was landing. All the workmen, stopping in their work with raised axes and other instruments, looked on in expectation. "Misfortune!" shouted the thickset Cossack from the ferry-boat. "What misfortune?" "Gentlemen Zaporoghians, let me address you?" "Speak on!" "Or, may be, you wish to convoke a _rada_?" "Speak, we are all here!" cried the people with one accord. "Have you, then, heard nothing about what has happened in the hetman's dominions?"[20] "And what is the matter there?" asked the ataman of one of the koorens. "What is the matter! It seems the Tartars must have well boxed your ears that you heard nothing!" "Tell, then, what _did_ happen there!" "Such things have happened that, since you were born and christened, you never saw the like of them!" "Speak, then, at once; and say what has happened, thou son of a dog!" cried one among the crowd, losing patience.