"Very well, my son, very well," growled the hero; "we shall see, we shall see!"
With obvious marks of annoyance on his face, he turned away from his contradictor, and ordered that the quarry should be conveyed at once to the hunting-box. Not another word did he exchange with any one but his Nelly; but her he literally overwhelmed with compliments and caresses.
It was already late in the afternoon when the hunters sat them down to a simple but tasty repast spread upon a huge and level gra.s.s-plot in the midst of the wood. Wine and merry jests soon set everything right again; they talked of everything at the same time, of war and the chase, of beautiful dames, of poetry (a fashionable subject then amongst the higher cla.s.ses), and of the intrigues of courts; but even after all this blithe discourse the hero could not quite forget his grievance, and again he inquired impatiently--
"So there really is excellent sport in Transylvania?"
The young Transylvanian began to feel this perpetual harping on the same string a little tiresome. He had never meant to be taken so literally.
The bald-pate, remarking the growing tension, sought to change the conversation, and raising his beaker proposed the following toast--
"G.o.d keep the Turks in a good humour."
But the hero angrily overturned his gla.s.s.
"G.o.d grant no such thing!" cried he savagely. "I"m not going to pray for the goggle-eyed dogs now, after fighting against them all my days. The man who is always trying to change masters is a fool."
"Yet the Turk is a very gracious master to us," put in the young Transylvanian, with an ambiguous smile.
"Ha, ha! didn"t I say so? With you, even Turks are bigger and finer than they are with us. Of course! of course! In Transylvania everything flourishes better than in Hungary: the boars are bigger, the Turks are daintier, than they are in this part of the country."
At this moment David, the old huntsman, approached the hero and whispered something in his ear. The hero"s features brightened as if by magic, and springing from his seat he cried--"Give me my gun!" then, holding his long, silver-mounted musket in his hand, he turned towards his guests with a radiant countenance. "All of you stay here. There is a colossal boar close at hand. You shall see him, my son," added he, tapping Nicolas on the shoulder. "Twice already have I vainly pursued the fellow; this time I mean to catch him. He is, I a.s.sure you, a descendant in the flesh of the Calydonian boar"--and with that, carried away by his enthusiasm, he hastened towards that part of the wood which the old huntsman had pointed out to him. David he presently ordered back: n.o.body was to accompany him.
"I know not how it is," whispered Helen to the youth at her side, "but I have a foreboding that my uncle is in danger. How I wish you were by his side!"
The youth said nothing in reply, but he instantly stood up and seized his gun.
"Pray don"t go after him," remarked the Transylvanian, when he saw the young man about to hasten off. "You will only enrage him. He wants to do the whole business himself, and a man who has exterminated hordes of Tartars can easily dispose of a single brute beast."
And so they kept the youth back from going. The men went on drinking, and the lady remained in a brown study, glancing uneasily, from time to time, at the skirts of the wood.
Suddenly a shot resounded through the forest.
Every one put down his gla.s.s and glanced at his neighbour with a beating heart.
A few moments pa.s.sed and then they heard the roar of a wild beast; but it was not the well-known roar of a mortally-wounded boar--no, it was a peculiar, gurgling, half-stifled sound that told of a fierce struggle.
"What is that?" was the question which rose to every one"s lips. "Surely he would call out if he were in danger!" Then came a second shot. Every one instantly sprang to his feet. "What was that?" they cried. "Oh! let us go! let us go!" exclaimed the girl, trembling in every limb, and the whole company hastened in the direction of the shot.
Our hero had scarcely advanced four or five hundred paces into the thicket when, at the foot of a mighty oak, he came upon the wild beast he sought. It was a gigantic boar, with span-long, glistening black bristles on its back and forehead; the tough hide lay, like plated armour, in thick folds about its huge neck; its feet were long and sinewy. Lazily grunting, it was making for itself a bed beneath the bushes in which its shapeless body was stretched out at full length, and it had found a place for its enormous head by rooting out with its tusks bushes as thick as a man"s arm.
On hearing approaching footsteps, the monster irritably raised its head, opened wide its jaws, and cast a sidelong glance at its a.s.sailant.
Our hero knelt upon one knee so as to take better aim, and fired at the wild beast just as it suddenly raised its head, so that the bullet pierced its neck instead of its skull, wounding it seriously but not mortally.
The wounded boar instantly sprang from its lair, and gnashing its crooked tusks together so that sparks flew from them, rushed upon its foe. It would not have been difficult to have avoided such a furious attack by a skilful side-spring; but our hero was not the man to get out of any opponent"s way; so he threw his gun aside, tore his dagger from its sheath, faced the savage beast, and dealt at its head a blow sufficient to have cleaved it to the chine; but the tremendous blow fell short upon one of the monster"s tusks, and the dagger, coming into contact with the stone-like bone, broke off short at the hilt.
Half stunned by the shock, the boar only succeeded in grazing the hero"s leg, whereupon the latter seized the beast by both ears and a desperate struggle began. Weaponless as he was, he grappled with the monster, which, grunting and roaring, twisted its head about in every direction; but the hero"s iron grasp held fast the broad ears of the monster with invincible force, and when the boar tried to overturn its a.s.sailant by suddenly going down on its haunches, the hero, with a swift and tremendous blow of his clenched fist, hurled it backwards, falling himself indeed at the same time, but uppermost, and quickly recovering his balance pressed down with his whole weight upon the boar (which valiantly but vainly continued struggling against superior strength), and triumphantly bestrided its huge paunch.
The boar now appeared to be completely beaten; its gla.s.sily glaring eyes were protruding, the blood streamed from its jaws and nostrils; it had ceased to bellow, but a rattling sound came from its throat; its legs writhed convulsively, its snout hung flabbily down; it was plain that it could not hold out much longer.
The hero had now only to call to his companions, who were close at hand, but that would have been too humiliating; or to wait till the boar bled to death, but that would have been too tiresome. Suddenly he recollected that he had a Turkish knife in his girdle, and, meaning to put a speedy end to the long tussle, he pressed down the boar"s head with his knee and felt for his knife with one hand.
At that moment the report of a gun[5] resounded somewhere in the wood.
The down-trodden boar suddenly seemed to feel that the pressure of his opponent"s hands and knees was slackening, and rallying all his remaining strength, threw off his a.s.sailant and dealt him one last blow with his tusks, and that blow was fatal, for it ripped open the man"s throat.
[Footnote 5: Some pretend that this shot was fired by a secret a.s.sa.s.sin sent from Vienna. Many doubt whether a shot was fired at all.]
His kinsmen and friends, hastening to the spot, found the hero in the throes of death by the side of the dead boar. They rushed up with loud lamentations, and bound up his throat with their kerchiefs.
"It is nothing, my children; it is nothing!" he gasped, and expired.
"Alas! poor warrior!" sighed those who stood around him.
"Alas! my country!" sobbed Helen, raising her tearful eyes to heaven.
The gala-day had become a day of mourning; the hunt a funeral.
The guests sorrowfully followed the body of their best friend to Csakatorny. Only the bald-head took the opposite direction.
"Didn"t I say that life was meant for other and better things?" murmured he. "Well, well! the world is large, and men are many. I"ll go a kingdom further on."
Thus died Nicolas Zrinyi[6] the younger, his country"s greatest poet and bravest son.
[Footnote 6: It is not without reason that Jokai alludes to Zrinyi as "the hero." He was one of the greatest warriors of his day (1618-1666), and his victories over the Turks were many and brilliant. As a poet he stands high, even judged by a modern standard.
His chief works are his great epic, _Szigeti veszedelem_, and his religious poems, _Keresztre_, "On the Cross!"]
Thus died the man whom Fortune always respected, the darling, the bulwark, the ornament of his fatherland.
In vain will you now seek for his hunting-box or his castle. All has perished--the name, the family, nay, the very remembrance of the hero.
The general and the statesman are forgotten; only one part of him still survives, only one part of him will live eternally--the poet.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOUSE AT EBESFALVA.