16. On the Water

“Once at the top, she turned around to look at the pond and the little brooks which ran into it, they were all dry. An ant could not have found water enough within ten leagues to quench his thirst.

“‘It is high time that I came,’ she said to herself, ‘high time indeed! But where are those who cheered me so when I started? What a strange welcome; such a silence after so much devotion!’

“A curious old magpie was perched on a half-dried-up tree. She looked to see what the crab was doing, and listened to her expressions of astonishment.

“‘Don’t be angry with them,’ said the magpie, ‘if they do not cry: Long live the heroic crab. It isn’t their fault they are all dead. Behold their shells, their bones, their skeletons! It is all that is left of them. Do you know, my dear, you have taken seventeen years to bring them the water which they ought to have had at once?’

“The poor crab was so excited, in verifying with a glance the truth of the magpie’s words, that, in trying to raise her claws to heaven in sign of despair, she forgot the jug she was carrying and let it fall on the ground. It was broken into a thousand pieces, the thirsty ground swallowed up the water it contained in the twinkling of an eye, and the next day, in her turn, the crab also was dead.”

“Do you understand, Andry Krouk? And your friends who think that I have been too fast, will they be of the opinion when you relate my story to them, that they would have done better, in place of choosing me for a messenger, to have sent a crab?”

Andry Krouk scratched his ear and dropped his face.

Vorochilo tapped him on the shoulder:

“Awake,” he said, “and let us go and awake the others. Tchetchevik is a hundred times right.”

Turning, then, toward the Envoy, “On the day agreed upon,” said Vorochilo, “the Ukraine will arise; the women and children, too, will be ready if they are wanted.”

“Andry,” said Maroussia, “don’t forget the . story of the crab.”

“She understood it before I did,” Andry said, embracing her. “You are indeed your mother’s daughter, my little girl.”

Old Knich was already in the skiff. He helped Maroussia to climb into it, and Tchetchevik jumped in with the lightness of a bird.

The little boat, pushed from the shore, glided again over the dark waters of the Dnieper; the sandy promontory and the indistinct forms of the two men they had left there soon disappeared in the mist.

On the bank of the river, while landing, Knich showed to Tchetchevik a beautiful, strong, black horse.

“Take Maroussia up behind you,” Knich said to the Envoy, “and gallop all night. Tomorrow turn the horse loose, he will find alone the farm of Samousse.”

The old minstrel jumped on the horse, Maroussia put her foot on the toe of his boot and in an instant was seated behind her good friend. Her arms were clasped about him like a vine around an oak. The horse started on a gallop; the sound of his feet was so light that one might have said that he was a winged steed.