Antek drives off the Land Guard (Straż Ziemska) after the village meeting, turning an apparent attempt to detain him into a brief, physical standoff. The encounter brings the novel’s collective resistance down to the scale of one man and two officers: Antek is isolated from the crowd, but he refuses to submit, and the officers retreat without taking him into custody.

Background and immediate context

The confrontation follows a heated public gathering in Lipce. During the school dispute, the villagers had already shown that official commands could meet with silence: when the notary called for someone to go to the manor on an errand, no one moved, and a voice answered that they had not come to run messages. Later, as the crowd pressed after the officers toward the Prefect, it gave voice to its anger at being ordered about and made to pay. The meeting’s defiance is thus visible before Antek faces the officers alone.

Antek looks back at the departing crowd and considers turning around. Seeing two members of the Land Guard following him, however, he changes course. He breaks off a substantial branch, leans against a wall, and trims it until it fits his hand, keeping one eye on the officers as they slowly approach. The makeshift weapon is prepared in plain view: the pause allows the officers to draw nearer, but it also gives Antek time to arm himself.

The confrontation

Antek addresses the officers derisively, asking whether the sergeant is spying on him. When the older man complains about the unending demands of his work, Antek answers that the officers’ work brings little beyond making dogs bark around the village and extracting a peasant’s last zloty. The exchange turns a pursuit into an open dispute over authority and exploitation. Antek does not try to placate the officers; he names their work as a burden on the villagers.

The older officer swears, grows visibly angry, and reaches for his broadsword. The two officers wait until they have reached the last cottage before the sergeant suddenly orders his companion to seize Antek. They do not get hold of him. Antek throws them off, leaps to the side of a cottage, and brandishes the stick, snarling that they will not win and warning them not to come closer. His words and stance make the threat unmistakable: he is ready to fight, even to kill them, rather than be taken.

Retreat and aftermath

The officers stand still. The narration stresses the disparity they confront: Antek is huge and enraged, and the stick is moving forcefully in his fists. Recognizing that the attempt is no simple arrest, the sergeant abruptly recasts it as a joke, laughing as he backs away. After retreating several paces, he shakes his fist and says they will meet again for a talk. The shift from seizure to banter does not erase the threat; it marks the officers’ retreat without a resolution between them.

Antek answers with an insult and waits until the officers have disappeared from view. He concludes that the sergeant had been frightened and was pretending the encounter had been a joke. He also connects the pursuit to his own defiance, believing that the truth he had spoken displeased the sergeant. The scene presents this as Antek’s understanding of what happened, while leaving the officers’ precise purpose unstated. Once they are gone, the immediate danger passes, but the sergeant’s promise of another encounter leaves the prospect of renewed trouble open.

Antek continues as far as the manor orchard, well beyond the village, and sits in the shade to rest. He is shaken and sweating. Through the palings he can see the white manor house among larches, its open windows dark against the building; people sit on the pillared porch while servants move among them, dishes clink, and laughter carries to him. The contrast between the meal at the manor and Antek’s food is sharply material: he eats the bread and cheese Hanka has put in his pocket. The scene ends not in triumph but in a brief pause, with his resistance set against the unequal world he has just condemned.

Narrative significance

The episode converts political defiance into bodily action. At the meeting, collective anger had gathered around the refusal to obey; here, the crowd has receded and Antek must answer the officers with his own strength and a branch shaped into a weapon. The change in scale does not make the conflict private: the encounter follows the villagers’ public refusal to be treated as errand-runners and their angry response to official authority.

The ending holds two kinds of exposure together. Antek has forced the officers to withdraw, but he is alone, shaken, and still subject to the prospect of another encounter. Beyond the village, the manor’s meal continues behind its palings. His bread and cheese, supplied by Hanka, provide no resolution to the disparity; they make it tangible. The episode therefore presents resistance as an immediate refusal to be seized, not as a victory that settles the larger conflict.