Anyway it was a halt. It is impossible to describe the strange and picturesque aspect of these fellows from a strange country, with their copper-colored faces, long beards, black eyes, flat heads, squat noses, and grayish tatters, on the banks of this lake, under the lofty perpendicular rocks lifting up their green pines to the skies. It seemed a new world in ours,--a sort of unknown and strange game, which the three red hunters at first contemplated with intense interest. Having remained so for about five minutes, Kasper and Frantz fixed their long bayonets at the muzzle of their carbines, and then retired about twenty paces into the underwood. They reached a rock, fifteen or twenty feet high, which Materne climbed, having no arms; then, after a few words exchanged in whispers, Kasper examined his priming and raised his musket slowly to his shoulder, while his brother stood by in readiness. One of the Cossacks--he who was letting his horse drink--was about two hundred paces from them. The gun went off, awakening the deep echoes of the gorge; and the Cossack, spinning over his horse's head, plunged through the ice of the lake. It is impossible to describe the stupor of the party at this report. They looked round them in every direction: the echo replied as though it had been a general fusillade; while a puff of smoke rose above the clump of trees where the hunters were hiding. Kasper had reloaded his piece in a moment; but in the same space of time the dismounted Cossacks had bounded on their horses, and all took flight over the slope of the Hartz, one after the other, like roebucks, screaming wildly, "Hourah! hourah!" This flight was but the work of a moment: the instant Kasper took aim for the second time, the tail of the last horse disappeared in the bushes. The horse of the dead Cossack alone remained at the water's edge, held there by a singular circumstance: his master, whose head and part of whose body was in the water, had his foot still in the stirrup. Materne listened from his rock, then said joyously--"They are gone! Well, let us go and see. Frantz, remain here. Suppose any of them should return----?" Notwithstanding this recommendation, they all three approached near the horse. Materne immediately took the bridle, saying:--"Come, old fellow, we are going to teach you to speak French." "Let us be off," exclaimed Kasper. "No, we must see what we have shot. Don't you see that will be good for our comrades? Dogs who have not sniffed the skin of the game are never well trained."