"I'll give you one entry for your note-book, Allfact, my boy," interrupted I; "there are _thirty-nine_ sand banks between this and Rostoff, at the head of the estuary; and the upper stream is all banks together--no navigation at all!" "I should think not, by Jove, with that kind of thing going on!" says Smoothbore, pointing to a solitary horseman who is coolly riding across our bows with an aggravating grin, his dog following. Our outraged captain has barely time to hurl at him some pithy suggestions respecting his portion in a future life, which had better not be quoted, when there comes a tremendous bump, and we are aground once more! Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at full gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's neck--their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black eyes gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean faces thrust forward like vultures scenting prey--shooting a sharp, hungry glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron age which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. These are the famous Cossacks of the Don, the best guerillas and the worst soldiers in the world; at once the laziest and most active of men--strangest of all the waifs stranded on the shore of modern civilization by the ebb of the middle ages--a nation of grown-up children, with all the virtues and all the vices of barbarism--simple, good-natured, thievish, pugnacious, hospitable, drunken savages.[K] [Footnote K: The Cossack is often erroneously classed by untravelled writers with the native Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the Circassian or the Tartar.] It takes us fully ten minutes to "poll off" again, and we have hardly done so when there comes a sound through the still air, like the moan of a distant sea; and athwart the last gleam of the sinking sun flits a cloud of wide-winged living things, shadowy, silent, unearthly, as a legion of ghosts. The wild fowl of the steppes are upon their annual migration, and for many minutes the living mass sweeps over us unbroken, orderly, and even as an army in battle array--a resemblance increased by the exertions of an active leader, who keeps darting back from his post at the head of the column, and trimming the ranks like an officer on parade. "I wonder how many birds there are in that column," says Allfact, instinctively feeling for his note-book, as if expecting some leading bird to volunteer the desired information. "Just like their mean tricks," mutters Smoothbore savagely. "First the game won't show at all, and then they come so thick that no fellow would be such a cad as to fire at 'em."