Taras Bulba and his sons had been in the Setch about a week.

Ostap and Andrii occupied themselves but little with the science of war.

The Setch was not fond of wasting time in warlike exercises.

The young generation learned these by experience alone, in the very heat of battles, which were therefore incessant.

The Cossacks thought it a nuisance to fill up the intervals of this instruction with any kind of drill, except perhaps shooting at a mark, and on rare occasions with horse-racing and wild-beast hunts on the steppes and in the forests.