Produced by David Clarke, JoAnn Greenwood and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) TALES BY POLISH AUTHORS London SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co., LTD. New York LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET TALES BY POLISH AUTHORS HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ STEFAN ŻEROMSKI ADAM SZYMAŃSKI WACŁAW SIEROSZEWSKI TRANSLATED BY ELSE C. M. BENECKE Oxford B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET 1915 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Of the contemporary Polish authors represented in this volume only Henryk Sienkiewicz is well known in England. Although the works of Stefan Żeromski, Adam Szymański, and Wacław Sieroszewski are widely read in Poland, none have as yet appeared in English, so far as the present translator is aware. 'Srul--from Lubartów' is generally considered one of the most striking of Adam Szymański's Siberian 'Sketches.' The author writes from personal experience, having himself been banished to Siberia for a number of years. The same can be said of Wacław Sieroszewski; during the fifteen years spent in Siberia as a political exile, he made a study of some of the native tribes, especially the Yakut and Tungus, and has written a great deal on this subject. Stefan Żeromski is also one of the most distinguished modern Polish novelists; several of his books have been translated into French and German. The translator is under a deep obligation to the authors, MM. Sienkiewicz, Szymański, and Żeromski, for kindly allowing her to publish these tales in English, and to Mr. J. H. Retinger, Secretary of the Polish Bureau in London, for authorising the same on behalf of M. Sieroszewski. E. C. M. B. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Henryk Sienkiewicz: '_Bartek the Conqueror_' 1 Stefan Żeromski: '_Twilight_' 101 '_Temptation_' 113 Adam Szymański: '_Srul--from Lubartów_' 119 Wacław Sieroszewski: '_In Autumn_' 137 '_In Sacrifice to the Gods_' 163 POLISH PRONUNCIATION: After k, rz = English sh. sz = English sh cz = English ch ł = English w w = English v BARTEK THE CONQUEROR HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ CHAPTER I