Four days did the Cossacks fight, tearing down bricks and stones for missiles.

But their stones and their strength were at length exhausted, and Taras resolved to cut his way through the beleaguering forces.

And the Cossacks would have cut their way through, and their swift steeds might again have served them faithfully, had not Taras halted suddenly in the very midst of their flight, and shouted, "Halt! my pipe has dropped with its tobacco: I won't let those heathen Lyakhs have my pipe!" And the old hetman stooped down, and felt in the grass for his pipe full of tobacco, his inseparable companion on all his expeditions by sea and land and at home.
But in the meantime a band of Lyakhs suddenly rushed up, and seized him by the shoulders.

He struggled with all might; but he could not scatter on the earth, as he had been wont to do, the heydukes who had seized him.

"Oh, old age, old age!" he exclaimed: and the stout old Cossack wept.