you yourselves when you first saw me said, 'Tis plain that we must not look at the horse, but at the warrior!" But Thomas thought to himself: "I'm in a pretty pickle now! Well, let the Chinaman kill me if he likes--I'll not be put to shame over the business anyhow!" Then they brought him his hack: he mounted it in peasant style, struck it with his bunch of twigs, and went into the open plain at a gentle amble. The Chinese Khan had armed his champion like a fortress; he clothed him in armour twelve puds (480 lbs.) in weight, taught him the use of every weapon, put in his hands a battle-axe eighty pounds in weight, and said to him just before he set out, "Mark me, and recollect my words! When a Russian hero cannot prevail by force, he will overcome by cunning, so lest thou should get the worst of it, take care and do everything the Russian hero does." So the champions went out against each other into the open field, and Thomas saw the Chinese hero advancing against him, as big as a mountain, with his head like a beer-cask, and covered with armour like a tortoise in its shell, so that he was scarcely able to move. So Tommy had recourse to artifice. He got off his horse and sat down on a stone and began to sharpen his scythe. The Chinese hero when he saw that, got off his horse immediately, fastened it to a tree, and began to whet his axe against a stone also. When Thomas had finished sharpening his scythe, he marched up to the Chinaman and said to him, "We two are mighty and potent heroes, we have come out against each other in mortal combat; but before we pitch into each other we ought to show each other proper respect, and salute one another after the custom of the country." And he saluted the Chinaman with a low, a very low bow. "Oh, oh!" thought the Chinaman, "here's some piece of trickery, I know. I'll bow yet lower." And he bowed himself to the very ground. But before he could raise himself up again in his heavy armour, Thomas rushed at him, tickled him once or twice in the neck, and so cut his throat through for him. Then he leaped upon the heroic horse of the Chinaman, scrambled on the top of it somehow, flourished his birch of twigs, tried to grasp the reins, and quite forgot that the horse was tied to a tree. But the good horse, as soon as he felt a rider on his back, tugged and pulled till he tore the tree up by the roots, and off he set at full gallop towards the Chinese host, dragging after him the big tree as if it had been a mere feather. Thomas Berennikov was terribly frightened, and began bawling, "Help, help!" But the Chinese host feared him more than a snowstorm, and it seemed to them as if he were crying to them, "Run, run!" so they took to their heels without once looking back. But the heroic horse plunged into the midst of them, trampled them beneath its feet, and the huge tree-trunk scattered them in all directions. Wherever it plunged it left a wide road behind it.