All these dishes were prepared for each kuren separately. Loaves of bread were laid out on horse skins, on canopies, or even directly on the ground and salt shakers were placed; Having gathered for lunch, the Cossacks, throwing off their hats and crossing themselves at the sunrise, took spoons from the depths of their bottomless pockets, took out knives, cut the bread into pieces and sat down in a circle on the ground, crossing their legs and tucking them under them in Turkish style. The cooks poured it into wooden ones with huge scoops. bowls, up to a fathom in circumference, a brew that was distributed among the groups of Cossacks. The Cossacks ate sedately, without haste, and, according to custom, ate everything without a trace. “Father” was the first to lower the spoon into the bowl, the second was the one sitting on his left hand, the third was the one next to the left, and so on until the turn came again to the chieftain. After the brew, they served baked and fried food, cutting it into pieces with axes and knives, and the heart of the animal was constantly given to the ataman, so that “he would be kind to his children,” and the lungs of the animal were divided equally among everyone, so that “the Cossack would be ready for water.”
Last At lunchtime the whole world fell down to rest; The Cossacks did not like to sleep in stuffy smokehouses, but preferred to stretch out on a scroll or on a bed right under the open sky; they were not afraid of bad weather. The Cossacks spent the evening in inactivity: lying on the ground with cradles in their teeth, they listened to the stories of experienced comrades about sea campaigns, about battles with the Tatars and Poles; sometimes, in the light of a dying fire, one of them, in a mysterious voice, began to talk about witches, mermaids, lizards and all sorts of other devilry that was so common in Ukraine, according to the naive belief of the Cossacks. How small
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The children, holding their breath, listened to these fantastic stories, and to the heart of the brave Cossack, who more than once looked into the face of death with a grin; I shrank with horror at the thought of a terrible dead man emerging from the grave, of a werewolf sorcerer, of a coven of witches on the famous Bald Mountain. They looked anxiously at the dark floodplain beyond the river, where the eagle owl screamed, and listened to the splashes of the silvered month of the Dnieper...
Such time spent does not give us, however, the right to consider the Cossacks to be completely idle and incapable of work: part of the Cossacks were constantly absent in the steppe or floodplains, hunting or fishing. Kurenny atamans kept a line between the Cossacks sent to these works, serving as a means of feeding the entire S$cha.
For whole weeks these parties lived in impassable and swampy floodplains or in the vast steppe, where they often encountered detachments of Tatars, and here young and inexperienced Cossacks learned those military techniques and skills that made them such dexterous and dangerous opponents in war; In SJCh itself, no military training was carried out. During skirmishes with the Tatars, the Cossacks used many small military tricks, which helped them win victories even in those cases when the odds were on the enemy’s side. So, if the Cossacks saw that they could not cope with the Tatars in open battle. then they tried to get away from them on their fast horses and, in order to confuse the enemy, they divided into several desks and rode off in different directions; The larger parties of Fkhali “goose”, the small ones 3 and 4 in a row, trying to trample as much grass as possible in order to give the Tatars an incorrect idea of the size of each party. The Tatars also had to last for several units, in accordance with the strength and number of the Cossack parties, and this was all the Cossacks needed: having gathered at the designated location, they defeated the Tatar detachments one after another. Sometimes, in order to throw the enemy off the trail, the Cossacks rode into a small steppe river that came across their way, and for some time rode into the water along the bottom. For the Cossack mines, trained to swim across the Dnir, moving along the shallow and quiet steppe river did not present any difficulties.
It happened that this trick did not help: the Tatars guessed whether the Cossacks were traveling up or down the rivers and began to overtake them. Then the last option remained - to hide in the water, which, of course, was difficult to do without great skill.