"_Yok_ (no)," he replied, shaking his head as a sign of negation, "Shamyl will not march out. Shamyl will send his _naïbs_[24] and he himself will look down from up yonder through his glass." "But doesn't he live a long way off?" "Not a long way off. Here, at your left, about ten _versts_ he will be." "How do you know that?" I inquired. "Have you been there?" "I've been there. All of us in the mountains have." "And you have seen Shamyl?" "_Pikh!_ Shamyl is not to be seen by us. A hundred, three hundred, a thousand _murids_[25] surround him. Shamyl will be in the midst of them," he said with an expression of fawning servility. Looking up in the air, it was possible to make out that the sky which had become clear again was lighter in the east, and the Pleiades were sinking down into the horizon. But in the gulch through which we were passing, it was humid and dark. Suddenly, a little in advance of us, from out the darkness flashed a number of lights; at the same instant, with a ping some bullets whizzed by, and from out the silence that surrounded us from afar arose the heavy, overmastering roar of the guns. This was the vanguard of the enemy's pickets. The Tatars, of which it was composed, set up their war-cry, shot at random, and fled in all directions. Every thing became silent again. The general summoned his interpreter. The Tatar in a white Circassian dress hastened up to him, and the two held a rather long conversation in a sort of whisper and with many gestures. "Colonel Khasánof! give orders to scatter the enemy," said the general in a low, deliberate, but distinct tone of voice. The division went down to the river. The black mountains stood back from the pass; it was beginning to grow light. The arch of heaven, in which the pale, lustreless stars were barely visible, seemed to come closer; the dawn began to glow brightly in the east; a cool, penetrating breeze sprang up from the west, and a bright mist like steam arose from the foaming river. [Footnote 19: _topot._] [Footnote 20: In the Caucasus the freshets take place in the mouth of July.] [Footnote 21: _tayak_ in the Caucasian dialect.] [Footnote 22: _tomásha_ means slaves in the ordinary dialect invented for intercourse between Russians and Tatars. There are many words in this strange dialect, the roots of which are not to be found either in Russian or Tatar.--AUTHOR'S NOTE.] [Footnote 23: Goods and chattels in the same dialect.] [Footnote 24: _naïb_ ordinarily means a Mohammedan judge or high religious officer, in Turkey and the Caucasus; hero it means an officer whom the great Circassian chieftain Shamyl endowed with special authority.] [Footnote 25: The word _murid_ has many significations, but in the sense here employed it means something between adjutant and body-guard.--AUTHOR'S NOTE.] VIII.