Part 4

“To-day,” resumed the sing-song voice of the little prattler--“to-day I saw in uncle’s room, near the wardrobe, an enormous ball; it had come through the roof and had fallen right into the room. It is so large that they can’t lift it.”

“The women who had husbands and money are gone away,” continued the old woman. “I have only a cabin, and they are destroying that! Look! look how they are firing, the wretches! Lord, my God!”

“And just as we were coming out of uncle’s house,” the child went on, “a bomb-shell came straight down; it burst, and threw the earth on all sides; one little piece almost struck us!”

VI.

Prince Galtzine met in constantly increasing numbers wounded men borne on stretchers, others dragging themselves along on foot or supporting each other, and talking noisily.

“When they fell upon us, brothers,” said the bass voice of a tall soldier who carried two muskets on his shoulder--“when they fell upon us, shouting ‘Allah! allah!’[D] they pushed one another on. We killed the first, and others climbed over them. There was nothing to be done; there were too many of them--too many of them!”

“You come from the bastion?” asked Galtzine, interrupting the orator.

“Yes, your Excellency.”

“Well, what happened there? Tell me.”

“This happened, your Excellency--_his strength_ surrounded us; he climbed on the ramparts and had the best of it, your Excellency.”

“How? the best of it? But you beat them back?”

“Ah yes, beat them back! But when all _his strength_ came down upon us, _he_ killed our men, and no help for it!”

The soldier was mistaken, for the trenches were ours; but, strange but well-authenticated fact, a soldier wounded in a battle always believes it a lost and a terribly bloody one.

“I was told, nevertheless, that you beat him back,” continued Galtzine, good-naturedly; “perhaps it was after you came away. Did you leave there long ago?”

“This very moment, your Excellency. The trenches must belong to him; _he_ had the upperhand--”

“Why, aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Abandon the trenches! It is frightful,” said Galtzine, irritated by the indifference of the man.

“What could be done when _he_ had the _strength_.”

“Ah, your Excellency,” said a soldier borne on a stretcher, “why not abandon them, when he has killed us all? If we had the _strength_ we would never have abandoned them! But what was to be done? I had just stuck one of them when I was hit--Oh, softly, brothers, softly! Oh, for mercy’s sake!” groaned the wounded man.

“Hold on; far too many are coming back,” said Galtzine, again stopping the tall soldier with the two muskets. “Why don’t you go back, hey? Halt!”

The soldier obeyed, and took off his cap with his left hand.

“Where are you going to?” sternly demanded the prince, “and who gave you permission, good-for--” But coming nearer, he saw that the soldier’s right arm was covered with blood up to the elbow.

“I am wounded, your Excellency.”

“Wounded! where?”

“Here, by a bullet,” and the soldier showed his arm; “but I don’t know what hit me a crack there.” He held his head down, and showed on the back of his neck locks of hair glued together by coagulated blood.

“Whose gun is this?”

“It is a French carbine, your Excellency; I brought it away. I wouldn’t have come away, but I had to lead that small soldier, who might fall down;” and he pointed to an infantryman who was walking some paces ahead of them leaning on his gun and dragging his left leg with difficulty.

Prince Galtzine was cruelly ashamed of his unjust suspicions, and conscious that he was blushing, turned around. Without questioning or looking after the wounded any more, he directed his steps towards the field-hospital. Making his way to the entrance with difficulty through soldiers, litters, stretcher-bearers who came in with the wounded and went out with the dead, Galtzine entered as far as the first room, took one look about him, recoiled involuntarily, and precipitately fled into the street. What he saw there was far too horrible!

VII.

The great, high, sombre hall, lighted only by four or five candles, where the surgeons moved about examining the wounded, was literally crammed with people. Stretcher-bearers continually brought new wounded and placed them side by side in rows on the ground. The crowd was so great that the wretches pushed against one another and bathed in their neighbors’ blood. Pools of stagnant gore stood in the empty places; from the feverish breath of several hundred men, the perspiration of the bearers, rose a heavy, thick, fetid atmosphere in which candles burned dimly in different parts of the hall. A confused murmur of groans, sighs, death-rattles, was interrupted by piercing cries. Sisters of Charity, whose calm faces did not express woman’s futile and tearful compassion, but an active and lively interest, glided here and there in the midst of bloody coats and shirts, sometimes striding over the wounded, carrying medicines, water, bandages, lint. Surgeons with their sleeves turned up, on their knees before the wounded, examined and probed the wounds by the flare of torches held by their assistants, in spite of the terrible cries and supplications of the patients. Seated at a little table beside the door a major wrote the number 532.

“Ivan Bogoïef, private in the third company of the regiment from C----, _fractura femuris complicata_!” shouted the surgeon, who was dressing a broken limb at the other end of the hall. “Turn him over.”

“Oh, oh, good fathers!” gasped the soldier, begging them to leave him in peace.

“_Perforatio capites._ Simon Neferdof, lieutenant-colonel of the infantry regiment from N----. Have a little patience, colonel. There is no way of--I shall be obliged to leave you there,” said a third, who was fumbling with a sort of hook in the head of the unfortunate officer.

“In Heaven’s name, get done quickly!”

“_Perforatio pectoris._ Sebastian Sereda, private--what regiment? But it is no use, don’t write it down. _Moritur._ Carry him off,” added the surgeon, leaving the dying man, who with upturned eyes was already gasping.

Forty or fifty stretcher-bearers awaited their burdens at the door. The living were sent to the hospital, the dead to the chapel. They waited in silence, and sometimes a sigh escaped them as they contemplated this picture.

VIII.

Kalouguine met many wounded on his way to the bastion. Knowing by experience the bad influence of this spectacle on the spirit of a man who is going under fire, he not only did not stop them to ask questions, but he tried not to notice those he met. At the foot of the hill he ran across a staff-officer coming down from the bastion full speed.

“Zobkine! Zobkine! one moment!”

“What?”

“Where do you come from?”

“From the quarters.”

“Well, what is going on there? Is it hot?”

“Terribly!”

And the officer galloped off. The fusillade seemed to grow less; on the other hand, the cannonade began again with renewed vigor.

“Hum--a bad business!” thought Kalouguine. He had an indefinite but very disagreeable feeling; he had even a presentiment, that is to say, a very common thought--the thought of death.

Kalouguine possessed self-love and nerves of steel. He was, in a word, what is commonly called a brave man. He did not give way to this first impression; he raised his courage by recalling the story of one of Napoleon’s aides-de-camp, who came to his chief with his head bloody, after having carried an order with all speed.

“Are you wounded?” asked the emperor.

“I crave pardon, sire, I am dead!” replied the aide-de-camp, and falling from his horse, died on the spot.

This anecdote pleased him. Putting himself in imagination in the place of the aide-de-camp, he lashed his horse, put on a still more “Cossack” gait, and rising in his stirrups to cast a look upon the platoon that followed him on a trot, he reached the place where they had to dismount. There he found four soldiers sitting on some rocks, smoking their pipes.

“What are you doing there?” he cried.

“We have been carrying a wounded man, your Excellency, and we are resting,” said one of them, hiding his pipe behind his back and taking off his cap.

“That’s it--you are resting! Forward! to your post!”

He put himself at their head and proceeded with them along the trench, meeting wounded men at every step. On the top of the plateau he turned to the left and found himself, a few steps farther on, completely isolated. A piece of a shell whistled near him and buried itself in the trenches; a mortar-bomb rising in the air seemed to fly straight for his breast. Seized by a sudden terror, he rushed on several steps and threw himself down. When the bomb had burst some distance off he was very angry with himself and got up. He looked around to see if any one had noticed him lying down; no one was near.

Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment. He who had boasted of never bowing his head, went along the trenches at a rapid pace, and almost on his hands and feet.

“Ah! it is a bad sign,” thought he, as his foot tripped. “I shall be killed, sure!”

He breathed with difficulty; he was bathed with sweat, and he was astonished that he made no effort to overcome his fright. Suddenly, at the sound of a step which approached, he quickly straightened up, raised his head, clinked his sabre with a swagger, and lessened his pace. He met an officer of sappers and a sailor. The former shouted, “Lie down!” pointing to the luminous point of a bomb-shell, which came nearer, redoubling its speed and its brightness.

The projectile struck in the side of the trench. At the cry of the officer, Kalouguine made a slight, involuntary bow, then continued on his way without a frown.

“There’s a brave fellow!” said the sailor who coolly watched the fall of the bomb. His practised eye had calculated that the pieces would not fall into the trench. “He wouldn’t lie down!”

In order to reach the bomb-proof occupied by the commander of the bastion, Kalouguine had only one more open space to pass when he felt himself again overcome by a stupid fear. His heart beat as if it would burst, the blood rushed to his head, and it was only by a violent effort of self-control that he reached the shelter at a run.

“Why are you so out of breath?” asked the general, after he had delivered the order he brought.

“I walked very quickly, Excellency.”

“Can I offer you a glass of wine?”

Kalouguine drank a bumper and lit a cigarette. The engagement was finished, but a violent cannonade continued on both sides. The commander of the bastion and several officers, among them Praskoukine, were assembled in the bomb-proof; they were talking over the details of the affair. The interior, covered with figured paper with a blue ground, was furnished with a lounge, a bed, a table covered with papers, and decorated with a clock hanging on the wall and an image, before which burned a small lamp. Seated in this comfortable room, Kalouguine saw all the marks of a quiet life; he measured with his eye the great beams of the ceiling half a yard thick; he heard the noise of the cannonade, deafened by the bomb-proofs, and he could not understand how he could have yielded twice to unpardonable attacks of weakness. Angry with himself, he would have liked to expose himself to danger again to put his courage to the proof.

A naval officer with a great mustache and a cross of Saint George on his staff overcoat came at this moment to beg the general to give him some workmen to repair two sand-bag embrasures in the battery.

“I am very glad to see you, captain,” said Kalouguine to the new-comer; “the general charged me to ask you if your cannon can fire grape into the trenches.”

“One single gun,” replied the captain, with a morose air.

“Let’s go and look at them!”

The officer frowned and growled out,

“I have just passed the whole night there, and I have come in to rest a little; can’t you go there alone? You will find my second in command, Lieutenant Kartz, who will show you everything.”

The captain had commanded this same battery for full six months, and it was one of the most dangerous posts. He had not left the bastion, indeed, since the beginning of the siege, and even before the construction of the bomb-proof shelters. He had gained among the sailors a reputation for invincible courage. On this account his refusal was a lively surprise to Kalouguine.

“That’s what reputations are!” thought the latter. “Then I will go alone, if you allow me,” he added aloud, in a mocking tone, to which the officer paid no attention.

Kalouguine forgot that this man counted six whole months of life in the bastion, while he, altogether, at different times, had not passed more than fifty hours there. Vanity, desire to shine, to get a reward, to make a reputation, even the delight in danger, incited him still more, while the captain had become indifferent to all that. He had also made a show, had performed courageous deeds, had uselessly risked his life, had hoped for and had received rewards, had established his reputation as a brave officer. But to-day these stimulants had lost their power over him; he looked at things differently. Well understanding that he had little chance of escaping death after six months in the bastions, he did not thoughtlessly risk his life, and limited himself to fulfilling strictly his duty. In fact, the young lieutenant appointed to his battery only eight days ago, and Kalouguine to whom this lieutenant showed it in detail, seemed ten times braver than the captain. Rising in each other’s estimation, these two hung out of the embrasures and climbed over the ramparts.

His inspection ended, and as he was returning to the bomb-proof, Kalouguine ran against the general, who was going to the observation tower, followed by his staff.

“Captain Praskoukine,” ordered the general, “go down, I beg, into the quarters on the right. You will find there the second battalion from M---- which is working down there. Order it to stop work, to retire without noise, and to rejoin its regiment in the reserve force at the bottom of the hill. You understand? Lead it yourself to the regiment.”

“I’m off,” replied Praskoukine, and he departed on the run.

The cannonade diminished in violence.

IX.

“Are you the second battalion of the regiment from M----?” asked Praskoukine of a soldier who was carrying sand-bags.

“Yes.”

“Where is the commander?”

Mikhaïloff, supposing that the captain of the company was wanted, came out of his pit, raised his hand to his cap, and approached Praskoukine, whom he took for a commanding officer.

“The general orders you--you must--you must retire at once--without any noise--to the rear; that is, to the reserve force,” said Praskoukine, stealthily looking in the direction of the enemy’s fire.

Having recognized his comrade, and having gained an idea of the manœuvre, Mikhaïloff dropped his hand and gave the order to the soldiers. They took their muskets, put on their coats, and marched off.

He who has never felt it cannot appreciate the joy which a man experiences at leaving, after three hours of bombardment, a place as dangerous as the quarters were. During these three hours Mikhaïloff, who, not without reason, was thinking of death as an inevitable thing, had the time to get accustomed to the notion that he would surely be killed, and that he no longer belonged to the living world. In spite of that, it was by a violent effort that he kept from running when he came out of the quarters at the head of his company, side by side with Praskoukine.

“_Au revoir! bon voyage!_” shouted the major who commanded the battalion left in the quarters. Mikhaïloff had shared his cheese with him, both of them seated in a pit in shelter of the parapet.

“The same to you; good-luck! It seems to me it is getting quieter.”

But scarcely had he uttered these words than the enemy, who had doubtless noticed the movement, began to fire his best; our side replied, and the cannonade began again with violence. The stars were shining, but with little light, for the night was dark. The shots and the shell explosions alone lighted for an instant the surrounding objects. The soldiers marched rapidly and in silence, some hurrying past the others: only the regular sound of their steps could be heard on the hardened earth, accompanied by the incessant roar of the cannonade, the click of bayonets striking one another, the sigh or the prayer of a soldier: “Lord! Lord!”

Occasionally a wounded man groaned, and a stretcher was called for. In the company which Mikhaïloff commanded, the artillery fire had disabled twenty-six men since the day before.

A flash illuminated the distant darkness of the horizon; the sentinel on the bastion cried, “Can--non!” and a ball, whistling over the company, buried itself in the ground, which it ploughed up, sending the stones flying about.

“The devil take them! How slowly they march!” thought Praskoukine, who, following Mikhaïloff, was looking behind him at every step. “I could run ahead, since I have delivered the order--Indeed, no! they would say I was a coward! Whatever happens I will march along with them.”

“Why is he following me?” said Mikhaïloff, on his side. “I always noticed he brings bad luck. There comes another, straight towards us, seems to me.”

A few hundred steps farther on they met Kalouguine on his way to the quarters, bravely rattling his sword. The general had sent him to ask how the work went on, but at the sight of Mikhaïloff he said to himself that, instead of exposing himself to this terrible fire, he could just as well find out by asking the officer who came from there. Mikhaïloff gave him, in fact, all the details. Kalouguine accompanied him to the end of the path, and re-entered the trench which led to the bomb-proof.

“What’s the news?” asked the officer, who was supping alone in the earthwork.

“Nothing. I don’t believe there will be any more fighting.”

“How! no more fighting? On the contrary, the general has just gone up to the bastion. A new regiment has arrived. Besides--listen!--the fusillade is beginning again. Don’t go. What’s the use of it?” added the officer, as Kalouguine made a movement.

“Nevertheless, I ought to go,” said the latter to himself. “However, haven’t I been exposed to danger long enough to-day? The fusillade is terrible.”

“It is true,” he continued aloud, “I had better wait here.”

Twenty minutes later the general came back, accompanied by his officers, among whom was the yunker, Baron Pesth, but Praskoukine was not with them. Our troops had retaken and reoccupied the quarters. After having heard the details of the affair, Kalouguine went out of the shelter with Pesth.

X.

“You have some blood on your overcoat; were you fighting hand-to-hand?” asked Kalouguine.

“Oh! it is frightful! Imagine--” And Pesth began to relate how he had led his company after the death of his chief, how he had killed a Frenchman, and how, without his assistance, the battle would have been lost. The foundation of the tale, that is, the death of the chief and the Frenchman killed by Pesth, was true, but the yunker, elaborating the details, enlarged on them and boasted.

He boasted without premeditation. During the whole affair he had lived in a fantastic mist, so much so that everything that had happened seemed to him to have taken place vaguely, God knows where or how, and to belong to some one besides himself. Naturally enough he tried to invent incidents to his own advantage. However, this is the way the thing happened:

The battalion to which he had been detailed to take part in the sortie remained two hours under the enemy’s fire, then the commander said a few words, the company chiefs began to move about, the troops left the shelter of the parapet and were drawn up in columns a hundred paces farther on. Pesth was ordered to place himself on the flank of the second company. Neither understanding the situation nor the movement, the yunker, with restrained breath and a prey to a nervous tremor which ran down his back, placed himself at the post indicated, and gazed mechanically before him into the distant darkness, expecting something terrible. However, the sentiment of fear was not the dominating one in his case, for the firing had ceased. What appeared to him strange, uncomfortable, was to find himself in the open field outside the fortifications.

The commander of the battalion once more pronounced certain words, which were again repeated in a low voice by the officers, and suddenly the black wall formed by the first company sank down. The order to lie down had been given; the second company did the same, and Pesth in lying down pricked his hand with some sharp thing. The small silhouette of the captain of the second company alone remained standing, and he brandished a naked sword without ceasing to talk and to walk back and forth in front of the soldiers.

“Attention, children! Show yourselves brave men! No firing! get at the wretches with the bayonet! When I shout ‘hurrah!’ follow me--closely and all together--we will show them what we can do. We won’t cover ourselves with shame, will we, children? For the Czar, our father!”

“What’s the name of the company chief?” asked Pesth from a yunker next to him. “He is a brave one!”

“Yes, he’s always so under fire. He is called Lissinkoffsky.”

Just at this moment a flame spurted out, followed by a deafening report; splinters and stones flew in the air. Fifty seconds later one of the stones fell from a great height and crushed the foot of a soldier. A shell had fallen in the middle of the company, a proof that the French had noticed the column.

“Ah! you are sending us shells now! Let us get at you and you will taste the Russian bayonet, curse you!”

The captain shouted so loud that the commander of the battalion ordered him to be silent.

The first company rose up, after that the second; the soldiers took up their muskets and the battalion advanced.

Pesth, seized by a foolish terror, could not remember whether they marched far; he went on like a drunken man. Suddenly thousands of fires flashed on all sides, with whizzings and crackings. He gave a yell and ran forward, because they all yelled and ran; then he tripped and fell over something. It was the company chief, wounded at the head of his troops, who took the yunker for a Frenchman and seized his leg. Pesth pulled his feet away and got up. Some one threw himself on him in the darkness, and he was almost knocked over again. A voice shouted to him, “Kill him, then! What are you waiting for?”

A hand seized his musket, the point of his bayonet buried itself in something soft.

“Ah! Dieu!”

These words were spoken in French, with an accent of pain and fright. The yunker knew he had just killed a Frenchman. A cold sweat moistened his whole body; he began to tremble, and threw down his musket. But that lasted only a second; the thought that he was a hero came to his mind. Picking up his gun, he left the dead man, running and shouting “Hurrah!” with the rest. Twenty steps farther on he reached the trench where our troops and the commander of battalion were.

“I have killed one!” said he to the latter.

“You are a brave fellow, baron,” was the reply.

XI.

“Did you know that Praskoukine is dead?” said Pesth to Kalouguine on the way back.

“It isn’t possible!”

“Why not? I saw him myself.”

“Good-by; I am in a hurry.”

“A lucky day!” thought Kalouguine, as he was entering his quarters. “For the first time I am lucky. It has been a brilliant affair; I have come out of it safe and sound; there must be recommendations for decoration. A sword of honor will be the least they can give me. Faith, I have well deserved it!”

He made his report to the general, and went to his room. Prince Galtzine was reading a book at the table, and had been waiting for him a long time.