Their eyes flashed, and they were brilliant with brass armour.

As soon as the Cossacks saw that they had come within gunshot, their matchlocks thundered all together, and they continued to fire without cessation.
The detonations resounded through the distant fields and meadows, merging into one continuous roar.

The whole plain was shrouded in smoke, but the Zaporozhtzi continued to fire without drawing breath--the rear ranks doing nothing but loading the guns and handing them to those in front, thus creating amazement among the enemy, who could not understand how the Cossacks fired without reloading.

Amid the dense smoke which enveloped both armies, it could not be seen how first one and then another dropped: but the Lyakhs felt that the balls flew thickly, and that the affair was growing hot; and when they retreated to escape from the smoke and see how matters stood, many were missing from their ranks, but only two or three out of a hundred were killed on the Cossack side.

Still the Cossacks went on firing off their matchlocks without a moment's intermission.