SEVASTOPOL In December, 1854, and in May and August, 1855. 1854-1856

Translated from the Original Russian and edited by Leo Wiener

Assittant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University

SEVASTOPOL

In December, 1854

The dawn is just beginning to crimson the sky above Mount Sapun. The dark blue surface of the sea has cast oft* the nocturnal darkness, and is waiting for the first ray, in order to gleam forth in gay splendour. From the bay is wafted cold and mist ; there is no snow, and everything is black, but the sharp morning frost pinches the face and crackles underfoot, and the distant, ceaseless roar of the sea, now and then interrupted by the booming of guns at Sevastopol, alone breaks the morning quiet. The ships are dark ; eight bells are sounding.

On the Northern side the activity of the day slowly begins to replace the calm of the night. Here passes a patrol to relieve some sentinels, clanking their guns ; there a surgeon is already hastening to the hospital ; there a soldier has crept out of his earth hut and is washing his sunburnt face with ice-crusted water, and, turning to the ruddy east, and swiftly crossing himself, says his prayers; here a tall, heavy camel cart, with creaking wheels, is creeping to the cemetery to bury the bloodstained dead, with whom it is loaded almost to the top.

You walk down to the harbour. You are struck by a peculiar odour of coal, dung, dampness, and beef. A

thousand different objects, wood, meat, gabions, flour, iron, are lying in heaps on the quay. Soldiers of various regiments, with bags and guns, without bags and without guns, are crowding here, smoking, swearing, dragging heavy burdens to a steamboat which, puffing smoke, is lying near the landing. Private two-oared boats, filled with all kinds of people, — soldiers, sailors, merchants, women, — are landing or leaving the quay.

” To the Gräfskaya, your Honour ? Please ! ” Two or three former sailors, getting out of their boats, are offering you their services.

You choose the one who is nearest to you, step across the half-decayed carcass of a chestnut horse, which is lying in the mud near the boat, and walk over to the stern. You push off from the shore. All around you is the sea, glittering in the morning sun ; before you is an old sailor in a camel’s-hair overcoat, and a fair-haired young boy, intently pulling at the oar in silence. You look at the outstretched masses of the ships scattered far and wide over the bay ; at the diminutive black dots of the sloops moving on the brilliant azure of the sea ; at the beautiful, bright structures of the city that may be discerned on the other side, tinged by the purple beams of the morning sun ; at the foaming white line of the mole ; at the submerged ships from which tower mournfully the black tops of masts ; at the far-off hostile fleet shimmering on the crystal horizon of the ocean ; at the frothing streaks, in which leap the briny bubbles raised by the oars ; you hear the even sound of voices which reaches you over the water, and the majestic sounds of firing which, so you think, is growing louder in Sevastopol.

At the thought of being in Sevastopol, you are involuntarily stirred by a certain feeling of courage and pride, and your blood begins to course more rapidly in your veins.

” Your Honour! Make straight for Kistentin” 1 the old sailor tells you, turning back in order to verify the direction which you are giving to the boat on the right of the rudder.

” She has still all her guns,” remarks the fair-haired lad, passing by the vessel, and scrutinizing it.

” Why, of course. She is a new boat : Kornilov has been living on her,” remarked the old man, also gazing at the vessel.

” I declare, it did burst ! ” says the boy, gazing, after a prolonged silence, at the white cloud of a dispersing smoke, which had suddenly appeared high over the southern bay, and which is accompanied by the sharp sound of an exploding bomb.

” He is firing to-day from the new battery,” adds the old man, with equanimity spitting on his hand. ” Come now, give way, Mishka, let us overtake the long-boat!” And your boat moves more rapidly ahead over the broadly billowing bay, really overtakes the heavy long-boat filled with some kind of bags, and unevenly propelled by awkward soldiers, and lands, among numerous craft alongside the shore, at the Gräfskaya quay.

On the shore move about noisily groups of soldiers in gray, sailors in black, and women in variegated attires. Women are selling rolls; Russian peasants with samovars cry, “ Hot sbiten ; ” 2 and right here on the very first steps lie in disorder rusty shells, bombs, canister-shot, and cast-iron cannon of various calibres. A little farther off is a large square, where are scattered huge beams, gun-carriages, sleeping soldiers ; here stand horses, carts, green ordnance and caissons, and infantry scaffolding; there move about soldiers, sailors, officers, women, children, and merchants; there carts with hay, with bags, and with

1 The steamer Constantine.

2 A drink composed of hot water and honey. Sometimes capsicum and other spices are added.

barrels drive around, and occasionally a Cossack passes by, and an officer on horseback or a general in a vehicle, pass by.

On the right, the street is shut off by a barricade, in the embrasures of which are placed some small cannon, and near them sits a sailor, smoking his pipe. On the left is a beautiful house with Roman figures on the pediment, and beneath it stand soldiers and bloodstained litters, — everywhere you see the unpleasant signs of a military camp.

Your first impression is necessarily most disagreeable: the strange mixture of camp and city life, of the beautiful town and the dirty bivouac, is not only not beautiful, but even seems like vile disorder ; and you imagine that everybody is frightened, that people are bustling around, not knowing what to do. But look more closely into the faces of the men who are moving about, and you will get a different impression. Look, for example, at this soldier of the baggage-train, who is taking a chestnut troyka to the water, and who is calmly mumbling something to himself ; it is evident that he will not lose his way in this motley crowd, which, indeed, does not exist for him, and that he is executing his work, whatever it may be, — to water horses or drag ordnance, — as calmly, and with the same self-confidence and indifference, as though all this were taking place at Tula or at Saransk. The same expression you read in the countenance of this officer, who passes by you in immaculately white gloves, and in the countenance of the sailor, who is smoking while sitting on the barricade, and in the countenances of the busy soldiers, who with the litters are waiting at the steps of the former Assembly House, and in the countenance of this maiden, who, fearing to soil her pink dress, trips from stone to stone across the street.

Yes, you will certainly be disappointed when you first enter Sevastopol. In vain will you look in one single face for traces of flurry and confusion, or even of enthusiasm, readiness to die, and determination. There is nothing of that. You see every-day people quietly occupied with every-day affairs, so that you will, no doubt, reproach yourself for your superabundant transport, and will be inclined to question the justness of the conception which you have formed about the heroism of the defenders of Sevastopol, from stories and from description, and from the aspect of things and from the sounds on the Northern side. But, before expressing your doubt, walk down to the bastions, take a look at the defenders of Sevastopol in the very place of the defence, or, still better, walk into the house opposite, which used to be the Assembly House of the Sevastopol nobility, and at the entrance of which the soldiers are standing with the litters, — and you will there see the defenders of Sevastopol ; you will there see terrible and sad, great and amusing, but surprising and exalting spectacles.

You walk into the great assembly hall. You barely open the door, and you are at once impressed by the sight and odour of forty or fifty patients who are severely wounded or have suffered amputation, some on cots, but most on the floor. Do not trust your feeling which holds you back on the threshold of the hall, — it is a wrong feeling ; walk on, and have no shame, as though you had come to look at the sufferers. Do not be ashamed to walk up and talk to them : the unfortunate like to see a sympathetic human face, like to tell of their sufferings, and to hear the words of love and sympathy. You pass along the aisle between the beds, and select a less severe and agonized face, and you take heart and walk over to talk with him.

” On what part of the body are you wounded ? ” you irresolutely and timidly ask an old, haggard soldier, who, sitting up on his cot, follows you with his good-natured glance, and almost invites you to come over to him. I

say “ you ask timidly,” because their sufferings, in addition to your sympathy, inspire you with a dread of offending, and with a deep respect for him who is bearing the suffering.

“In my leg,” answers the soldier ; but you immediately notice by the folds of the coverlet that he has lost his leg above the knee. ” Thank God now,” he adds, ” I want to be discharged.”

” How long ago were you wounded ? “

” This is the sixth week, sir ! “

“ Does it still hurt ? “

“ No, it does not ; only in bad weather I have a kind of pain in the thigh, that’s all.”

” How did you come to be wounded ? “

” In the fifth baksion, sir, during the first bardment. I had trained my cannon, and was moving like this toward the second embrasure, when he struck me in the leg, and I felt as though I had stepped into a ditch. I looked down, and saw my leg was gone.”

” Did it really not pain you at first ? ”

” No ; only it felt as though some one had stuck something hot into my leg.”

” And later ? ”

“ And later it did not hurt either ; only when they began to stretch the skin, there was a little itching. The main thing, sir, is not to think : if you don’t think you are all right. People generally suffer because they think.”

Just then a woman in a gray striped dress and wrapped in a black kerchief walks over to you. She takes part in your conversation with a sailor, and begins to tell you about him, about his suffering, about the desperate condition in which he was for four weeks, and how, after he was wounded, he had them stop the fitter that he might see the volley of our battery ; how the grand dukes talked to him and made him a present of twenty-five roubles, and how he told them that he wanted to go back to the bastion, in order to teach the younger men, even though he could not work himself. Saying all this in one breath, the woman looks now at you, and now at the sailor, who turns away his face as though he did not hear her and picks at some lint on the pillow, and her eyes sparkle with unusual enthusiasm.

“ This is my wife, sir ! ” remarks the sailor, with an expression which says : “You must pardon her. Of course, she is a woman, and she is saying foolish things.”

You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol; for some unknown reason you feel ashamed before this man. You would like to tell him so much, in order to express your sympathy and admiration ; but you cannot find words, or are dissatisfied with those that occur to you, — and you bow in silence before this speechless, unconscious grandeur and firmness of spirit, this modesty as regards his own worth.

” Well, God grant that you recover soon ! ” you say to him, and you stop in front of another patient, who is lying on the floor, and apparently awaiting death in unspeakable agony.

It is a fair-complexioned man, with a swollen, pale face. He is on his back, his left hand thrown under his head, in an attitude expressive of excruciating pain. The dry, open mouth with difficulty emits a stertorous breath ; his blue, leaden eyes are turned upwards, and the bandaged stump of his right arm protrudes from underneath the rumpled coverlet. The oppressive odour of dead flesh impresses you still more forcibly, and the consuming, internal fire, which penetrates all the limbs of the sufferer, seems to penetrate you, too.

“ Is he unconscious ? ” you ask the woman who is walking behind you, and who glances kindly at you, as at a relative.

“ No, he can hear still, though very faintly,” she adds,

in a whisper. “I have offered him some tea to-day,— well, even though he is a stranger to me, I ought to pity him, — but he hardly drank any.”

” How do you feel ? ” you ask him.

The wounded soldier rolls his pupils, in reply to your voice, but he does not see, nor understand you.

” A burning in my heart ! “

A little farther on, you see an old soldier changing his linen. His face and body are of an indefinite cinnamon colour, and as lean as a skeleton’s. He has no arm at all : it has been cauterized at the armpit. He sits up briskly ; but by his dull, dim eyes, by the terrible leanness and the wrinkles of his face, you see that he is a creature that has forfeited the better part of his life in suffering.

On the other side, you notice on a cot the agonized, pale, gentle face of a woman, upon whose cheek plays a feverish glow.

” Our sailor woman was struck by a bomb on the fifth,” your guide tells you. ” She was bringing her husband his dinner to the bastion.”

” Well, did they cut it off ? “

” Yes, above the knee.”

If your nerves are strong, go now through the door on the left : in that room they are putting on bandages and performing operations. You will there see doctors, with arms bloodstained up to their elbows, and pale, morose countenances, busy at a cot, on which, with open eyes and speaking, as though in delirium, meaningless but sometimes simple and touching words, lies a wounded soldier, under the influence of chloroform. The doctors are occupied with the disgusting but beneficent work of amputation. You will see the sharp, bent knife entering the healthy body ; you will see the wounded man suddenly come to his senses, with a terrible, piercing cry, and with curses; you will see the surgeon’s assistant throw the amputated arm into a corner ; you will see, on a litter, in the same room, another wounded man, who, watching the operation performed on his companion, writhes and groans, not so much from physical pain, as from the moral anguish of anticipation, — you will see terrible, soul-stirring spectacles ; you will see war, not in its regular, beautiful, and brilliant array, with music and drum-taps, with fluttering flags, and generals going through evolutions with their horses, but war in its real aspect, — in blood, in suffering, in death.

Upon issuing from this house of suffering, you will certainly experience a feeling of relief ; you will breathe in the fresh air with fuller lungs, will feel pleasure in the consciousness of your health, but, at the same time, in the contemplation of this suffering, you will draw the consciousness of your nothingness, and you will go calmly and without any indecision to the bastions.

” What do the death and suffering of such an insignificant worm as I mean in comparison with so many deaths and so much suffering ? ” But the sight of the clear sky, the gleaming sun, the beautiful city, the open church, and the military moving in various directions soon brings your mind into the normal condition of light-heartedness, petty cares, and preoccupation with the present alone.

Maybe you will see emerging from the church the funeral of some officer, with a rose-coloured coffin, and music, and unfurled banners ; maybe the sounds of firing from the bastions reach your ear, but that will not induce your former thoughts. The funeral will appear to you as a very fine warlike spectacle, the sounds as very fine warlike sounds, but you will not connect with this spectacle, nor with these sounds, the clear idea of suffering and death which you have formed at the point where the wounds are dressed.

After passing the church and the barricade, you will enter into the most animated part of the city, living its

own inner life. On both sides are the signs of shops and inns. Tradespeople, women in bonnets and kerchiefs, foppish officers, — everything tells of the firmness of spirit, the self-confidence, and the security of the inhabitants.

Go into the inn on the right, if you wish to hear the conversations of the sailors and officers : no doubt they are now telling of the past night, of Fénka, of the action of the 24th, of how expensive and bad the cutlets are that they serve, and of how this or that companion was killed.

“ The deuce take it, but it’s bad with us to-day ! ” says a fair-browed, beardless naval officer in a green, handmade scarf.

” Where is that ? ” asks another.

” In the fourth bastion,” answers the youthful officer, and you are sure to look with greater attention, and even with a certain reverence, at the fair-browed officer, as he mentions the fourth bastion. His too great volubility, his waving of hands, his loud laughter and voice, which had struck you as impudent, now will appear to you as that peculiar dare-devil mood which some very young men acquire after peril ; still, you imagine that he is going to tell you how bad it is in the fourth bastion from the cannonballs and bombs : not at all ! it is bad because it is dirty there.

” It is impossible to walk over to the battery,” he says, pointing at his boots, which are covered with mud above the calf.

” My best gun-captain has been killed to-day, — he was struck in the forehead,” says another.

” Who ? Mityukhin ? No — Shall I ever get that veal ? Rascals ! ” he adds, turning to the waiter —

” Not Mityukhin, but Abramov. He was a brave fellow,— he was in six sorties.”

At the other corner of the table two infantry officers are seated at cutlets and peas, with a bottle of sour Crimean wine, called “ Bordeaux : ” one of them, with a red collar and two stars on his overcoat, a young man, is telling the other, with a black collar and without stars, about the action at Alma. The first has imbibed a little freely, and from the hesitation in his recital, from the indecision in his glance, expressive of a suspicion that he is doubted, but especially from the fact that he is playing too great a part in all this, and that it is all too terrible, it is evident that he is swerving greatly from stern truth.

But you do not care for these stories, which you will, for a long time to come, hear in all the corners of Russia : you want to go at once to the bastions, especially to the fourth, of which you have been told so many different tales. When somebody tells you that he has been in the fourth bastion, he announces the fact with special delight and pride ; when some one says that he. is going to the fourth bastion, you will be sure to notice a slight agitation in him, or too great an indifference ; if they wish to tease somebody, they tell him, “You ought to be stationed in the fourth bastion ; ” if you meet a litter, and ask, ” Where from ?” the answer is generally, ” From the fourth bastion.” There are, on the whole, two distinct opinions in regard to this terrible bastion : one, the opinion of those who have never been there, and who are convinced that the fourth bastion is a sure grave for any one who does go there ; the other, the opinion of those who live in it, like that fair-complexioned midshipman, and who will say of the fourth bastion, that it is dry or dirty there, warm or cold in the earth huts, and so forth.

In the half-hour which you have had in the inn, the weather has changed : the fog that has been hanging over the sea has gathered into gray, dull, damp clouds, and is shrouding the sun ; a gloomy, frozen mist is settling

down and wetting the roofs, the sidewalks, and the overcoats of the soldiers.

You pass another barricade, and through a door on the right walk up a broad street. Beyond this barricade the houses on both sides of the street are uninhabited ; there are no shop signs, the doors are covered with boards, the windows are broken ; here a corner of the house is shattered, there a roof is pierced. The structures look like old veterans who have suffered all kinds of woe and want, and seem to be looking haughtily, and even somewhat contemptuously, at you. On the road you stumble on shells strewn about, and on puddles full of water, dug out by bombs in the stony soil. In the street you meet or catch up with detachments of soldiers, Cossack sharpshooters, and officers ; occasionally you see a woman or a child. The woman does not wear a bonnet ; she is a sailor’s wife, in a fur jacket and soldier boots.

Proceeding along the street and descending a small hill, you observe all about you, not houses, but certain strange ruin-heaps of stones, boards, clay, and beams; in front of you, on a steep hill, you see a black, dirty space, checkered by ditches, — and that is the fourth bastion. Here you find still fewer people ; one sees no women at all ; the soldiers walk rapidly ; along the road you may notice drops of blood, and you are sure to meet four soldiers with a litter, and on the litter a pale, sallow face, and a bloodstained overcoat. If you ask, “Where are you wounded ? ” the bearers will tell you, angrily, without turning toward you, ” In the leg,” or ” In the arm,” if he is slightly wounded ; or they will keep sullen silence, if the head does not appear on the litter, or he is dead, or severely wounded.

The whizzing of a cannonball or bomb near by, while you are ascending the hill, gives you an unpleasant sensation. You suddenly will understand, quite differently from what you understood before, the meaning of those discharges which you had heard in the city. Some joyful recollection will suddenly flash through your imagination ; your own personality will begin to interest you more than your observations ; you will show less attention to your surroundings, and you will suddenly be seized by an unpleasant sensation of indecision. In spite of this mean little voice at the sight of peril, which is speaking within you, you, especially as you glance at the soldier who, waving his arms, and slipping down-hill over the liquid mud, runs toward you, laughing, — you silence that voice, involuntarily straighten out your chest, lift your head higher, and clamber up the slippery hill of clay.

You have barely reached the summit, when on the right and left of you rifle-balls begin to whizz, and you stop to reflect whether you had not better walk in the trench, which runs parallel to the road ; but the trench is filled more than knee-deep with such a liquid, yellow, ill-smelling mud, that you will certainly select the road along the brow of the lull, especially since you see everybody else walking in the road. After passing two hundred steps, you come out on a dirty expanse which is all dug up, and which is surrounded on all sides by gabions, earthworks, casemates, platforms, and dug-outs, on which stand large cast-iron guns, and on which cannonballs lie in regular heaps. Everything seems to be scattered about without any aim, connection, or order. Here, in the battery, sits a group of sailors ; there in the middle of the space, half-buried in the mud, lies a broken cannon ; there an infantry soldier, shouldering his gun, crosses the battery, and with difficulty pulls his feet out of the sticky mud. But everywhere, on all sides, and in all places, you see splinters, unexploded bombs, cannonballs, signs of the camp, — and all that is merged in the liquid, viscous mud. Not far from you, as you imagine, you hear a cannonball strike ; you think you hear on all sides the various sounds of bullets, — buzzing like a bee,

whistling, whizzing, or whining like a string, — you hear the terrible booming of a discharge which shakes you all up, and seems awful and terrible to you.

” So here it is, the fourth bastion ! Here is this terrible, truly awful place ! ” you think, experiencing a slight sensation of pride and a mighty sensation of suppressed terror. But you must be undeceived ; this is not yet the fourth bastion. This is the Yazonov redoubt, — a comparatively secure, and not at all terrible place. In order to reach the fourth bastion, turn to the right, along this narrow trench, along which a foot-soldier is moving with bent body. Along this trench you will, perhaps, again meet stretchers, a sailor, soldiers with spades ; you will see miners, and dug-outs in the mud, into which two men can creep by bending ; and you will see there the sharpshooters of the Black Sea battalions, who change their boots, eat, smoke their pipes, and live in there ; and you will see again the same stinking mud all around you, the traces of an encampment, and abandoned cast iron of every possible shape.

By walking another three hundred steps, you again come out to a battery, — to a small square cut up by ditches, and surrounded by gabions filled with dirt, guns on platforms, and earth ramparts. Here you will, probably, see some five sailors, playing cards under the breastwork, and a naval officer, who, noticing that you are a newcomer, and curious, will gladly show you everything under his charge which might interest you. This officer so calmly rolls up a cigarette with yellow paper, while seated on a gun, so calmly passes from one embrasure to another, so calmly speaks with you, without the least affectation, that, in spite of the bullets, which whizz above you offener than before, you yourself become cool, and attentively question the officer and listen to his story.

This officer will tell you — but only if you question him about it — of the bombardment of the 5th ; he will tell you how only one gun of his battery could be put in action, and how of all the attendants only eight men were left, and how, nevertheless, on the following 6th, he fired off all his guns ; he will tell you how on the 5th a cannonball entered an earth hut of the sailors, and laid low eleven men ; he will show you through the embrasure the batteries and trenches of the enemy, which are here not more than from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet distant. I am, however, afraid that under the influence of the buzzing bullets, you, leaning out of the embrasure, in order to catch a glimpse of the enemy, will see nothing, or, if you do see, you will be very much surprised to find that this white rocky rampart, which is so near to you, and where now and then burst white cloudlets of smoke, — that this white rampart is the enemy, — he, as the soldiers and sailors say.

It is even quite possible that the naval officer, from vanity, or simply to afford himself an amusement, will want to do a little firing in your presence. ” Send the gun-captain and the crew up to the gun ! ” and about fourteen sailors, putting their pipes into their pockets, or hurriedly munching their hardtack, will briskly and gaily walk up to the gun, clattering with their spiked boots on the platform, and load it. Look closely at the faces, the whole form, and the movements of these men : in every wrinkle of their sunburnt, broad-cheeked faces, in every muscle, in the breadth of their shoulders, in the stoutness of their legs, clad in huge boots, in every motion — calm, firm, deliberate — are seen the chief characteristics of Russian strength, simplicity and tenacity ; but here, you imagine that the peril, the wretchedness, and the sufferings of war have imprinted on every face, in addition to these chief traits, the consciousness of their own worth, and of elevated thought and feeling.

Suddenly a frightful roar, which shakes not only your aural organs, but your whole being as well, startles you

so that your whole body quivers. Thereupon you hear the retreating whistle of the projectile, and a dense powder smoke envelops you, the platform, and the black figures of the sailors moving upon it. About this shot of ours you will hear various comments by the sailors, and you will observe their animation, and the manifestation of a feeling which, perhaps, you had not expected to see, — the feeling of malice, of revenging themselves on the enemy, which is concealed in every breast.

” Struck right into the embrasure ; I think it has killed two — there they are carrying them,” are the joyful exclamations you hear. ” Now, he is getting mad ; he will let her go in a minute,” somebody remarks, and, indeed, soon after you see a flash and smoke in front of you. The sentry on the breastwork cries, ” Can-non ! ” Immediately after a cannonball whines past you, splashes against the ground, and scatters a funnel-shaped mass of débris and stones about you. The commander of the battery is angry at this ball, and orders them to load a second and third gun ; the enemy keeps returning the fire, and you experience interesting sensations, and hear and see interesting things.

The sentry again shouts ” Cannon ! ” and you hear the same sound and thud, and see the same débris; or he calls out ” Mortar ! ” and you hear the even, fairly agreeable whistling of a bomb, with which you find it hard to connect the idea of something terrible ; you hear this whistling coming nearer and growing faster ; then you see a black ball, feel a palpable blow against the ground, and hear the ringing explosion of the bomb. Then the splinters fly through the air whistling and whining; stones rustle in the air, and you are bespattered with mud. At these sounds you experience a strange sensation of pleasure, and at the same time of fear. During the moment when you are conscious of the projectile’s flight above your head, you cannot help thinking that it will kill you ; but a feeling of vanity sustains you, and nobody notices the knife that is cutting your heart. But when the projectile has passed by you, without doing you any harm, you revive, and you are seized, though only for an instant, by a blissful, inexpressibly pleasant sensation, so that you find a special charm in danger, in this game of life and death ; you want the balls or bombs to fall closer and closer to you.

But the sentry shouts again, in his loud, thick voice, ” Mortar ! ” and again there is a whistle, a blow, and an explosion of a bomb ; but at the very moment of this sound you are startled by the groan of a man. You reach the wounded man, who, bloodstained and bespattered with mud, has a strange inhuman aspect, at the same time as the stretcher. A part of the sailor’s chest has been torn out. In the first few minutes you see on his mud-covered face nothing but terror and a feigned, premature expression of suffering, peculiar to a man in this condition ; but when the stretcher is brought and the wounded man is placed there on his sound side, you observe that this expression is exchanged for one of ecstasy and of an exalted, unexpressed thought ; his eyes burn more brightly, his teeth are set, his head raises itself with difficulty, and, while he is being lifted up, he halts the stretcher, and with effort, and in a trembling voice, says to his companions, ” Forgive me, brothers ! ” He wants to say something else, and it is evident that he wants to say something touching, but he only repeats ” Forgive me, brothers ! ” Just then a fellow sailor walks over to him, puts his cap on his head, which the wounded man holds up for the purpose, and calmly, with equanimity, waving his arms, returns to his gun.

” Seven or eight men a day are taken off that way,” the naval officer informs you, in response to the expression of terror on your face, yawning and rolling his cigarette of yellow paper.

And so you have seen the defenders of Sevastopol in the very place of the defence, and you walk back, for some reason paying no attention to the balls and bullets which continue to whistle until you reach the ruins of the theatre, — you walk in a quiet, exalted mood. The main and consoling conviction which you have carried away is that it is impossible to break the strength of the Russian people, — and this impossibility you have seen, not in the mass of traverses, breastworks, cunningly intertwined trenches, mines, and ordnance piled upon each other, of which you did not understand a thing, but in the eyes, speeches, and manner, in what is called the spirit, of the defenders of Sevastopol. What they are doing, they do so simply, with so little effort, and with such intensity, that you are persuaded that they are able to do a hundred things more — they can do anything.

You comprehend that the feeling which makes them work is not that feeling of paltriness, vanity, obliviousness, such as you have experienced yourself, but another, more powerful sentiment which has made of them men who live calmly under cannonballs, surrounded by hundreds of accidents of death, instead of the one death to which all men are subject, and who live under these conditions amidst uninterrupted labour, vigilance, and mud. People cannot assume these terrible conditions for the sake of a cross, a name, or a threat ; there must be another, higher impelling cause. This cause is a feeling which rarely comes to the surface and is kept in bashful abeyance in a Russian, but which is in the depth of every soul, — the love of his country. Only now the stories about the first siege of Sevastopol, when there were no fortifications in it, no armies, no physical possibility of retaining it, and yet when there was not the slightest doubt that it would not surrender to the enemy, — about the times when that hero, worthy of ancient Greece, Kornilov, driving through the army, said, “We will die,boys, but will not surrender Sevastopol,” and our Russians, incapable of expressing themselves glibly, answered, ” We will die, hurrah ! ” — only now the stories about these times have ceased for you to be a beautiful historical tradition, but have become a certainty, a fact. You can easily comprehend and imagine to yourselves the people whom you have just seen as those heroes, who in those troublous times did not fall, but rise in spirit, and with delight prepared themselves to die, not for the city, but for their country. This epic of Sevastopol, of which the Russian nation was the hero, will long leave grand traces in Russia.

It is growing toward evening. The sun, before setting, has emerged from the gray clouds which veil the sky, and suddenly has illuminated with its crimson light the violet clouds, the greenish sea that is covered with ships and boats and that is agitated in an even, broad swell, and the white structures of the city, and the people moving about in its streets. Over the water are borne the sounds of some antiquated waltz, which the regimental band is playing in the boulevard, and the sounds of volleys from the bastions, which strangely echo them.

Sevastopol, April 25,1855.

IN MAY, 1855

I.

Six months have passed since the time when the first cannonball whistled from the bastions of Sevastopol and tore up the earth in the works of the enemy, and since then thousands of bombs, balls, and bullets have been flying incessantly from the bastions into the trenches, and from the trenches into the bastions, and the angel of death has not ceased hovering over them.

Thousands of human ambitions have been slighted, thousands have been satisfied, or puffed up, and thousands have been put to rest in the embraces of death. What a mass of rose-coloured coffins and linen shrouds ! But still the same sounds are heard from the bastions ; with the same involuntary trepidation and terror the French are looking on a clear day from their encampment on the yellowish, furrowed earth of the bastions of Sevastopol, on the black figures of our sailors moving on them, and counting the embrasures from which threateningly protrude our iron guns. Just so the master’s mate in the telegraph tower surveys through the glasses the motley forms of the French, their batteries, tents, columns, moving about on the green hill, and the puffs of smoke that flash in the trenches ; and with the same eagerness heterogeneous masses of men from all the corners of the world, with still more heterogeneous desires, are streaming into this fateful spot. And the question, still undecided by diplomacy, has not yet been solved by powder and blood.

II.

In the besieged city of Sevastopol, the regimental band was playing in the boulevard, near the pavilion, and throngs of the military and of women were strolling leisurely through its avenues. The bright vernal sun had risen in the morning above the works of the English, had passed over to the bastions, thence to the city, to the Nicholas barracks, and, shining with equal cheer upon all, was now sinking toward the blue, distant sea, which swayed in even motion and was resplendent with a silvery sheen.

A tall infantry officer, with rather stooping shoulders, who was drawing on his hand a clean, though not very white, glove, came out of the gate in front of a small sailor cottage, built on the left side of Ocean Street, and, looking pensively at his feet, ascended the street toward the boulevard.

The expression of this officer’s homely countenance did not betray any great mental powers, but simple-mindedness, thoughtfulness, honesty, and a tendency to sobriety. He was badly built, not very agile, and apparently timid in his movements. He was dressed in a little worn cap, a light overcoat of a rather peculiar lilac shade, behind the edge of which could be seen a gold watch-chain, pantaloons with foot-straps, and clean, well-polished calfskin boots. He might have been a German, if the features of his face had not indicated his pure Russian origin, or an adjutant, or a regimental quartermaster (but then he would have had spurs), or an officer who for the period of the cam

paign had left the cavalry or, perhaps, the Guards. He was, in reality, a former cavalry officer, and at the present moment, as he was walking up toward the boulevard, he was thinking of a letter which he had received from his former comrade, now out of service and a landed proprietor in the Government of T–-, and from his wife,

pale, blue-eyed Natasha, his great friend. He recalled one passage in that letter, in which his comrade said :

” When the Invalid is brought to us, Pupka (thus the ex-uhlan called his wife) rushes headlong into the antechamber, seizes the gazette, runs with it to the bay window in the arbour, or into the drawing-room (in which, as you will remember, we have passed such delightful winter evenings, when the regiment was stationed in our city), and reads the heroic deeds of you soldiers with such zeal as you can hardly imagine. She frequently says of you : ‘ Now, Mikhaylov,’ says she, ‘ is a dear. I am ready to kiss him when I see him. He is fighting in the bastions, and will certainly get the Cross of St. George, and they will write about him in the papers — ’ and so forth, so that I am beginning in all earnestness to be jealous of you.”

In another passage he said :

” The gazettes reach us dreadfully late, and though there is a lot of oral news, you can’t believe it all. For example, the young ladies with music, whom you know, were saying yesterday that Napoleon had been captured by our Cossacks, and sent to St. Petersburg ; but you can imagine how little I believe this. We were told by a gentleman who has arrived from St. Petersburg (he has a place on special affairs at a minister’s, a charming fellow, and now that there is no one in town, he is the greatest imaginable resource to us) so he assures us that our men have occupied Eupatdria, so that the French have no longer any communication with Balaklava, and that we had two hundred soldiers killed in this action,

while the French lost fifteen thousand. My wife was so elated at this, that she caroused all night, and she says that her heart tells her that you have certainly taken part in this action, and have distinguished yourself.”

In spite of the words and expressions which I have purposely given in italics, and of the whole tone of the letter, StaffCaptain Mikhaylov recalled, with inexpressibly melancholy pleasure, his pale friend in the province, and how he used to sit with her in the arbour in the evenings, and talk about sentiments ; he recalled his good comrade, the uhlan, and how he would get angry and lose, when they played in the study at kopek-stakes, and how his wife would laugh at him ; he thought of the friendship of these people for himself (maybe, he thought, there was something more than friendship on the side of his pale friend) : these people with their surroundings flashed through his imagination in a remarkably soothing, blissfully rose-coloured light, and, smiling at his reminiscences, he placed his hand on the pocket where lay the letter which was so dear to him.

From the reminiscences StaffCaptain Mikhaylov involuntarily passed to dreams and hopes. ” What will be Natasha’s surprise and joy,” he thought, striding through a narrow side street, “ when she suddenly reads in the Invalid how I was the first to climb on a cannon, and received the Cross of St. George ! The captaincy I am to receive anyway, having been recommended for it long ago. Then I may easily get the grade of major by seniority this very year, because many of my fellow officers have been killed in this campaign, and many more, no doubt, will be. And then there will be another engagement, and I, as a well-known man, will be entrusted with a regiment — lieutenantcolonel — the Anna decoration on my neck — colonel — ” and he was already a general, honouring with his visit Natasha, the widow of his comrade, who, according to his dreams, would be dead by that time, — when the sounds of the boulevard music reached his ears more distinctly, the throngs of people burst upon his vision, and he found himself in the boulevard, a staffcaptain as before.

III.

He went, at first, to the pavilion, near which stood the musicians, for whom other soldiers of the regiment acted as stands and held the open music, and near whom scribes, yunkers, and nurses with their children formed a circle, rather looking on than listening. About the pavilion stood, sat, and walked chiefly sailors, adjutants, and officers in white gloves. On the broad avenue of the boulevard walked all sorts of officers and all sorts of women, now and then in bonnets, but more often in kerchiefs (there were also some without kerchiefs or bonnets) ; there was not an old woman among them, but, on the contrary, all were young. Farther below, in the fragrant, shady avenues of white acacias, walked or sat separate groups.

No one on the boulevard was especially delighted to meet Captain Mikhaylov, except, perhaps, Captain Obzhogov and Captain Suslikov of his own regiment, who fervently pressed his hand ; but the former wore camel’s-hair trousers, no gloves, a threadbare overcoat, and had a sweaty face, and the latter shouted so loudly and carelessly, that it was annoying to walk with them, especially in the presence of the officers with the white gloves (to one of whom, an adjutant, StaffCaptain Mikhaylov bowed, and to another, an officer of the staff, he could have bowed, because he had met him twice in the house of a common acquaintance). Besides, what pleasure was it to him to walk with Messrs. Obzhdgov and Suslikov, since he met them without this about six times a day, and each time pressed their hands ? It was not for this that he had come to the music.

It would give him pleasure to walk up to the adjutant, with whom he exchanged greetings, and to talk with him and his company, not that Captains Obzhdgov and Sushkov and Lieutenant Pashtétski might see that he was speaking with them, but simply because they were pleasant people, and besides knew all the news, and would tell it to him.

But why was StaffCaptain Mikhaylov afraid to walk over to them ? ” What if they suddenly should not bow to me,” he thought, ” or if they should bow and continue speaking among themselves, as if I were not present, or should walk entirely away from me, and I should remain all alone among the aristocrats ? ” The word aristocrats (in the sense of a higher, select circle, in whatsoever condition in life) has of late acquired with us, in Russia, where, it seems, it ought never to exist, great popularity, and has penetrated into every part of the country and into every stratum of society whither vanity has penetrated (and into what conditions of time and circumstance does this wretched inclination not penetrate ?) : among merchants, among officials, scribes, and officers, into Saratov, into Mamadÿshi, into Vmnitsy, everywhere where people live. And since there were many people in Sevastopol, consequently there was also much vanity, that is, there were many aristocrats, in spite of the fact that at any moment death was hanging over the head of every aristocrat and of every plebeian.

To Captain Obzhdgov, StaffCaptain Mikhäylov was an aristocrat ; to StaffCaptain Mikhaylov, Adjutant Kalugin was an aristocrat, because he was an adjutant and on ” thou ” terms with another adjutant. To Adjutant Kalugin, Count Ndrdov was an aristocrat, because he was an aid-de-camp.

Vanity, vanity, and vanity everywhere, even on the

brink of the grave, and among people ready to die from deep conviction. Vanity ! It must be a characteristic trait and peculiar disease of our century. Why was nothing heard of this passion among men of former days, as one hears of the smallpox and of the cholera ? Why are there only three kinds of people in our age : those who accept the principle of vanity as a necessary, consequently as a just, fact, and who freely submit to it ; those who accept it as an unfortunate, but insurmountable, condition ; and those, again, who act unconsciously and servilely under its influence ? Why did Homer and Shakespeare speak of love, of glory, of suffering, while the literature of our age is only an endless story of snobs and vanity ?

The staffcaptain walked twice in indecision past the circle of his aristocrats ; the third time he made an effort over himself, and went up to them. This circle was composed of four officers : of Adjutant Kalugin, Mikhaylov’s acquaintance, of Adjutant Prince Gâltsin, who really was something of an aristocrat as compared with Kalugin, of Colonel Neférdov, one of the so-called 122 society men (who had entered the service for this campaign from the retired list), and of Captain of Horse Praskukhin, also one of those 122. Fortunately for Mikhaylov, Kalugin was in an excellent frame of mind (the general had just had a very confidential talk with him, and Prince G alt sin, who had arrived from St. Petersburg, was stopping with him) ; he did not regard it as beneath his dignity to extend his hand to StaffCaptain Mikhaylov, a thing which, however, Praskukhin could not make up his mind to do, although he had frequently met Mikhaylov in the bastion, had again and again drunk his wine and brandy, and even owed him twelve roubles and a half at cards. As he did not yet know Prince Gâltsin very intimately, he did not wish to betray to him his acquaintance with a simple staffcaptain of the infantry. He bowed slightly to him.

” Well, captain,” said Kalugin, ” when shall we go again to the little bastion ? Do you remember how we met on the Schwartz redoubt ? It was hot there, wasn’t it?”

” Yes, it was,” said Mikhaylov, recalling how on that night, as he was making his way along the trench up to the bastion, he had met Kalugin, who was walking along in a dashing manner, briskly clanking his sabre.

” By rights, I ought to go there to-morrow ; but we have a sick man,” continued Mikhaylov, ” an officer, and so — ”

He was on the point of telling that it was not his turn, but that the commander of the eighth company was ill, and that, as there was but the ensign left in the company, he had considered it his duty to propose himself in place of Lieutenant Nepshisétski, and that therefore he was going to the bastion to-day. Kalugin was not listening to him.

” I feel that something will happen soon,” said he to Prince Gâltsin.

” And won’t anything happen to-day ? ” timidly asked Mikhâylov, glancing now at Kalugin, and now at Gâltsin.

Nobody replied. Prince Gâltsin only frowned, stared past his cap, and, after a moment’s silence, asked :

” She is a fine girl, the one in the red kerchief. Do you not know her, captain ? ”

” She lives near my quarters, and is a sailor’s daughter,” replied the staffcaptain.

” Come, let us get a good look at her ! ”

Prince Gâltsin took, on one side, Kalugin’s arm, and on the other, the staffcaptain’s, being convinced in advance that this must necessarily afford great pleasure to the latter, which, indeed, was true enough.

The staffcaptain was superstitious, and regarded it as a great sin to busy himself with women before an action ; but on this occasion he feigned to be a libertine, which

Prince Galtsin and Kalugin obviously did not believe, and which extremely surprised the maiden in the red kerchief, who had noticed more than once that the captain blushed whenever he passed by her window. Praskukhin followed them from behind and kept nudging the arm of Prince Galtsin, making all kinds of remarks in French. As it was not possible for four persons to walk abreast on the narrow path, he was compelled to walk by himself ; only, when making the second circuit, he linked his arm with a well-known, brave naval officer, Servyagin, who had come up to speak with him, and who was also anxious to join the circle of the aristocrats. The famous hero was delighted to put his muscular, honest hand through the arm of Praskukhin, who was known to everybody, and to Servyagin himself, as a not very decent kind of man. When Praskukhin, explaining to Prince Galtsin his acquaintance with that sailor, whispered to him that he was a famous hero, Prince Galtsin, who had been in the fourth bastion the day before and had seen a bomb explode within twenty paces of him, did not pay the least attention to Servyagin, on the ground that he himself was a not less brave fellow than that gentleman, and because he surmised that very many reputations were not merited.

It gave StaffCaptain Mikhaylov such pleasure to promenade in this company, that he forgot his dear letter from T–-, and the gloomy thoughts that had assailed him

before his departure to the bastion. He stayed with them until they began to converse exclusively among themselves, and evade his glances, by which they meant to let him know that he could leave ; finally they walked altogether away from him. But the staffcaptain was, nevertheless, contented, and, when he passed by Yunker Baron Pest, who had been uncommonly proud and self-confident ever since the previous night, when he had for the first time passed a night in the blindage of the fifth bastion, and who, in consequence of this, regarded himself as a hero, he was not in the least mortified by the suspiciously supercilious expression with which the yunker straightened himself out and took off his cap to him.

IV.

No sooner had the staffcaptain crossed the threshold of his lodgings, than entirely different thoughts entered hfe mind. He saw his small room, with its uneven earth floor and crooked windows pasted over with paper, his old bed, with a rug nailed to the wall above it, on which an amazon was represented, and where two Tula pistols were hanging, and the dirty bed, with the chintz coverlet, of the yunker who was living with him ; he saw his Nikita, with dishevelled, greasy hair, who, scratching himself, rose from the floor; he saw his old overcoat, his boots, and a bundle, from which protruded the point of a cheese and the neck of a wine bottle filled with brandy, gotten ready for him for the bastion, — and he suddenly recalled that he was to pass the whole night with his company in the lodgments.

” I shall certainly be killed to-night,” thought the staffcaptain, ” I feel it. The main thing is that it was not my turn to go, and I offered myself. It is always the man who obtrudes who is killed. And what is it that ails that accursed Nepshisétski ? It is very likely he is not ill at all, and here another man will be killed in his place, he certainly will be. However, if I am not killed, I shall by all means be recommended for promotion. I noticed how the commander of the regiment was pleased when he heard me say: ‘Permit me to go, if Lieutenant Nepshisétski is ill.’ If it does not bring me a majorship, I cannot fail getting a Cross of St. Vladimir.

” This is the thirteenth time I have gone to the bastion. Oh, thirteen is a bad number. I am sure I shall be killed, I feel I shall be ! but somebody had to go, and the company could not be sent out with the ensign. If something happened, the honour of the regiment, the honour of the army, would be involved. It was my duty to go — yes, my sacred duty. Still, I have a presentiment.”

The staffcaptain forgot that a similar presentiment, in a greater or lesser degree, had assailed him before when he had to go to the bastion, and he did not know that the same more or less strong presentiment was experienced by everybody who went into action. After having calmed himself with the conception of duty, which was especially developed and strong in the staffcaptain, he sat down at the table, and began to write his farewell letter to his father. Ten minutes later, after he had written the letter, he rose from the table, with eyes wet with tears, and, saying mentally all the prayers which he knew, he began to dress himself. His tipsy, coarse servant lazily handed him his new coat (the old one, which the staffcaptain put on whenever he went to the bastion, was not mended).

” Why is not the coat mended ? All you care for is sleeping, lazybones ! ” angrily said Mikhaylov.

” Sleeping ? ” growled Nikita. ” I am doing nothing but running around the whole day like a dog; I am all worn out, and then I may not even sleep ? “

” You are drunk again, I see ! “

“ I did not get drunk on your money, so why do you reproach me?”

” Shut up, blockhead ! ” cried the staffcaptain, ready to strike him; if he was out of humour before, he now completely lost his patience and felt mortified by the coarseness of Nikita, whom he liked and even pampered, and with whom he had been living for twelve years.

” Blockhead ? Blockhead ? ” repeated the servant. ” Why do you call me such a name, sir ? Think what is before you ! It is not right to curse ! “

Mikhäylov recalled whither he was to go soon, and he felt ashamed of himself.

” Whom would you not make lose his patience, Nikita ? ” he said, in a meek voice. ” Leave this letter to father on the table, — don’t touch it ! ” he added, blushing.

“As you command, sir,” said Nikita, becoming sentimental under the influence of the wine which he had drunk, as he said, on his own money, and winking his eyes, in an obvious desire to burst out into tears.

When the staffcaptain said on the steps, “Goodbye, Nikita ! ” the latter suddenly exploded in forced sobs, and darted forward to kiss the hands of his master. “ Goodbye, master ! ” he said, blubbering. An old sailor woman, who was standing on the porch, being a woman, could not keep from joining this sentimental scene, began to wipe her eyes with her dirty sleeve and to say something about gentlemen even having to suffer all kinds of torments, and that she, poor creature, was left a widow, and began for the hundredth time to tell drunken Nikita her woe: how her husband was killed in the first bombardment, how her cottage was laid in ruins (the one she was now living in did not belong to her), and so forth. After his master’s departure, Nikita lighted a pipe, asked the landlady’s daughter to go for some brandy, and at once stopped weeping ; on the contrary, he exchanged some angry words with the old woman for a little pail which, so he claimed, she had smashed.

“ And, maybe, I shall only be wounded,” the staffcaptain reflected, as he was approaching the bastion with his company, in the twilight. “ Where will it be ? How ? Here or here ? ” he said to himself mentally, pointing to his abdomen and to his chest. “ If it should be here,” he thought of the upper part of his leg, “it might go all round. But if here, and with a splinter at that, — that will be the end ! ”

The staffcaptain walked along the trenches and reached the lodgments in safety ; in conjunction with an officer of sappers he set the men to work, though the darkness was complete, and sat down in a small pit beneath the breastwork. There was little firing. Occasionally there was a flash of fire, now on our side, now on his, and the burning fuse of a bomb described a fiery arc on the dark, starry heaven. But all the bombs lodged far behind and to the right of the entrenchment, in the pit of which the staffcaptain was sitting. He took a drink of brandy, ate a piece of cheese, lighted his cigarette, and, having said his prayers, wanted to take a nap.

V.

Prince Gâltsin, LieutenantColonel Neférdov, and Praskukhin, whom no one had invited, with whom no one spoke, but who did not leave them, went from the boulevard to Kalugin’s to drink tea.

“Well, you did not finish the story about Yaska Méndel,” said Kalugin, who, having taken off his overcoat, sat down near the window in a soft easy chair, and unbuttoned the collar of his clean, starched linen shirt. “ How did he get married ? “

” It is killing, friend ! Je vous dis, il y avait un temps on n» parlait que de ça à Pétersbourg,” said Prince Gâltsin, smiling ; he leaped up from his seat near the piano, and seated himself on the window near Kalugin. ” It is simply killing. I know all the details — “

And he began gaily, cleverly, and briskly to tell a love-story, which we will leave untold, because it does not interest us. It is, however, a remarkable fact that not only Prince Galtsin, but all the gentlemen, of whom one took up his position on the window, another stretched his legs, and a third sat down at the piano, seemed to be different men from what they had been in the boulevard : there was nothing of that ridiculous conceit and haughtiness which they displayed before the officers of infantry ; here among their own, they were, especially Kalugin and Prince Galtsin, quite natural, and agreeable, merry, and good fellows. The conversation turned on their St. Petersburg fellow officers and acquaintances.

” What of Maslovski ? “

« Which ? The uhlan of the body-guard, or of the horse-guard? “

“I know both of them. The one of the horse-guard was a boy in my days, just out of school. What is the elder one now? A captain of cavalry? “

” Yes, long ago.”

” And is he still keeping his gipsy maid ? ”

« No, he has given her up — ” and so forth, in the same strain.

Then Prince Galtsin sat down at the piano, and sang a gipsy song superbly. Praskukhin, without being asked by any one to do so, began to accompany him, and he did it so well that he was asked to continue singing second, which gave him much pleasure.

A servant came in with tea, cream, and cracknels on a silver tray.

” Serve the prince ! ” said Kalugin.

” Really, it is strange, when you come to think of it,” said Galtsin, taking a glass, and walking to the window. ” Here we are in a besieged city : piano, tea with cream, and such quarters as, truly, I should like to have in St. Petersburg.”

“If it were not for this,” said the old lieutenantcolonel, who was dissatisfied with everything, “ this eternal expectation of something would be insufferable — to see men killed day after day — and no end to it — and to live in mud and have no comforts.”

“ And how is it with our infantry officers,” said Kalugin, “ who are living with their soldiers in the bastions and in the blindage, and who eat the soldiers’ beet soup — how is it with them ? ”

“ How is it with them ? Though they do not change their linen for ten days at a time, they are heroes, and wonderful men.”

Just then an infantry officer entered the room.

“I — I was ordered — may I report to Gen— to his

Excellency from General N–-? ” he asked, with a timid

bow.

Kalugin rose, but, without returning the officer’s salute, with offensive politeness and a strained, official smile, asked the officer whether it would not please them to wait and, without asking him to be seated, and paying no further attention to him, turned to Gältsin and began to speak to him in French, so that the poor officer, who was standing in the middle of the room, was absolutely at a loss what to do with himself.

“ A very pressing affair,” said the officer, after a moment’s silence.

“ Ah ! then please come ! ” said Kalugin, putting on his overcoat, and taking the officer to the door.

” Eh bien, messieurs, je crois, que cela chauffera cette nuit,” said Kalugin, coming back from the general’s.

” What ? What is it ? A sortie ? ” they all began to ask.

“ I do not know. You will find out yourselves,” said Kalugin, with a mysterious smile.

” My commander is in the bastion, consequently I ought to go there myself,” said Praskukhin, buckling on his sabre.

But nobody replied to him ; he ought to have known himself whether he was to go there, or not.

Praskukhin and Neférdov went out, in order to betake themselves to their places. ” Goodbye, gentlemen !” “ Au revoir, gentlemen ! We shall see each other to-night ! ” cried Kalugin through the window, as Praskukhin and Neférdov, leaning on the bows of their Cossack saddles, galloped down the street.

“ Non, dites moi, est-ce qu’il y aura véritablement quelque chose cette nuit ? ” said Gältsin, lying with Kalugin on the window, and looking at the bombs which were rising above the bastions.

“ I may tell you, you see — you have been in the bastions, have you not ? ” (Gältsin made a sign of affirmation though he had been but once in the fourth bastion.) « Opposite our lunette was a trench,” and Kalugin, not being a specialist, but still regarding his military reflections as quite correct, began, somewhat confusedly, and distorting the fortification terminology, to tell about the position of our works and about that of the enemy’s and about the plan of the impending engagement.

« I declare, they are beginning to crack a little near the lodgments. Oh! is this ours or his? There it bursts,” they said, lying in the window, looking at the fiery paths of the bombs crossing each other in the air, at the flashes of the volleys, which for a moment illuminated the dark blue sky, and at the white powder smoke, and listening to the ever increasing sounds of the reports.

” Quel charmant coup d’œil ! eh ? ” said Kalugin, directing his guest’s attention to this really beautiful spectacle. ” Do you know, at times it is not possible to distinguish a bomb from a star.”

” Yes, I just now thought it was a star ; but it began to settle, — there it has burst. And that big star over there, what do you call it ? It is just like a bomb.”

” Do you know, I am so accustomed to these bombs that I am quite sure that in Russia all these will seem to me, in a starry night, to be bombs. One gets so used to things.”

” I wonder whether I had not better go to this sortie,” said Prince Gältsin, after a moment of silence.

” Don’t say that, friend ! Don’t even think of it ! I won’t let you go anyway,” answered Kalugin. ” You have time yet, friend ! “

” 8eriously ? So you think that I ought not to go ? Eh?”

At this time, a terrible cracking of muskets was heard immediately after the artillery roar, in the direction where these gentlemen were looking, and thousands

of small lights uninterruptedly flashed and gleamed all along the line.

” That’s it, the real thing ! ” said Kalugin. ” I cannot hear with equanimity this musketry-fire ; you know, it just gripes my soul. There is a hurrah ! ” he added, listening attentively to the distant drawling roar of hundreds of voices, “ ah-ah-ah,” which was borne to him from the bastion.

” Whose hurrah is this, theirs or ours ? “

“ I do not know ; it has now come to a hand-to-hand fight, for the firing has stopped.”

At that moment, an officer with a Cossack rode up to the porch beneath the window, and leaped from his horse.

” From where ? ”

” From the bastion. I must see the general.”

” Come on. Well, what is it ? ”

” They attacked the lodgments — took them — The French brought up immense reserves — attacked ours — there were only two battalions,” said, out of breath, the very officer who had come in the evening, with difficulty drawing his breath, but walking toward the door with perfect ease.

“ Well, did they retreat ? ” asked Gältsin.

“No!” angrily replied the officer. “The battalion came up in time, they were repulsed ; but the commander of the regiment was killed, and many officers, and I am ordered to ask for reinforcements.”

With these words he went with Kalugin to the general’s, whither we shall not follow him.

Five minutes later, Kalugin was seated on a Cossack horse (again in that peculiar quasi-Cossack pose, which, so I have observed, all the adjutants, for some reason or other, find especially agreeable), galloped away to the bastion, in order to transmit there certain orders, and to wait for some news of the result of the engagement. Prince Galtsin, under the influence of that strong agitation which the signs of an impending engagement produce on a spectator who does not take part in it, went out into the street, and began aimlessly to pace up and down.

VI.

Soldiers were carrying the wounded on stretchers and leading them by their arms. The street was completely dark ; only here and there lights glimmered in the windows of the hospital or of the quarters of officers sitting up late. From the bastions was borne the same roar of ordnance and of musketry cross-fires, and the same lights flashed against the black heaven. Occasionally could be heard the tramp of the horse of an orderly galloping past, the groan of a wounded soldier, the steps and conversation of the bearers, or a feminine voice of some frightened inhabitant who had gone out on the porch to take a look at the cannonade.

Among the latter was also our acquaintance Nikita, the old sailor woman, with whom he had in the meantime made peace, and her ten-year-old daughter.

” 0 Lord, and most holy Virgin J ” the old woman said to herself, with a sigh, looking at the bombs which incessantly flew from one side to the other, like balls of fire. ” Awful, just awful ! Oho ! There was nothing like this in the first bardment. You see where the accursed one has burst ? Right over our house in the village.”

” No, that is farther away. They all fall into Aunt Arinka’s garden,” said the girl.

“ And where, oh, where is now my master ? ” said Nikita, in a chanting voice, and still a little drunk. ” How I do love this master of mine ! I love him so that if — God forfend it ! — he should be killed in the accursed action, I do not know what I should do with myself, truly, aunty, upon my word ! Just let me tell you there is no master like him ! He is not to be mistaken for one of those that play cards here ! What are they ? Pshaw ! In short — ’’concluded Nikita, pointing to the lighted window of his master’s room, where Yunker Zhvadchéski had invited, in the absence of the staffcaptain, some guests for a carousal, in celebration of the cross which he had received ; these were Sub-Lieutenant Ugrovich and Sub-Lieutenant Nepshisétski, who was suffering from catarrh.

” The little stars, the little stars keep a-rolling ! ” the girl, gazing at the sky, broke the silence which followed after Nikita’s words. “ There, there another has come down. What is that for, mamma ? ”

” They will entirely demolish our cottage,” said the old woman, sighing, without replying to her daughter’s question.

« When we went there to-day with uncle, mamma,” continued the girl, in a singsong, ” such an awful cannonball was lying in the very room near the safe ; it must have gone through the vestibule, and have flown into the room — such an awfully big one that you could not lift it.”

” Whoever had a husband and money, has left,” said the old woman, ” but there, they have ruined the last little cottage I had. You see, you see how he is firing, that rascal ! Lord, Lord ! ”

” And as we were coming out, one bomb came a-flying and it burst, and it scattered the dirt, and it almost struck uncle and me with a splinter.”

VII.

Prince Gâltsin kept coming across more and more wounded soldiers on stretchers and afoot, supporting each other, and speaking loudly among themselves.

” How they did jump, my friends ! ” said, in a bass, a tall soldier, carrying two guns on his back. ” How they jumped and cried ‘ Allah ! Allah J’1 and began to crawl over each other. You kill some, and others come in their place, — there is nothing to be done. An endless — “

But at this point Galtsin stopped him.

” Are you from the bastion ? “

” Yes, your Honour ! “

” Well, what has happened there? Pell me! “

” What has happened? A might of them made the advance, your Honour, and they climbed the rampart, and that’s all. We have succumbed entirely, your Honour ! “

” How succumbed ? Did you not repel them ? “

“ How could we repel them, when his whole might came up against us ? They have disabled us all, and we are getting no reinforcements.”

The soldier was mistaken, because the trenches were in our possession ; but this is a peculiarity commonly observed : a soldier who is wounded in an action always considers it lost and dreadfully sanguinary.

” How is it, I was told they were beaten off ? ” Galtsin

1 Having fought with the Turks, our soldiers had become so accustomed to this cry of the enemy, that they ascribed it also to the French. — Author’s note.

said, with mortification. ” Maybe they were beaten off after you left ? How long ago did you leave ? ”

” Just lately, your Honour ! ” answered the soldier. ” I doubt it. The trenches must all be on his side — we have completely succumbed.”

” Well, how is it you are not ashamed ? To give up the trenches ! This is terrible ! ” said Galtsin, saddened by this indifference.

” What was to be done ? There was such a might ! ” grumbled the soldier.

” Oh, your Honour ! ” suddenly said a soldier on a stretcher which came alongside them. ” How could we help giving them up, when nearly all of us have been disabled ? If we had had the proper forces, we would not have given them up in a lifetime. But what was to be done ? I stabbed one, and then it struck me here — Oh, easier, friends, steadily, friends, walk more steadily ! Oh, oh, oh ! ” groaned the wounded man.

” Indeed, there seems to be too large a crowd coming back,” said Galtsin, again stopping the tall soldier with the two guns. ” What are you going for? Oh, there, stop !” .

The soldier stopped, and with his left hand raised his cap.

” Whither are you going, and for what ? ” he cried, sternly, to him. ” Good-for — “

But, walking up close to the soldier, he noticed that his right arm was bare above the elbow, and bloodstained.

” Wounded, your Honour ! ”

” How wounded ? “

” Here, I suppose, by a bullet,” said the soldier, pointing to the arm. “ I can’t tell what it was that knocked me in the head,” and, bending down, he showed his bloodstained and matted hair on the back of his head.

” Whose is the second gun ? “

” A French carbine, your Honour ! I took it away. Indeed, I should not have come away, if I did not have to accompany this soldier ; he might fall by himself,” he added, pointing to a soldier who was walking a little ahead of them, leaning on his gun, and with difficulty dragging along and moving his left leg.

Prince Gältsin suddenly felt dreadfully ashamed for his unjust suspicions. He was conscious of blushing; he turned his face away, and, without asking anything else of the wounded, or observing them, he walked to the ambulance hall.

Having with difficulty made his way on the porch, between wounded soldiers on foot and the bearers of stretchers, who went in with the wounded and came out with the dead, Gältsin went into the first room, cast a glance about him, and at once involuntarily turned around, and ran out into the street. It was too terrible !

VIII.

The large, high, dark hall, illuminated only by four or five candles, with which the surgeons went up to examine the wounded, was literally full. The bearers continually brought in wounded soldiers, placed them close to each other on the floor, which was already so crowded that the unfortunates were pressed together and soaked in the blood of each other, and went out for other men. The puddles of blood, which could be seen in unoccupied spots, the feverish breaths of several hundred men, and the exhalations of the men busy about the stretchers produced a peculiar, oppressive, dense, noisome stench, in which the candles in the different corners of the room flickered gloomily. The sounds of various groans, sighs, and snoring, interrupted now and then by a penetrating cry, hovered in the air. The Sisters of Mercy, with calm faces and with an expression not only of mere feminine, sickly, lachrymose compassion, but of active, practical sympathy, stepping here and there over the wounded, with medicaments, with water, bandages, and lint, flitted between the bloodstained overcoats and shirts. The surgeons, with rolled-up sleeves, kneeling before the wounded, near whom the assistants held the candles, examined, felt, and probed the wounds, in spite of the terrible groans and entreaties of the sufferers. One doctor was seated at a table near the door, and just as Gältsin entered the hall, he marked down No. 532.

” Ivan Bogäev, private of the third company of the 8. regiment, Fractura femuris complicata ! ” cried another,

from the end of the hall, feeling the shattered leg. “ Turn him around ! “

” Oh, oh, fathers, my fathers ! ” cried the soldier, entreating them not to touch him.

” Perforâtio capitis.”

” Semén Nefrédov, lieutenantcolonel of the N–—regi

ment of infantry. You must be patient a little, colonel, or else I can’t do anything. I will give you up,” said a third, rummaging with a hook in the brain of the unfortunate lieutenantcolonel.

” Oh, it is not necessary ! Oh, for the Lord’s sake, hurry up, hurry up, for the — ah-ah-ah ! “

” Perforatio pectoris — Sevastyàn Seredâ, private — of what regiment? However, don’t write down, moritur. Take him away,” said the doctor, walking away from the soldier, who was rolling his eyes, and having the rattle in his throat.

About forty soldiers of the ambulance, waiting for the loads of the dressed to be taken to the hospital, and of the dead to the chapel, were standing at the door, and, silently, now and then sighing, were looking at this spectacle.

IX.

On his way to the bastion, Kalugin met many wounded soldiers. Knowing from experience how badly such a spectacle affects in an engagement a man’s spirit, he not only did not stop to question them, but, on the contrary, endeavoured not to pay the least attention to them. At the foot of the hill he came across an orderly, who was galloping at full speed from the bastion.

” Zdbkin, Zdbkin ! Stop a minute ! ”

” Well, what is it ?”

” Where do you come from ? “

” From the lodgments.”

” Well, how is it there ? hot ? ”

” Oh, terrible ! “

And the orderly galloped away.

Indeed, although there were few volleys of musketry, the cannonade began with renewed vim and fury.

” Oh, it is bad ! ” thought Kalugin, experiencing a certain disagreeable sensation, and he, too, had a presentiment, that is, a very common thought, — the thought of death. But Kalugin was egoistical and endowed with wooden nerves, in short, he was what is called brave. He did not succumb to his first sentiment, and began to encourage himself ; he thought of a certain adjutant, of Napoleon’s, I think, who, having transmitted his orders, galloped up at full speed to Napoleon, with bleeding head.

” Vous êtes blessé ! ” said Napoleon to him. ” Je vous demande pardon, sire, je suis mortf and the adjutant fell down from his horse, and expired on the spot.

This incident seemed very nice to him, and he imagined himself a little that adjutant ; then he struck his horse with the whip, and assumed a still more dashing Cossack attitude, looked back at the Cossack, who, standing in his stirrups, was galloping behind him, and arrived as a valiant soldier at the place where he had to dismount from his horse. Here he found four soldiers, who were sitting on some stones, and smoking their pipes.

” What are you doing here ? ” he shouted to them.

“We have taken away a wounded man, your Honour, and so we are taking a little rest,” answered one of them, hiding his pipe behind his back, and doffing his cap.

“ Taking a rest, eh ? March to your places ! “

He walked with them along the trench, up the hill, meeting wounded soldiers at every step. When he had reached the top, he turned to the left, and, having taken a few steps in that direction, suddenly found himself alone. A splinter whizzed by close to him, and struck into the trench. Another bomb rose in front of him, and, it seemed, was flying straight upon him. All at once he felt terribly : he raced forward about five steps, and lay down flat on the ground. When the bomb exploded some distance away from him, he was dreadfully mortified, and he got up and looked around, to see whether anybody had noticed his fall ; but nobody was near.

When terror once enters your soul, it does not easily give way to another sensation. Having always boasted of never bending, he now walked up the trench with hurried step, and almost in a creeping posture. ” Ah, it is bad ! ” he thought, stumbling, “ I shall certainly be killed,” and, feeling how heavily he was breathing, and how the perspiration stood out on his whole body, he was amazed at himself, but no longer tried to overcome his feeling.

Suddenly somebody’s steps were heard in front of him. He immediately straightened up, raised his head, and, briskly clanking his sabre, went ahead with less hurried step. He did not recognize himself. When he came upon an officer of sappers and a sailor, who were walking toward him, and the first called out to him, ” Lie down ! ” pointing to the bright point of a bomb, which, approaching brighter and brighter, and faster and faster, struck the ground near the trench, he involuntarily bent his head a little, under the influence of the terrified voice, and walked on.

“ What a brave fellow ! ” said the sailor, who was calmly watching the falling bomb, and with an experienced eye at once figured out that its splinters could not reach the trench. ” He does not even want to lie down.”

There were but a few paces left for Kalugin to make across the small square, up to the blindage of the commander of the bastion, when he was again overcome by darkness and a foolish terror ; his heart beat more strongly, the blood rushed to his head, and he had to exert an effort over himself, in order to run as far as the blindage.

” Why are you so out of breath ? ” said the general, when he communicated the orders to him.

” 1 was walking very fast, your Excellency ! “

“ Don’t you want a glass of wine ? ”

Kalugin drank a glass of wine, and lighted a cigarette. The engagement was over ; only a heavy cannonade was kept up on both sides. In the blindage sat General N–-,

the commander of the bastion, and some six other officers, among whom was also Praskukhin, and they were discussing various details of the action. Sitting in this cosy room, with its blue wall-paper, with a divan, a bed, a table, on which lay papers, with a clock and an image, before which a lamp was burning ; looking at these signs of life, and at the huge yard beams, of which the ceiling was formed ; and listening to the cannonading, which in the blindage appeared feeble, Kalugin absolutely could not comprehend how it was he had allowed himself twice to be overcome by such an unpardonable weakness. He

was angry with himself, and he was anxious for some danger, in order to test himself.

” I am glad you are here, captain,” he said to a naval officer, in the overcoat of an officer of the staff, with long moustache and the Cross of St. George, who had just entered into the blindage, to ask the general for some workmen to mend in his battery two embrasures which had caved in. ” The general has ordered me to find out,” continued Kalugin, when the commander of the battery was through with the general, ” whether your ordnance can discharge canister-shot along the trench ? “

” Only one gun will do it,” the captain replied, gloomily.

” Still, let us go and look.”

The captain frowned, and angrily cleared his throat.

“ I have been standing there all night, and have come away to take a little rest,” he said. ” Can’t you go down yourself ? My assistant, Lieutenant Karts, is there, and he will show you around.”

The captain had for six months commanded this, one of the most perilous batteries, and had passed his time uninterruptedly in the bastion, ever since the beginning of the siege, when as yet there were no blindages, and he had among sailors a reputation for bravery. Consequently his refusal startled and surprised Kalugin. ” A fine reputation ! ” he thought.

” Well, then I will go by myself, if you will permit,” he said, in a slightly derisive tone, to the captain, who, however, did not pay the least attention to his words.

Kalugin did not consider that he had at different times, taken all together, passed fifty hours in the bastions, whereas the captain had lived there for six months. Kalugin was urged on by vanity, by the desire to shine, by the hope of earning a reward and a reputation, and by the charm of the risk, while the captain had long passed through all that: at first he had been vain, had done daring deeds, courted danger, hoped for rewards and for a reputation, and even had obtained them, but now all these impelling causes had lost their power with him, and he looked at matters quite differently. He promptly executed his duties, but comprehending well how very few chances of life there were left for him, after six months in the bastion, he no longer risked these chances without imperative necessity, so that the young Leutenant, who had joined the battery about a week ago, and who now was showing Kalugin around, unnecessarily vying with him in thrusting his head forward through the embrasures and walking out on the banquettes, seemed ten times more brave than the captain.

Having inspected the battery, Kalugin, on his way back to the blindage, stumbled in the darkness on the general, who with his orderlies was going to the watch-tower.

” Captain Praskukhin ! ” said the general, ” please go down to the right lodgment, and tell the second battalion of the M–-regiment, who are working there, to leave

the work, and to walk away noiselessly and join their regiment, which is standing in reserve at the foot of the hill — You understand ? Take them yourself down to the regiment.”

“ Yes, sir ! “

Praskukhin ran at full gallop to the lodgment.

The firing was growing less frequent.

X.

“ Is this the second battalion of the M–—regiment ? “

asked Praskukhin, having reached the place, and stumbling against soldiers who were carrying dirt in bags.

” Yes, sir.”

“ Where is the commander ? “

Surmising that the commander of the company was wanted, Mikhaylov crawled out of his pit, and, taking Praskukhin for the chief, he went up to him, with his hand at his visor.

” The general has commanded — you — please go — as fast as possible — and, above all, softly — back — no, not back, but to the reserve,” said Praskukhin, looking askance in the direction of the enemy’s fires.

Having recognized Praskukhin, dropping his hand, and having grasped the whole matter, Mikhaylov gave the order, and the soldiers of the battalion began to stir,- to pick up their muskets, to put on their overcoats, and to move.

He who has not experienced it cannot form an idea of the pleasure which a man feels when he leaves, after three hours of bombardment, such a perilous place as the lodgments. In these three hours Mikhaylov had more than once, not without reason, regarded his end as inevitable, and he had become accustomed to his conviction that he should certainly be killed, and that he no longer belonged to this world. And yet it cost him a great effort to keep his legs from running, when he left the lodgments at the head of his company, abreast with Praskukhin.

” Goodbye ! ” said to him a major, the commander of another battalion that was to remain in the lodgments, and with whom he had shared the cheese, while sitting in the pit, near the breastworks. ” I wish you a happy journey ! “

” And I wish you luck in your position. It seems, it has quieted down now.”

But no sooner had he said this than the enemy, evidently having noticed the motion in the lodgments, began to fire offener and offener. Our men began to return the fire, and a furious cannonading began once more. The stars were shining high, but not brilliantly. The night was pitch-dark ; only the flashes from the volleys and the exploding bombs momentarily lighted up things. The soldiers walked fast in silence, and involuntarily raced with each other ; between the uninterrupted peals of the cannonade nothing was heard but the even sound of the steps on the dry road, the clattering of the bayonets, or the sigh and prayer of some soldier, ” 0 Lord, O Lord, what is this ?” Now and then could be heard the groan of a wounded man, and the cries, “The stretcher!” (In the company which Mikhaylov commanded, twenty-six men were put out of action by one artillery fire.) There was a flash on the distant gloomy horizon, the sentry cried from the bastion, “ Can-non ! ” and a ball, whizzing above the company, tore up the ground and scattered stones.

” The devil take it ! How slowly they are walking,” thought Praskukhin, continually looking back, as he walked at Mikhaylov’s side. “Truly, I had better run ahead. I have transmitted the order — Still, no ; they might later say that I am a coward ! Come what may, I will walk with them.”

“ Why does he keep at my side ? ” thought Mikhaylov, for his part. “ So far as I have observed, he always brings misfortune. There it flies, straight upon us, it seems.”

Having made a few hundred steps, they stumbled on

Kalugin, who, briskly clattering his sabre, was walking to the lodgments, in order to find out, by the general’s command, how the works were proceeding there. But, when he met Mikhaylov, he thought that, rather than go himself under this terrible fire, which, besides, he had not been ordered to do, he would get the details from an officer who had been there. Indeed, Mikhaylov told him everything about the works. Having walked a short distance with him, Kalugin turned into the trench which led to the blindage.

“Well, what is the news?” asked an officer who was sitting all alone in the room, at supper.

” Nothing. It seems, there will be no further engagement.”

“How not? On the contrary, the general has just gone once more to the watch-tower. Another regiment has come. There it is — you hear ? Again the musketry fire. Don’t go. Why should you ? ” added the officer, noticing the motion which Kalugin had made.

“ By rights I ought certainly to be there,” thought Kalugin, ” but I .have to-day exposed myself enough to danger ; it is a terrible fire.”

” That’s so, I will wait for them here,” he said.

And, indeed, some twenty minutes later the general returned with the officers who were about him ; among them was also Yunker Baron Pest, but not Praskukhin. The attack had been repulsed, and the lodgments were occupied by us.

Having received the exact information, Kalugin walked away with Pest from the blindage.

XI.

“ Your overcoat is bloody ; have you really taken part in the hand-to-hand fight ? ” Kalugin asked him.

” Oh, it is terrible ! Just imagine — “

And Pest began to tell how he had led his company, how the commander of the company had been killed, how he had stabbed a Frenchman, and how the affair would have been lost, if it had not been for him.

The foundation for the story, that the commander of the company had been killed, and that Pest himself had killed a Frenchman, was true ; but, in giving the details, the yunker was drawing on his imagination and bragging.

He was involuntarily bragging, because during the whole action he was moving in such a mist and oblivion that everything which had occurred seemed to him to have occurred somewhere, at some time, and with somebody. He very naturally tried to reconstruct these details advantageously to himself. This is the way it really happened :

The battalion to which the yunker had been detailed for the sortie had been for a couple of hours under fire near a wall ; then the commander of the battalion in front said something, — the commanders of the companies began to stir, the battalion moved, emerged from behind the breastworks, and, having walked about one hundred paces, stopped, and drew up in company columns. Pest was ordered to take up a position on the right flank of the second company.

Without being able to give himself an account where

he was, or why, the yunker took up his position, and, with bated breath and with a cold drill running down his spine, unconsciously gazed into the distance ahead of him, expecting something terrible to happen. However, he did not feel so frightened, for there was no firing then, but he felt strange and queer, when he reflected that he was outside the fortress, in the field. Again the commander of the battalion in front said something. Again the officers uttered something in whispers, as they communicated their orders, and the black wall of the first company suddenly crouched. The order was given to he down flat. The second company, too, lay down, and Pest, in getting down, pricked his hand against some thorny plant. The commander of the second company was the only one who did not lie down. His short figure, with the unsheathed sword, which he kept waving, moved up and down in front of the company, talking all the time.

“ Boys ! Show yourselves brave fellows, I tell you ! Don’t fire your guns, but run the canaille down with your bayonets ! When I shout ‘ Hurrah ! ‘ you after me, and no standing back — The main thing is — all as one — we will give a good account of ourselves, we won’t bungle ! Hey, boys ? For the Tsar, our father ! ”

” What is the name of the commander of your company ? ” Pest asked a yunker who was lying abreast with him. ” What a brave fellow ! “

” Yes, as always before an action — ” answered the yunker. ” His name is Lisinkovski.”

At this moment, there was a sudden flash right in front of the company ; there was a terrible roar which deafened the whole company ; high up in the air stones and splinters rustled (it was at least fifty seconds later that a stone fell from above and broke a soldier’s leg). It was a bomb from an elevation gun, and the fact that it struck the company proved that the French had observed the column.

« Go ahead with your bombs ! Just let us get at you, and you will feel the three-edged Russian bayonet, accursed one ! ” cried the commander of the company, so loud that the commander of the battalion was compelled to order him to keep quiet and be less noisy.

Immediately after this, the first company rose, and then the second. They were ordered to fix their bayonets, and the battalion advanced. Pest was so terrified that he was absolutely unconscious of time and place, and of what was going on. He moved like a drunken man. Then suddenly a million fires flashed on all sides, and there was a ping and a crash. He shouted and ran somewhere, because everybody else was running and shôuting. Then he stumbled and fell down on something. It was the commander of the company, who had been wounded at the head of his company, and who seized the yunker’s leg, taking him for a Frenchman. Then when he had torn his leg away and had got up, a man reeled back against him and almost knocked him down once more ; another man cried, ” Stab him ! What are you gazing at ? ” Somebody took the gun, and ran the bayonet through something soft. ” Ah Dieu ! ” somebody cried in a terrible, penetrating voice, and it was only then that Pest comprehended that he had transfixed a Frenchman. Cold sweat stood out on his body, he shuddered, as in an ague, and he threw down the gun. But this lasted but a moment; it immediately occurred to him that he was a hero. He grasped his gun, and, crying ” Hurrah ! ” ran with the throng away from the killed Frenchman. After running some twenty paces, he arrived at the trench. There were our men and the commander of the battalion.

” I have stabbed one!” he said to the commander of the battalion.

” You are a brave fellow, baron ! “

XII.

” Do you know, Praskukhin has been killed,” said Pest, accompanying Kalugin, who was going home.

” Impossible ! ”

” Most certainly. I have seen him myself.”

” Goodbye ! I must hurry.”

” I am well satisfied,” thought Kalugin, on his way back. “For the first time a bit of luck, while I am the officer of the day. It is a fine affair ! I am alive and hale ; there will be a fine report, and I shall assuredly get a gold sword. And I deserve it.”

Having reported to the general all that was necessary, he went to his room, to which Prince G alt sin had returned long ago, in expectation of him ; he was reading a book which he had found on Kalugin’s table.

It gave Kalugin remarkable pleasure to feel himself at home and out of danger. Having donned his nightgown and lain down on the bed, he told Gältsin all the particulars of the engagement, narrating them, naturally, from a point of view from which these details would prove that he, Kalugin, was a very fine and brave officer ; this, it seems to me, it was superfluous to hint at, because all knew that anyway, and had no right and no cause to doubt it, unless, perhaps, the deceased Captain Praskukhin, who, though he had regarded it as a privilege to link arms with Kalugin, had only the day before told a friend of his in secret that Kalugin was a nice man, but that, between you and me, he hated dreadfully to go to the bastions.

Praskukhin, who was walking abreast with Mikhaylov, had just left Kalugin, and was beginning to revive a little, as he approached a less dangerous spot, when he saw a flash gleaming brightly behind him, and heard the shout of the sentry, ” Mortar ! ” and the words of one of the soldiers walking behind, ” It will fly straight to the bastion ! ”

Mikhaylov looked back. The bright point of the bomb had just stopped in his zenith, when by its position it was impossible to determine its direction. But this lasted only a moment : faster and faster, nearer and nearer, so that the sparks of the fuse could be seen and the fatal whistling could be heard, the bomb was settling down straight over the battalion.

” Lie down,” cried somebody’s voice.

Mikhaylov and Praskukhin lay down on the ground. Praskukhin closed his eyes and only heard the bomb’s thud against the hard earth near by. A second passed, — it seemed an hour, — and the bomb did not explode. Praskukhin was frightened : had he been cowardly for nothing ? Maybe the bomb had fallen some distance oft’, and he only imagined that the fuse was hissing near him. He opened his eyes, and it gave him pleasure to see Mikhdylov lying near his very feet, motionless on the ground. Just then his eyes for a moment met the burning fuse of the bomb spinning around within three feet from him.

Cold terror, which excluded all other thoughts and feelings, — terror seized his whole being. He covered his face with his hands.

Another second passed, — a second during which the whole world of feeling, thoughts, hopes, and recollections flashed through his imagination.

” Whom will it kill, — me or Mikhaylov ? or both of us ? And if me, where will it be ? In the head, — then all is ended ; but if in the leg, they will amputate it, and

I will insist on their giving me chloroform, and I may still live. And, maybe, it will kill only Mikhaylov : then I will tell how we walked abreast, and how I was bespattered by blood, when he was killed. No, it is nearer to me — I will be the man ! “

Here he thought of the twelve roubles which he was owing Mikhaylov, and of another debt in St. Petersburg, which he ought to have paid long ago ; the gipsy melody which he had sung the night before passed through his mind. The woman whom he had loVed appeared before his imagination in a cap with lilac ribbons ; he recalled a man who had insulted him five years before, and whose insult he had not yet avenged, — though inseparably from these and from a thousand other recollections, the feeling of the present, the expectation of death, did not leave him for an instant.

« Still it may not burst,” he thought, and, with desperate determination, wished to open his eyes. But at this moment, even while his lids were closed, his eyes were startled by a red fire ; with a terrible crash something struck his chest ; he ran, tripped over his sabre, which was dangling between his legs, and fell on his side.

“Thank God! I am only contused,” was his first thought, and he wanted to touch his breast with his hands ; but his arms felt as though fettered, and his head was as if in a vise. In his eyes flashed the soldiers, and unconsciously he counted them : ” One, two, three, soldiers ; and the one with his overcoat rolled under him is an officer,” he thought. Then a lightning flashed in his eyes, and he was wondering what it was they were firing, — a mortar or a cannon. Then they fired again ; and there were more soldiers : five, six, seven soldiers passed by. He was suddenly horrified at the thought that they might crush him. He wanted to cry out that he was bruised ; but his mouth was so parched that his tongue cleaved to the palate, and terrible thirst tormented him. He felt that it was wet near his breast ; this sensation of wetness reminded him of water, and he wanted to drink even that which caused that moisture.

” I must have abrased the flesh as I fell,” he thought, and, beginning more and more to succumb to the fear that the soldiers, who continued flashing past him, would crush him, he collected all his strength, and wanted to shout, ” Take me ! ” But instead of this he groaned so terribly that he was horrified at the sound he himself made. Then some red fires leaped in his eyes, — and he thought that the soldiers were putting rocks on him ; the fires leaped about ever less frequently, and the rocks pressed him more and more. He made an effort to push aside the rocks, and he no longer saw, nor heard, nor thought, nor felt. He had been instantly killed by a splinter that had struck his chest.

XIII.

When Mikhaylov saw the bomb, he fell to the ground, and in the two seconds during which the bomb lay unexploded, he, like Praskukhin, thought and felt immeasurably much. He mentally prayed to God, and kept repeating, ” Thy will be done ! What made me go into military service ? ” and at the same time he thought : ” And there I have gone over to the infantry, in order to take part in the campaign. Would it not have been better if I had remained in the regiment of uhlans in the city of T–-, and passed my time with my friend Natäsha ?

And this is what I have instead ! ” And he began to count : ” One, two, three, four,” making up his mind that if it exploded on an even number, he would live, but if on an uneven number, he would be killed. ” Everything is ended ; I am killed,” he thought, when the bomb exploded (he forgot whether it was on an even or on an uneven number), and he felt a blow and a severe pain in his head. ” 0 Lord, forgive me my sins ! ” he said, swaying his hands, and he rose, and fell down senseless on his back.

His first sensation, when he awoke, was that of blood flowing down his nose, and a pain in his head, which was growing fainter. ” My soul is departing,” he thought, ” and what will it be there ? O Lord, receive my soul in peace ! But one thing is strange,” he reflected ; ” namely, that, dying, I so clearly hear the steps of the soldiers, and the sounds of firing.”

” A stretcher, ho, there, — the captain has been killed ! ” cried over his head a voice, which he involuntarily recognized as that of his drummer Ignatev.

Somebody took him by the shoulders. He tried to open his eyes, and saw overhead the dark-blue sky, groups of stars, and two bombs flying above him, and overtaking each other ; he saw Ignatev, the soldiers with the stretcher and their guns, the rampart, the trenches, and suddenly persuaded himself that he was not yet in the other world.

He was lightly wounded in the head by a stone. His very first impression was like regret : he had so well and so calmly prepared himself for his transition to the other world, that he was unpleasantly affected by his return to reality, with its bombs, trenches, and blood ; his second impression was an unconscious joy that he was alive, and his third, a desire to get away from the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer tied his commander’s head with a handkerchief, and, supporting him, led him to the ambulance.

” Whither am I going, and wherefore ? ” thought the staffcaptain, when he had collected his senses a little. ” My duty is to stay with the company, and not to go ahead, the more so since the company will soon be out of the firing line,” a voice whispered to him.

” It is not necessary, my friend,” he said, pulling his arm away from the obliging drummer. ” I am not going to the ambulance ; I will stay with the company.”

And he turned back.

” Your Honour, it would be better if you had your wound dressed properly,” said Ignätev. “ In the heat of the moment, you may think it of no significance ; and it might get worse. And this is such a hot place, — really, your Honour ! ”

Mikhäylov hesitated for a moment, and would have followed Ignätev’s advice, if he had not suddenly thought

of the many severely wounded at the ambulance. ” It may be the doctors will only laugh at my scratch,” thought the staffcaptain, and resolutely, in spite of the drummer’s persuasion, he went back to his company.

” Where is Orderly Praskukhin, who was walking with me ? ” he asked the ensign who was leading the company when they met.

” I do not know — I think he was killed,” the ensign replied, reluctantly.

” Killed or wounded ? How is it you do not know ? Was he not going with us ? And why did you not take him ? ”

” There was no time for that, the place was so hot ! “

“How could you do it, Mikhail Ivànych?” said Mikhaylov, angrily. “ How could you abandon him, if he was alive ; and even if he has been killed, his body ought to have been taken along.”

” How can he be alive, when I tell you that I went up myself and took a look at him ! ” said the ensign. “ Really, I am satisfied if I can get my men away. Look at the canaille ! They are now discharging cannonballs at us,” he added.

Mikhaylov sat down, and clasped his head, which began to pain him terribly from the motion.

” No, we ought to go down and fetch him. Maybe he is still alive,” said Mikhaylov. ” It is our duty, Mikhail Ivanych ! ”

Mikhail Ivanych made no reply.

” He did not take him at the time, and now I must send the soldiers by themselves. But how am I to send them ? Under this terrible fire they will only be uselessly killed,” thought Mikhaylov.

” Boys ! We ought to go back, and pick up the officer who lies wounded there in the ditch,” he said, neither very loudly, nor imperatively, for he felt that it would be disagreeable for the soldiers to execute this order,— and, indeed, since he did not address any one in particular, no one stepped forward to carry it out.

” On the other hand, he may be dead, and then it is not worth while to subject my men to useless danger ; I am the only one to be blamed for having neglected him. I will go there myself, and find out whether he is alive. That is my duty,” said Mikhaylov to himself.

“ Mikhail Ivanych ! you lead the company, and I will catch up with you,” he said, and, raising his overcoat with one hand, and with the other continually fingering the image of St. Mitrofani, in whom he had special faith, he ran at full speed up the trench.

Having convinced himself that Praskukhin was dead, Mikhaylov dragged himself back, breathing heavily, and holding with his hand the loosened bandage and his head, which now began to pain him severely. The battalion was already in its place at the foot of the hill, and almost beyond the firing line, when Mikhaylov caught up with them. I say, almost beyond the firing fine, because now and then a stray bomb reached even this place.

“To-morrow I must go down to the ambulance to register,” thought the staffcaptain, while the surgeon’s assistant was dressing his wound.

XIV.

Hundreds of bloodstained bodies of men, who two hours before had been full of all sorts of elevated and petty hopes and desires, were now lying with stark limbs on the dew-covered, blooming valley, which separated the bastion from the trench, and on the even floor of the chapel for the dead in Sevastopol; hundreds of men, with curses and prayers on their parched lips, were creeping, rolling around, and groaning, some between the corpses in the blooming valley, others on stretchers, on cots, and on the bloodstained floor of the ambulance ! And just as in former days gleamed the morning glow over Mount Sapun, paled the twinkling stars, rose a white mist from the dark, roaring sea, crimsoned the dawn in the east, scudded the long purple cloudlets along the bright azure horizon, and just as in former days swam ‘ out the mighty, beautiful luminary, portending joy, love, and happiness to all living things.

XV.

On the following evening the music of the chasseurs again was playing in the boulevard, and again officers, yunkers, soldiers, and young women strolled leisurely near the pavilion, and along the lower avenues of blooming, fragrant white acacias.

Kalugin, Prince Gâltsin, and a colonel were walking with linked arms near the pavilion, and discussing the engagement of the previous night. The guiding thread of the conversation was, as it always is in similar cases, not the engagement itself, but the part which each had taken in the engagement. Their faces and the sounds of their voices were expressive of solemnity, even sadness, as though the losses of the day before powerfully affected and grieved them ; but in truth, since none of them had lost a very close friend, this expression of sadness was + merely of an official nature, a something which they regarded it as their duty to evince. On the contrary, Kalugin and the colonel would have been delighted to see such an engagement every day, if they could earn every day a gold sabre and a major-generalship, even though they were very nice people. I like to hear a conqueror, who, to satisfy his ambition, leads millions to destruction, called a monster. But get the confession of Ensign Petrushov and of Sub-Lieutenant Antonov, and so forth ; every one of them is a Napoleon in miniature, a monster in miniature, and forthwith ready to start a battle, to kill a hundred people, merely to get an additional star, or one-third additional pay.

“No, you must pardon me,” said the colonel, “it began at first on the left flank. I was there.”

” Perhaps,” replied Kalugin. “ I was chiefly in the right flank ; I went there twice : once, to find the general, and the second time, for no special reason, just to look at the lodgments. It was a hot place, I tell you.”

” I am sure Kalugin knows,” Prince Gâltsin said to the colonel. ” Do you know, V–- told me to-day about

you. He said you were a gallant officer.”

“But the losses, the losses were terrible,” said the colonel. “ In my regiment four hundred men were put out of action. I marvel how it is I got away from there alive.”

Just then, at the other end of the boulevard and coming toward these gentlemen, appeared the form of Mikhaylov with his head bandaged.

“ Are you wounded, captain ? ” said Kalugin.

“ Yes, a little, from a stone,” answered Mikhaylov.

“ Est-ce gue le pavillon est baissé déjà ? ” asked Prince Gâltsin, glancing at the staffcaptain’s cap, and addressing no one in particular.

“ Non, pas encore,” replied Mikhaylov, wishing to show that he knew how to speak French.

” Are they still having a truce ? ” said Gâltsin, addressing him in Prussian, as much as to say, so the staffcaptain thought, “ It will, no doubt, be hard for you to speak French, so would it not be better to talk to you simply ? ” And, with this, the adjutants went away from him. The staffcaptain felt exceedingly lonely, just as on the day before, and, exchanging greetings with various gentlemen, — some he did not care to meet, others he could not make up his mind to approach, — sat down near the monument of Kazârski, and lighted a cigarette.

Baron Pest, too, came to the boulevard. He said that he had been present at the truce, that he had spoken with some French officers, and that one French officer had said to him, “ If it had been dark another half-hour, the lodgments would have been retaken,” and that he had answered him, “ Monsieur ! I shall not deny it, in order not to accuse you of a falsehood,” and how well that was said, and so on.

In reality, though he had been present at the truce, he had had no chance to say there anything in particular, no matter how anxious he had been to talk to the French (for it is so jolly to talk with Frenchmen). Yunker Baron Pest had walked up and down the line for quite awhile, asking the Frenchmen who were near him, “ Of what regiment are you ? ” to which they answered him, and that was all. But when he went a little too far into the line, a French sentry, who did not suspect that this soldier knew any French, cursed him in the third person : “ That accursed one is coming to look at our works.” Finding nothing of interest at the truce, Yunker Baron Pest rode home, and on his way back thought out the French phrases which he was now telling. On the boulevard were also Captain Zotov, who was talking in a loud voice, and Captain Obzhogov, dishevelled in appearance, and an artillery captain, who did not seek anybody’s favour, and a yunker, fortunate in love, and all the persons of the day before, and all of them with the same eternal impulses. There was only lacking Praskukhin, Neférdov, and some others, whom hardly any one now remembered, or thought of, though their bodies had not yet been washed, attired, and buried in the ground.

XVI.

In our bastion and in the French trench are floating white flags, and between them, in the blooming valley, lie in heaps, without boots, in gray and blue uniforms, the disfigured corpses, which workmen are carrying away and placing on wagons. The odour of corpses fills the air. From Sevastopol and from the French camp, masses of people have poured out to behold this spectacle, and with eager and benign curiosity they rush toward each other.

Let us hear what these people are saying one to another.

Here, in a circle of Russians and Frenchmen, who have gathered around him, a youthful officer, speaking poor though intelligible French, is looking at a cartridge-box of the guards.

” What is this bird for ? “

” Because it is a cartridge-box of a regiment of the guards, sir, which bears the imperial eagle.”

” And are you of the guards ? ”

” Pardon, sir, I am of the sixth of the line.”

” And this — where bought ? ” asks the officer, pointing to a yellow, wooden cigar-holder, in which the Frenchman is smoking a cigarette.

“At Balaklava, sir! It is not much, just of palmwood.”

” Pretty ! ” says the officer, being guided in his conversation, not so much by his wishes, as by the words which he chances to know.

” If you will have the kindness to keep this as a memento of this meeting, you will oblige me.”

And the polite Frenchman blows out the cigarette, and hands the cigar-holder to the officer, with a slight bow. The officer gives him his, and all persons in the group, both Frenchmen and Russians, seem to be very much pleased, and smile.

Then a dashing infantryman, in pink shirt, and overcoat hanging over his shoulders, in company with other soldiers, who, with their hands behind their backs, with merry, curious faces, stand behind him, walks up to a Frenchman, and asks for a light for his pipe. The Frenchman takes a few puffs, pokes his little pipe, and pours some burning tobacco on the Russian’s.

” Tobacco boun” says the soldier in the pink shirt, and the spectators smile.

” Yes, good tobacco, Turkish tobacco,” says the Frenchman. ” And with you, Russian tobacco ? Good ? “

“ Russian boun,” says the soldier in the pink shirt, whereat the crowd roll with laughter. ” French not bozm, bon jour, moussic ! ” says the soldier in the pink shirt, discharging at once his whole supply of linguistic knowledge, and tapping the Frenchman’s abdomen, and all laugh. The Frenchmen laugh, too.

“ They are no beauties, those stupid Russians,” says a zouave in the throng of Frenchmen.

” What are they laughing about ? ” says another, a swarthy fellow, with an Italian pronunciation, coming up to our soldiers.

“Caftan boun” says the dashing soldier, examining the embroidered coat-skirts of the zouave, and again they laugh.

” Don’t walk out of your line, back to your places, sacré nom !” shouts a French corporal, and the soldiers disperse in obvious displeasure.

And here, in a circle of French officers, our young

cavalry officer is making himself conspicuous. They are talking about a certain Count Sazonov, ” whom I used to know well, sir,” says a French officer with one epaulet, ” he is one of those real Russian counts, such as we love.”

” There is a Sazonov, whom I used to know,” says the cavalryman, ” but he is no count, so far as I know. He is a short, dark-complexioned man, about your age.”

” That’s it, sir, that’s he. Oh, how I would like to see that dear count. If you see him, please give him my regards. Captain Latour,” he says, bowing.

” Is not this a terrible business we are in ? It was hot work last night, was it not ? ” says the cavalryman, trying to keep up the conversation, and pointing to the dead bodies.

” Oh, sir, it is terrible ! But what brave fellows your soldiers are, what brave fellows ! It is a pleasure to fight with such brave soldiers.”

” I must confess yours are themselves up to snuff,” says the cavalryman, bowing, and imagining that he is a really clever fellow.

Enough of that.

Let us rather look at this ten-year-old boy, who, in an old cap, no doubt his father’s, in shoes worn on bare feet, and in nankeen trousers, held up by one suspender, had gone beyond the rampart at the very beginning of the truce, and has all the time been walking through the ravine, looking with dull curiosity at the French and at the dead bodies lying on the ground, and collecting wild blue flowers, with which this valley is strewn. On his way home with a large nosegay, he, closing his nose against the odour which the wind is wafting to him, stops near a heap of piled up bodies, and for a long time gazes at one headless corpse, which is nearest to him. After standing for awhile, he moves up and touches with his foot the outstretched stiff arm of the corpse. The hand shakes a little. He touches it a second time, a little more boldly. The hand shakes again, and stops in the old place. The boy suddenly shrieks, hides his face in the flowers, and runs away to the fortress at full speed.

Yes, in the fortress and in the trench float white flags ; the blooming valley is filled with dead bodies ; the fair sun descends toward the blue sea ; and the blue sea, billowing, glitters under the golden rays of the sun. Thousands of people are crowding, looking, talking, and smiling to each other. And will not these people, — these Christians who profess one great religion of love and renunciation, — seeing what they have done, suddenly kneel down in repentance before Him who, having given them life, has implanted in the soul of every one, together with the terror of death, the love of goodness and beauty? And will they not embrace each other as brothers, with tears of joy and happiness ? The white flags are put away, and again the instruments of death and suffering shriek, again flows innocent blood, and are heard groans and curses.

I have said what I had intended to say this time. But I am assailed by heavy doubt. Perhaps I ought not to have said this ; perhaps that which I have said belongs to one of those evil truths which, lurking unconsciously in each soul, ought not to be proclaimed, in order not to become noxious, like the dregs of wine, which must not be shaken, lest it be spoiled.

Where is the expression of evil which one must avoid ? Where is the expression of goodness in this narrative which should be emulated ? Who is its villain, and who its hero ? All are good, and all are bad.

Neither Kalugin, with his brilliant bravery, bravoure de gentilhomme, and his vanity, prime mover of all his actions, nor Praskukhin, an empty-headed, harmless man, though fallen on the field of battle for his faith, his throne, and his country, nor Mikhaylov, with his bashfulness, nor

Pest, a child without firm convictions and rules, can be the villains or the heroes of the narrative.

The hero of my narrative, whom I love with all the powers of my soul, whom I have endeavoured to reproduce in all his beauty, and who has always been, who is, and always will be beautiful, is truth.

IN AUGUST, 1855

I.

Toward the end of August, an officer’s vehicle (that peculiar vehicle, not to be met with elsewhere, which forms something intermediate between a Jewish calash, a Russian cart, and a hamper-wagon) was driving at a walk through the dense, hot dust of the Sevastopol highway, which runs through a ravine between Duvdnka and Bakhchisaray.

In the front of the vehicle squatted an orderly, in a nankeen coat and what had formerly been an officer’s cap, but now was crushed into a soft shape, pulling at the reins; behind, on bundles and bales covered with a soldier’s mantle, sat an infantry officer in a summer overcoat. The officer was, so far as one could judge of him in his sitting posture, not very tall of stature, but exceedingly broad, and that not so much from shoulder to shoulder, as from his breast to his back ; he was broad and stocky, and his neck and nape were well developed and puffed up. A waist, that is, a recess in the middle of his body, he did not have, nor was there any belly ; on the contrary, he was rather spare, particularly in the face, which was covered by an unhealthy sallow sunburn. His face would have been handsome but for a certain bloated appearance and the large soft wrinkles, not of old age, which flowed together and magnified his features, and gave the whole countenance an expression of staleness and coarseness. His eyes were small, hazel, exceedingly vivacious, even bold ; his moustache very thick, but not broad, and gnawed at the ends ; and his chin, and particularly his cheeks, were covered with an exceedingly heavy, thick black beard of two days’ standing.

The officer had been wounded on the 10th of May by a splinter in his head, on which he was still wearing a bandage, and now, having felt completely well for a week, he was returning from the hospital at Simferopol to his regiment, which was stationed somewhere in the direction from which the firing was heard, — but whether in Sevastopol itself, on the Northern side, or at Inkerman, he had not been able to get any reliable information.

The firing was heard very distinctly, frequently, and, it seemed, very close, particularly whenever the mountains were not in the way, or the wind carried the sounds. Now it appeared as though an explosion were shaking the whole air, and causing him to tremble involuntarily ; now less loud sounds followed each other in rapid succession, like the roll of a drum, interrupted now and then by a sharp roar; or everything blended into crackling peals, resembling the thunderclaps, when the storm is at its worst, and the rain has just started down in sheets.. Everybody was saying that the bombardment was terrible, and so, indeed, it appeared from the sound.

The officer urged his orderly to drive faster: he evidently wanted to get there as soon as possible. On the way they met a large caravan of Russian peasant carts that had taken provision to Sevastopol, and that now were returning, loaded with sick and wounded soldiers in gray overcoats, sailors in black cloaks, volunteers in red fezes, and reserve militiamen with beards. The officer’s vehicle was compelled to stop in the dense, immovable cloud of dust raised by the caravan, and the officer, blinking and scowling from the dust which filled his eyes and ears, glanced at the faces of the sick and the wounded, who were moving past him.

“That feeble soldier is from our company,” said the orderly, turning to his master, and pointing to a cart filled with wounded men, which had just come abreast of them.

In the front of the cart sat in a sideways posture a long-bearded Russian, in a lambskin cap. Holding the butt of his whip with his elbow, he was plaiting the lash. Behind him five or six soldiers were jostled in all kinds of attitudes in the bed of the wagon. One, with his arm in a sling, with his overcoat thrown over his shirt, though pale and haggard, was sitting upright in the middle of the vehicle ; he put his hand to his cap, when he saw the officer, but, evidently recalling that he was wounded, he pretended to be scratching his head. Another, alongside him, was lying in the bottom of the cart ; all that was visible were his two hands with which he held on to the rounds of the cart, and his raised knees that swayed in all directions like mops. The third, with a bloated face and bandaged head, over which towered a soldier-cap, was sitting toward one side, with his feet dangling down to the wheel, and, leaning with his arms on his knees, seemed to be dozing. It was to him that the travelling officer directed his speech.

“ Dôlzhnikov ! ” he cried.

“ I ! ” answered the soldier, opening his eyes and doffing his cap, and speaking in a thick staccato bass, as though some twenty soldiers were shouting all at once.

“ When were you wounded, my friend ? ”

The leaden, suffused eyes of the soldier became animated ; he had obviously recognized his officer.

« I wish you health, your Honour ! ” he uttered, in the same staccato bass.

” Where is the regiment stationed now ? ”

” They were standing in Sevastopol, and they were to move on Wednesday, your Honour.”

“Whither?”

” I don’t know — probably on the Northern side, your Honour ! To-day, your Honour,” he added in a drawling voice, putting on his cap, ” he has begun to shoot straight across, mostly bombs, and they are carried as far as the bay ; the firing is awful to-day, and — ”

Further it was not possible to hear what the soldier was saying ; but by his face and pose one could see that he was telling disheartening things, with the malice of a suffering man.

The travelling officer, Lieutenant Kozeltsov, was an officer out of the ordinary. He was not one of those who live so or so, and do so or so, because others are living and doing so; he did everything which pleased him best, and others followed his example, and were convinced that it was good. He was sufficiently well endowed by nature with small gifts : he sang well, played the guitar, spoke fluently, and wrote with ease, particularly government documents, in which he had acquired a facility while being an adjutant of a battalion ; but most noticeable was his trait of egoistical energy, which, though chiefly based on his petty endowments, was in itself a well-defined and striking feature. He was possessed of the egoism, which is so large a part of life itself (and which is most frequently evolved in exclusively masculine, and especially in military, circles), that he could not comprehend any other choice but to lead or to be annihilated, and that his egoism was even the prime mover of all his inward convictions ; he naturally wanted to surpass all people with whom he compared himself.

” Of course, I am not going to pay any attention to what Moscow1 is prattling ! ” muttered the lieutenant, conscious

1 So the common soldiers are called collectively.

of a burden of apathy on his heart, and of a mistiness of thoughts, which were caused by the aspect of the convoy of the wounded and by the soldier’s words, the meaning of which was involuntarily increased and confirmed by the sounds of the bombardment. “ Funny Moscow ! Go, Nikolaev ! Move on — Have you fallen asleep ? ” he added, in a somewhat angry voice, adjusting the folds of his overcoat.

The reins began to be pulled, Nikolaev smacked his lips, and the vehicle started at a gallop.

« We will stop for only a minute to feed them, and we will move on to-day,” said the officer.

II.

Just as he was driving into a street of Duvânka, with its demolished stone walls of Tartar houses, Lieutenant Kozeltsdv was stopped by a convoy of bombs and cannonballs, on its way to Sevastopol, and crowded together on the road.

Two infantrymen were sitting in the dust on the stones of a ruined fence, near the road, and eating a watermelon with bread.

” Are you going far, countryman ? ” said one of them, munching his bread, to a soldier with a small bag over his shoulders, who had stopped near them.

” I am on my way to the company from the provincial capital,” answered the soldier, looking away from the melon, and adjusting his bag on his back. ” We have been for nearly three weeks looking after the company’s hay, but now they have called everybody back ; and it is not known in what place the regiment is at present. They say that our men last week relieved those on the Shipwharf. Have you not heard, gentlemen ? ”

“In the city, brother, in the city it is stationed,” said the other old soldier of the baggage-train, who was digging with his clasp knife into the unripe, white melon. ” We have just left there at noon. It is awful there, brother ! ”

” How so, gentlemen ? “

“Don’t you hear them? They are firing all around, so that there is not a place safe. It is impossible to tell how many of our brothers they have killed ! ”

And the speaker waved his hand and straightened his cap.

The pedestrian soldier thoughtfully shook his head, smacked his tongue, then took out of his boot-leg a pipe, without filling it, poked the half-burned tobacco, lighted a piece of punk with the pipe of the soldier who was smoking, and raised his cap.

” Only God can help us, gentlemen ! Goodbye ! ” he said, and, adjusting the sack on his back, walked up the road.

” Ho there, wait a little ! ” persuasively said the one who was digging into the watermelon.

” It’s all the same ! ” mumbled the pedestrian, winding his way between the wheels of the crowding vehicles.

III.

The station was filled with people when Kozeltsov drove up to it. The first person whom he met on the porch was a very young, haggard man, the inspector, who kept exchanging words with two officers following at his heels.

” You will wait not only three days, but even ten days ! Generals have to wait, too, sir ! ” said the inspector, with the desire to sting the travellers. “You don’t expect me to harness myself for you ! “

“ Then don’t give anybody any horses, if there are none ! Why were they given to a lackey with his things ? ” cried the older of the two officers, with a glass of tea in his hands, and apparently avoiding the use of the personal pronoun, but letting him feel that he could have used ” thou ” to the inspector if he had wanted.

” Now you judge for yourself, Mr. Inspector,” said the other, the younger officer, hesitatingly, “ we are not travelling for our personal pleasure. No doubt we are wanted, if we have been ordered out. If you won’t let us have them, I will write to the general. But what is this ? — You, it seems, do not respect the officers’ calling.”

“ You always spoil things ! ” the older officer interrupted him. ” You are only in my way ; one must know how to talk with him. Now he has lost his respect for us. Give us horses this minute ! ” I say.

“ Most gladly, sir, but where shall I get them ? ”

The inspector kept a moment’s silence, and suddenly grew excited, and, waving his hands, began to speak :

” I understand it all and know it all, sir. But what are you going to do ? Give me only ” (the faces of the officers were lit up by hope) —“give me only a chance to live to the end of the month, and I will no longer be here. I prefer to go to Mound Malakhov, than to stay here, upon my word! Let them do what they please. In the whole station there is not one safe vehicle, and the horses have not had a bunch of hay for three days.”

And the inspector disappeared through the gate.

Kozeltsdv entered the room at the same time with the officers.

“ Well,” the older officer quietly said to the younger, though but a second before he had seemed to be excited, ” we have been travelling for three months, so we will wait a little longer. No great misfortune, — we shall get there early enough.”

The smoky, dirty room was so crowded with officers and portmanteaus, that Kozeltsov barely found a place on the window to sit down. Looking at the officers’ countenances, and listening to their conversations, he began to roll a cigarette. On the right of the door, near a crooked, greasy table, on which stood two samovärs with the brass turned green in spots, and where pieces of sugar lay on bits of paper, sat the chief group : a young officer, without moustache, in a new quilted summer coat, was filling the teapot ; four officers of about the same age were scattered in the different corners of the room. One of these slept on the divan, having rolled up his fur coat under his head ; another, who stood at the table, was carving some roast mutton for a one-armed officer seated there. Two officers, one of them in an adjutant’s overcoat, the other in an infantry overcoat, but one of fine material, and with his cartridge-box slung over his shoulder, sat near the oven bench ; from the manner in which both looked at the others, and in which the one with the cartridge-box smoked his cigar, it was evident that they were not infantry officers at the front, and that they were satisfied with this. It cannot be said that their manner showed contempt, but a certain self-satisfied composure, based partly on their wealth and partly on their relations with generals, — a consciousness of superiority, rising to a desire to conceal it.

A youthful, thick-lipped doctor and an artillery officer with a German physiognomy were sitting almost on the legs of the young officer who was asleep on the divan, and were counting some money. Some four orderlies were either dozing, or attending to portmanteaus and bundles at the door. Among all these persons, Kozeltsov did not find a single acquaintance ; but he began attentively to listen to their conversations. He took at once a liking for the young officers, who, as he immediately decided from their looks, were coming directly from the corps, and, moreover, they reminded him that his brother, also fresh from the corps, was to arrive in a few days at one of the batteries of Sevastopol. But in the officer with the cartridge-box, whose face he had seen somewhere, everything seemed to him disgusting and impudent. He even left the window with the thought, ” I will settle him, if he tries to say anything,” and sat down on the oven bench. Being simply a good officer at the front, he could not, as a general rule, bear any officers of the staff, such as he judged at first glance those two to be.

IV.

” But this is dreadfully annoying,” said one of the young officers, ” to be so near, and yet not to be able to reach it. There may be an engagement to-day, and we shall not be there.”

In the piping tone of the voice, and in the fresh, spotted blush which covered the face of the officer while he was speaking, one could see the refreshing, youthful bashfulness of a man who is all the time afraid that his words are not properly chosen.

The armless officer looked at him with a smile.

« You will get there in plenty time, believe me,” he said.

The young officer looked respectfully at the haggard face of the armless man, which was unexpectedly brightened by a smile, and he grew silent and busied himself with the tea. Indeed, in the face of the one-armed officer, in his attitude, and especially in the empty sleeve of his overcoat, was expressed much of that calm equanimity which could be explained by the assumption that in every affair and conversation he looked as though saying, ” All this is very beautiful, all this I know, and all this I could do myself if I wanted to.”

“ What, then, is our decision ? ” again said the young officer to his companion in the quilted coat, ” shall we remain here overnight or shall we continue travelling with our horse ? “

His companion refused to continue the journey.

“ Just think of it, captain,” continued the one who was 397

pouring out the tea, turning to the armless officer, and lifting up the knife which he had dropped, ” they told us that horses were dreadfully expensive at Sevastopol, and so we bought a horse in partnership at Simferopol.”

” I suppose they have fleeced you for it ? “

” Really, I do not know, captain. We paid for the horse and vehicle ninety roubles. Is that very dear ? ” he added, turning to everybody in general and in particular to Kozeltsov, who was watching him.

” No, not dear, if it is a young horse,” said Kozeltsov.

” You see ! And they told us that it was too dear — He is a little lame now, but that will pass. We were told that he was a strong horse.”

” You are from what corps ? ” asked Kozeltsov, wishing to find out something about his brother.

“We are from the yeomen’s regiment, — there are six of us, and we are all bound for Sevastopol, at our own request,” said the talkative young officer. ” The trouble is, we do not know where our batteries are ; some say, at Sevastopol, and others again say, at Odessa.”

” Could you not have found out at Simferopol ? ” asked Kozeltsov.

“ They did not know — Let me tell you, our comrade went there to the chancery ; they told him a lot of rude things — you can imagine how disagreeable that is — Would you wish a cigarette all rolled up?” he said to the armless officer, who was on the point of getting out his cigarette-holder.

He was attentive to him with a certain servile enthusiasm.

“Are you yourself from Sevastopol?” he continued. ” 0 Lord, how wonderful all this is ! In St. Petersburg we have been thinking of you, of all the heroes ! ” he said, turning to Kozeltsov with respect and kindliness.

“Well, so you may have to journey back again?” asked the ensign.

“ That is what we are afraid of. You may imagine : we have bought a horse, and have provided ourselves with all necessaries, — a coffee-pot with a spirit-lamp, and other necessary trifles, — and now we have no money left,” he said in a quiet voice, looking back at his companion, “ so that, if we have to journey back, we do not know what to do.”

“ Did you not get any travelling money ? ” asked Kozeltsdv.

“ No,” he answered in a whisper, ” but we were promised that we should get it here.”

“ Have you any certificate to that effect ? “

“ I know that the certificate is the main thing, but there is a senator in Moscow, he is an uncle of mine,— and when I called at his house, he assured me that they would give it to me here, or else I should have taken some from him. Will they give it ? ”

“ Certainly.”

“ I myself think they will,” he said, in a tone which proved that, having asked the same thing at thirty stations, and having received all kinds of answers, he no longer had any full confidence in anybody’s statement.

V.

” Who has asked for beet-soup ? ” demanded the slovenly landlady, a woman about forty years of age, entering the room with a soup-bowl.

The conversation stopped at once, and all the persons in the room gazed at the landlady. One officer even winked to another.

” Oh, Kozeltsov asked for it,” said the young officer. “We must wake him. Get up and eat ! ” he said, going up to the one who was sleeping on the divan, and pushing him by the shoulder.

A boy, seventeen years of age, with vivacious black eyes and a blush covering his whole cheek, sprang up energetically from the divan, and, rubbing his eyes, stopped in the middle of the room.

” Oh, pardon me,” he said to the doctor, whom he had pushed in rising.

Lieutenant Kozeltsov at once recognized his brother, and went up to him.

” Do you not know me ? ” he said, smiling.

” Ah, ah, ah ! ” cried the younger brother, beginning to kiss his brother, “ now that is remarkable ! ”

They kissed three times, but hesitated on the third time, as though both were struck by the idea, “Why exactly three times ? ”

“ Oh, how glad I am ! ” said the elder, gazing at his brother. ” Let us go out on the porch and talk ! “

“ Come, come ! I do not want any soup — You eat it, Féderson ! ” he said to his companion.

” But you wanted to eat.”

“ I do not want anything.”

When they had gone out on the porch, the younger brother kept asking, ” Well, tell me how you are,” and kept on saying how glad he was to see him, but did not tell anything about himself.

” I want to get back to Sevastopol as soon as possible : if one has luck, one can advance here faster than in the guards. There it takes ten years to become a colonel, and here Totleben was promoted in two years from lieutenantcolonel to general. And if I am killed, well, what’s to be done ? ”

” That’s the kind of fellow you are ! ” said his brother, smiling.

“ Really, do you know, brother ? ” said the younger, smiling and blushing, as though getting ready to say something disgraceful. “All this is nothing. The chief reason why I asked to be sent down here is, I was ashamed to stay in St. Petersburg, while here men are dying for their country. And, then, I wanted to be with you,” he added, more bashfully still.

“ How funny you are ! ” said the elder brother, drawing out his cigarette-holder, and without looking at him. ” What a pity, we shall not be together.”

“ Now, tell me truthfully, is it terrible in the bastions ? ” suddenly asked the younger.

“ At first it is terrible, then you get used to it, and it is all right. You will see for yourself.”

” Now tell me this : will they take Sevastopol ? I think they never will.”

” God knows.”

” Here is an annoyance — Just think of my bad luck ! On the road they stole a whole bundle, and my hat was in it, so that I am now in a terrible fix, and do not know how to make my appearance.”

Kozeltsov the second, Vladimir, very much resembled

his brother Mikhâylo, just as a blooming rose-bush resembles a defloured brier. His hair, too, was blond, but thick and curling over the temples. On his white, tender nape there was a small blond lock — a sign of good fortune, as the nurses say. On the tender white skin of his cheeks did not dwell, but burst forth, a full-blooded, youthful blush, betraying all the movements of his soul. His eyes, although like his brother’s, were opener and brighter, which was the more apparent because they were covered by a light film of moisture. A blond down was sprouting on his cheeks and over his red lips that folded themselves into a bashful smile, or displayed his white, shining teeth. Stately, broad-shouldered, in his unbuttoned overcoat, underneath which could be seen a red shirt with a slanting collar, with a cigarette in his hand, leaning against the balustrade of the porch, with a naïve joy expressed in his face and gestures, he was such a charming boy, as he stood before his brother, that he could stand there and look at him for a long time.

He was very happy to see his brother, and looked at him with respect and pride, thinking of him as a hero ; but in some respects, namely, in worldly knowledge, in the ability of speaking French, and of being in the society of distinguished people, of dancing, and so forth, he was a little ashamed of him, looked down upon him, and even hoped to be able to educate him. All his impressions were fresh from St. Petersburg, from the house of a lady who was fond of good-looking fellows, and who had had him at her house during the holidays, and from the house of the Moscow senator, where he had once danced at a great ball.

VI.

Having talked their fill, and having finally reached a feeling, frequently experienced, that there was little in common between them, even though they loved each other, the brothers remained silent for quite awhile.

« Take your things, and we will start at once,” said the elder brother.

The younger suddenly blushed, and was ill at ease.

« Straight to Sevastopol ? ” he asked, after a moment’s silence.

“Why, yes. You have not many things; I suppose we can manage them.”

” Very well! We will start at once,” said the younger, with a sigh, and entered the room.

But, before opening the door, he stopped in the vestibule, gloomily hung his head, and began to think :

” At once straight to Sevastopol, under the bombs — terrible ! However, it is all the same ; sooner or later it would have to be. Now, at least, it will be with brother — ”

The trouble was that only now, at the thought that, after seating himself in the vehicle, he would not get out of it until he found himself in Sevastopol, and that no accident whatsoever could detain him, did he form for the first time a clear conception of the danger which he was seeking, and he was disturbed in mind at the mere thought of its nearness. Having calmed himself a little, he entered the room ; but fifteen minutes passed, and he had not yet come out to his brother, so that the latter

finally opened the door, in order to call him. The younger Kozeltsdv, in the attitude of a guilty schoolboy, was speaking about something to Officer P–-. When the brother

opened the door, he looked completely lost.

” Directly, directly ! ” he said, waving his hand to his brother. ” Wait there a moment, if you please.”

A minute later he came out, and went up to his brother with a deep sigh.

“Just think of it, I cannot journey with you, brother,” he said.

“ How is that ? What nonsense ! “

“I will tell you the whole truth, Misha! We are all out of money, and we all owe some to that staffcaptain whom you have seen in there. It is a perfect shame ! ”

The elder brother frowned, and for a long time did not break the silence.

” Do you owe much ? ” he asked, looking at his brother with a scowl.

“ Not much, not very much ; but it makes me feel ashamed. He has paid for me at three stations, and it was all the time his sugar we have been using — so that I do not know — and we have been playing at preference — I am indebted to him a little.”

” That is bad, Volodya ! What would you have done, if you had not met me ? ” the elder brother said, sternly, without looking at him.

” Well, I thought I should get the travelling money at Sevastopol, and so I should pay him there. I certainly can fix it that way ; and so it will be better if I journey with him to-morrow.”

The elder brother drew out his purse, and with a certain quivering in his fingers, took out from it two ten-rouble and one three-rouble bills.

“ Here is all my money,” he said. “ How much do you owe ? “

When Kozeltsdv said that this was all his money, he was not telling the whole truth ; he had besides four gold coins sewn into the lining of the coat against an evil day, but he had vowed that he would never touch them.

It turned out that Kozeltsdv owed in all, for the preference and for the sugar, eight roubles. The elder brother gave him the money, remarking at the same time that it would not do to act that way, and especially to play at preference.

” What did you play for ? “

The younger brother did not answer a word. His brother’s question appeared to him as a doubt of his honesty. His annoyance with himself, his shame of his action, which had given rise to such suspicions, and the insult from his brother, whom he loved so, produced on his impressionable nature such a strong and morbid sensation, that he did not make any reply. Feeling that he would not be able to keep back the tearful sounds which were rising in his throat, he took the money, without looking at it, and went in to his companions.

VII.

Nikolaev, who in Duvànka fortified himself with two swallows of brandy, purchased from a soldier selling it on the bridge, jerked the reins; the vehicle jolted over the rocky and occasionally shaded road which led along the Belbek to Sevastopol, and the brothers, whose legs were continually striking against each other, kept a stubborn silence, though they were all the time thinking one of the other.

“ Why did he offend me ? ” thought the younger. ” He might have passed it over in silence. He acted as though he took me for a thief, and he seems to be angry even now, so that our relations will for ever be strained. And how glorious it could otherwise be for both of us at Sevastopol ! Two brothers, friendly to each other, are both fighting against the enemy : the elder brother, though not a very well educated man, is already a brave soldier, and the younger — well, he is a valiant fellow himself — In a week I should prove to everybody’s satisfaction that I am no longer so very young ! I will quit blushing ; in my face will be expressed bravery ; and by that time my moustache, though not very long, will be of considerable size,” and he pulled the down which had appeared at the edges of his mouth.

” Maybe we shall arrive to-day to take part at once in an engagement, both my brother and I. He must be stubborn and brave, one of those who do not talk much, but act better than others. I should like to know,” he continued, ” whether he is jamming me into the edge of the vehicle on purpose, or not. He, no doubt, feels that I am ill at ease, and looks as though he did not notice me. We shall arrive to-day,” he continued his reflections, keeping to the edge of the vehicle, and fearing to move, lest his brother should notice that he was ill at ease, “and we shall make at once for the bastion; I at the guns, and my brother with his company, and we shall march together. Suddenly the French will rush upon us. I — to shoot, and shoot. I will kill a lot of them ; but they continue to press forward. There is no chance of firing, and, of course, there is no salvation for me ; but suddenly brother will dash ahead, with sabre in hand, and I will seize a gun, and the soldiers will run with us. The French will rush up to brother. I will run up, will kill one Frenchman and another, and will save brother. I shall be wounded in one arm, so will seize the gun with the other, and will still run forward, Only brother will be killed by a bullet at my side ; I will stop for an instant, will look sadly at him, will rise to my feet, and will shout : ‘ After me ! Let us avenge his death ! I have loved my brother more than anybody in this world/ I will say, ‘ and I have lost him. Revenge ! Let us annihilate the foe, or die all together ! ‘

” All will shout, and will plunge forward after me. The whole French army will come out, and Pelissier himself. We will destroy them all ; but I am wounded a second, and a third time, and I shall fall down to my death. Then everybody will run up to me. Gorchakov will come, and will ask me what I wish. I will say that I have no other wish than to be placed by my brother’s side, and that I want to die with him. I shall be carried and put down near the bloodstained body of my brother. I will lift myself a little, and say : ‘ Yes, you were unable properly to estimate the two men who have sincerely loved their country ; now they have both fallen — may God forgive you ! ‘ and I shall expire.”

Who knows to what extent these dreams might be realized !

” Have you ever been in a hand-to-hand encounter ? ” he suddenly asked his brother, forgetful of the fact that he had intended not to speak to him.

“ No, not once,” answered the elder brother. “ In our regiment two thousand men were put out of action while at work, and I, too, was wounded while at work. War does not take place at all as you imagine it, Volodya !”

The word ” Volodya ” touched the younger brother : he wanted to have an explanation from his brother, who did not have the slightest idea that he had offended V olodya.

” You are not angry at me, Misha ? ” he asked, after a moment’s silence.

” For what ?”

” No, nothing— that there has been — oh, nothing.”

” Not in the least,” answered the elder brother, turning to him, and slapping his leg.

” Then you must forgive me, Misha, if I have given you cause for grief.”

And the younger brother turned away, in order to conceal the tears that suddenly had appeared in his eyes.

VIII.

” Is it possible this is Sevastopol already ? ” asked the younger brother, as the vehicle reached the top of a hill.

Before them lay the bay with the masts of ships, the sea with the hostile fleet in the distance, the white shore batteries, the barracks, the water-works, the docks, the city buildings, and the pale violet clouds of smoke, which were continually rising along the yellow hills that surrounded the city, and that stood out against the blue sky, in the rosy beams of the sun, which now was brilliantly reflected and setting at the horizon of the dark sea.

Volodya beheld without shuddering the terrible place of which he had been thinking so much. On the contrary, with Esthetic enjoyment and with a heroic sensation of self-satisfaction, that in half an hour he himself would be there, he gazed at this truly enchanting and original spectacle, and he continued gazing at it up to the very time when they arrived at the Northern side, at the baggage-train of his brother’s regiment, where they were to get definite information as to the location of the regiment and battery.

The officer in charge of the baggage-train was living near the so-called new town, — a collection of frame barracks, built by sailor families, — in a tent which was connected with a fairly large booth, constructed of green oak boughs that had not yet become sufficiently dry.

The brothers found the officer at a dirty table, on which stood a glass of cold tea, a salver with brandy and crumbs of dry caviar and bread, clad in a soiled yellow shirt,

counting up on a large abacus an immense heap of paper money. But before saying anything about the personality of the officer and his conversation, we must take a closer look at the interior of his booth, and get a little acquainted with his manner of life and occupations.

The new booth was large, firmly plaited, and comfortably constructed ; it was provided with little tables and sod benches, and was altogether such as are built only for generals or regimental commanders. The sides and the ceiling were protected from the falling leaves by three rugs which, though of atrocious designs, were new and, no doubt, expensive. On an iron bed underneath the main rug, with the representation of a horsewoman upon it, lay a bright red plush coverlet, a soiled torn pillow, and a raccoon fur coat ; on the table stood a looking-glass in a silver frame, a terribly dirty silver hairbrush, a broken horn comb full of greasy hair, a silver candlestick, a bottle of liqueur with an immense label in red and gold, a gilded clock with the portrait of Peter the Great, two gold pens, a box with some kind of capsules, a bread crust, and old cards lying in a heap, while under the bed stood empty and full bottles.

This officer was in charge of the regiment’s baggage and of the provender for the horses. With him lived his great friend, a commissionaire, who was interested in some speculations. As the brothers entered, he was asleep in the tent, while the officer of the baggage-train was counting up the Crown money before the end of the month. The exterior of this officer was handsome and martial : he was tall, wore a long moustache, and was of noble proportions. His disagreeable points were a certain sweaty and bloated condition of his face, which almost concealed his small gray eyes (as though he were saturated with porter), and an extraordinary neglect of his person, from his greasy hair down to his large bare feet in erminefur slippers.

” What a lot of money ! What a lot of it ! ” said Kozeltsov the elder, upon entering the booth, and with involuntary greed directing his eyes upon the heap of bills. ” If you lent me only one-half of it, Vasili Mikhaylovich ! “

The officer stooped a little, as he noticed the newcomers, and, collecting his money, bowed, without rising.

” Ah, if it all were mine ! But it is Crown money, my friend — Who is this with you ? ” he said, putting the money in a small safe which was standing near him, and eyeing Volodya.

” That is my brother, who has come from the corps. We have called here to find out where the regiment is stationed.”

” Sit down, gentlemen ! ” he said, rising, and walking into the tent, without paying any further attention to the guests. ” Won’t you have a drink, say a little porter ? ” he said.

” It won’t hurt, Vasili Mikhaylovich ! “

Volodya was impressed by the magnificence of the officer of the baggage-train, by his nonchalant manner, and by the respect with which his brother spoke to him.

” He must be a very good officer, whom all respect : no doubt he is simple, but hospitable and brave,” he thought, modestly and timidly sitting down on the divan.

” Where, then, is our regiment stationed ? ” the elder brother asked across the tent.

« What ? “

He repeated his question.

“ Zéyfer was here to-day : he told me they had gone to the fifth bastion.”

” Sure ? ”

“If I tell you so, it must be correct; however, the devil take him ! It would not be much for him to tell a lie. Well, will you have some porter ? ” said the officer, still staying in his tent.

” Very well, I will take a drink,’’ said Kozeltsdv.

“ And will you have a glass, Osip Ignatevich ? ” continued the voice in the tent, evidently addressing the sleeping commissionaire. ” Get up : it is now nearly five o’clock.”

“ Don’t bother me ! lam not sleeping,” replied‘a thin, lazy voice.

“ Well, get up anyway : it is dull without you ! ”

The officer of the baggage-train came back to his guests.

“ Let us have some Simferopol porter ‘ ” he shouted.

An orderly, with a proud expression on his face, so Volodya thought, entered the booth, and, pushing Volodya aside, fetched a bottle of porter from underneath the bench.

The bottle was soon emptied, and the conversation was for some time continued in the same strain, when the folds of the tent were pushed aside, and from it emerged a short, well-preserved man, in a blue dressing-gown with tassels, in a cap with a red border and a cockade. Upon his appearance he was smoothing down his moustache; gazing at some point in the rug, he returned the salute of the officers with a barely perceptible shrug of his shoulders.

” I will take a glass myself ! ” he said, sitting down at the table. ” Are you coming from St. Petersburg, young man ? ” he said, graciously addressing Volodya.

” Yes, sir, I am on my way to Sevastopol.”

” Did you volunteer ? “

” Yes, sir.”

” What is it that makes you so anxious, gentlemen ? Really, I do not understand it ! ” continued the commissionaire. ” It seems to me I would be willing to walk back to St. Petersburg, if they would only let me. I am tired of this accursed life, upon my word ! ”

” What are you lacking here ? ” said the elder Kozeltsdv, addressing him. ” You, certainly, are having an easy time here ! “

The commissionaire glanced at him, and turned away.

” This danger, these privations, — can’t get anything,” he continued, turning to Volddya. “What makes you so anxious? Gentlemen, I am positively unable to understand you ! If there were any advantage from it, but thus ! Well, what good is there in your being made a cripple for life at your age ? ”

” Some need a monetary advantage, and others serve for honour’s sake,” Kozeltsdv the elder again put in his word.

” Can honour be sweet when there’s nothing to eat ? ” said the commissionaire, smiling contemptously, and turning to the officer of the baggage-train, who also smiled at his witticism. ” Set it for ‘ Lucia,’ and we will listen,” he said, pointing to a music-box. ” I like it.”

“Is that Vasili Mikhaylovich a good man?” Volddya asked his brother, after leaving the booth at dusk, and proceeding on their way to Sevastopol.

“ Passable, only dreadfully stingy ! But I cannot bear that commissionaire. I’ll knock him down some day.”

IX.

Volodya was not exactly in an unhappy frame of mind when they reached, almost at night, the large bridge across the harbour, but he experienced a heavy sensation in his heart. Everything he had heard and seen was so incompatible with his past, though still recent, impressions : the large, bright, parqueted examination hall, the good, merry voices, and the laughter of his comrades, the new uniform, the beloved Tsar, whom he had been seeing for the last seven years, and who, bidding them farewell, had, with tears in his eyes, called them his children, — and everything he now saw so little resembled his fair, rainbow-coloured, magnanimous dreams !

“ So here we are ! ” said the elder brother, upon reaching the Michael battery, and climbing out of the vehicle. ” If they will let us through the bridge, we will go at once to the Nicholas barracks. You will stay there until morning, and I will go at once to the regiment, and find out where your battery is stationed, and in the morning I will come for you.”

” What for ? Let us go together,” said Volodya. ” I will go with you to the bastion. I shall have to get used to it sooner or later. If you are going there, I can, too.”

“ You had better not go.”

” I beg you ; I shall, at least, find out how — “

” My advice is not to go. Still — “

The sky was clear and dark ; the stars and the fires of the bombs and from the discharges, continuously in motion, were already gleaming brightly in the darkness. The large white structure of the battery and the beginning of the bridge rose from the darkness. The discharges of several guns and the explosions, rapidly following each other or resounding all together literally every second, shook the air ever louder and more distinctly. Through this roar could be heard the gloomy rumbling of the sea, as though seconding it. The brothers went up to the bridge. A reserve soldier struck his gun against his hand in an awkward manner, and shouted :

” Who goes there ? “

” A soldier.”

” I have orders not to let any one through.”

” But we must be there.”

” Ask the officer.”

The officer, who was dozing, while sitting on an anchor, rose, and gave the order to let them through.

” You may go there, but not back. Back there ‘ I declare, all at once ! ” he shouted to the regimental vehicles, laden to the top with gabions, that were crowding at the entrance.

Upon descending to the first pontoon, the brothers fell in with some soldiers who were returning from there, and speaking loudly.

” He has received his supply of ammunition, and so he is squaring up accounts, — that’s what I tell you.”

” My friends ! ” said another voice, ” as soon as you crawl out on the Northern side, you will see the world again, upon my word ! The air is different there.”

” Nonsense ! ” said the first. ” The other day an accursed bomb flew as far as this and took off the legs of two sailors, that’s what — ”

The brothers passed the first pontoon, and, waiting for the vehicle, halted at the second, which in places was already swamped. The wind, which had seemed feeble on land, was very strong here, and came in gusts; the

bridge swayed to and fro, and the waves, noisily washing against the beams and breaking against the moorings and cables, flooded the planks. On the right the sea roared and darkled in a hostile mist, separated by an endless, even, black line from the starry heaven, gleaming pale gray at the horizon ; somewhere in the distance glimmered the fires on the hostile fleet ; on the left rose the black mass of one of our ships, and could be heard the plashing of the waves against its hull ; one could see a steamer noisily and rapidly moving from the Northern side. The fire of a bomb exploding in its neighbourhood for an instant illuminated the gabions heaped high on its deck, two men standing on the bridge, and the white foam and sprays of the greenish waves through which the steamer was ploughing.

At the edge of the bridge a man was sitting in nothing but a shirt, his feet dangling in the water, and was fixing something in the pontoon. In front, over Sevastopol, were borne the same fires, and louder and louder were the sounds that reached them. A surging wave from the sea washed over the right side of the bridge and wet Volodya’s feet ; two soldiers, splashing their feet in the water, passed by him. Suddenly something crashed and lighted up the bridge in front, a vehicle that was going over it, and a man on horseback, and the splinters fell into the water, whistling and raising spray.

” Ah, Mikhäylo Seménych ! ” said the rider, halting his horse in front of the elder Kozeltsov. “ Well, have you entirely recuperated ? “

” As you see. Whither does God carry you ? “

“ To the Northern side, for cartridges. I am to-day acting regimental adjutant — we are expecting an assault from hour to hour.”

” Where is Martsov ? “

” He lost a leg yesterday — he was in town, sleeping in his room— Do you know him ?”

« The regiment is in the fifth bastion, is it not ? ”

“ Yes, they have taken the place of the M–- regi

ment. Go to the ambulance ; you will find some of our men there, and they will take you to it.”

“ Well, and my quarters on the Morskâya are still in good condition ? ”

” Not at all, my dear ! It has long ago been demolished by bombs. You will not recognize Sevastopol now : not a woman, no inns, no music there now ; yesterday the last establishment left. It is very sad now — Goodbye ! “

And the officer galloped away.

Volodya suddenly felt terribly : he thought that a cannonball or a splinter would at any moment strike his head. This moist darkness, all these sounds, especially the growling splash of the waves, — everything seemed to tell him that he should not advance, that nothing good awaited him now, that his foot would never again step on land on the other side of the bay, that he had better turn back and run somewhere, as far away from the place as possible. ” But maybe it is already too late ; maybe it is my fate,” he thought, shuddering partly at this thought, and partly because the water had soaked through his boots, and was wetting his feet.

Volodya drew a deep sigh, and walked a little away, at one side of his brother.

” O Lord ! Is it possible I shall be killed ? I, Volddya Kozeltsdv ? O Lord, have mercy upon me ! ” he said, in a whisper, making the sign of the cross.

” Come now, Volodya ! ” said the elder brother, as the vehicle got up on the bridge. ” Have you seen the bomb ? “

On the bridge the brothers encountered wagons with wounded men, with gabions, and one with furniture which a woman was taking away. On the other side nobody barred their way.

Instinctively, groping along the wall of the Nicholas battery, the brothers listened in silence to the sounds of the bombs which were bursting overhead and to the roar of the splinters that were falling from above, and arrived at that place in the battery where the image was. Here they learned that the fifth light battery, to which Volodya had been assigned, was stationed at the Ship wharf ; they decided, in spite of the danger, to go for the night to the elder brother’s station in the fifth bastion, and thence, on the following morning, to the battery. Turning into the corridor, and stepping over the legs of the sleeping soldiers, who were lying along the whole wall of the battery, they finally reached the ambulance.

Upon entering the first room, filled with cots, upon which lay the wounded, and saturated with an oppressive, disgustingly terrible hospital odour, they met two Sisters of Mercy, who were walking toward them.

One woman, about fifty years of age, with black eyes and a severe expression on her face, was carrying bandages and lint, and giving orders to a boyish surgeon’s assistant, who was following her ; the other, a very pretty girl, about twenty years of age, with a pale, gentle, fair-complexioned face, which looked sweet and helpless from underneath her white cap, and with her hands in the pockets of her apron, was walking by the side of the elder woman, apparently afraid to leave her.

Kozeltsdv addressed to them the question as to where Martsov was, who had lost a leg the day before.

« I think, of the P–- regiment ? ” asked the older

woman. ” Is he a relative of yours ? “

” No, a comrade.”

“Take them there,” she said to the young Sister, in French. ” Over there,” and she herself walked over to a wounded man with the assistant.

« Come now — what are you gazing at ? ” said Kozeltsdv to Volddya, who had raised his eyebrows and was staring at the wounded with an expression of compassion, without being able to tear himself away from them. ” Come on ! “

Volddya followed his brother, but he continued to look around and unconsciously to repeat :

« 0 Lord ! 0 Lord ! “

” He has evidently not been here long ! ” said the Sister to Kozeltsov, pointing to Volédya, who, sighing and repeating his exclamation, followed them through the corridor.

” He has just arrived.”

The pretty sister glanced at Volodya and suddenly burst out weeping. ” My God ! My God ! When will all this end ? ” she said, with an expression of despair in her voice. They entered the officer’s room. Martsov lay on his back, holding his muscular arms, bared up to the elbow, behind his head, with an expression on his sallow face which showed that he had set his teeth, in order not to cry from pain. His sound leg, in a stocking, stuck out from underneath his coverlet, and one could see how he was convulsively moving his toes.

” Well, how are you ? ” asked the Sister, with her thin, gentle fingers, upon one of which Volodya noticed a gold ring, raising his somewhat bald head and fixing the pillow. ” Your comrades have come to see you.”

” Of course, it is painful,” he said, angrily. ” Let me alone ! It is all right.” The toes in the stocking began to twitch faster. ” How are you ? What is your name ? Pardon me,” he said, turning to Kozeltsov. ” Oh, yes ! I beg your pardon ! One does forget here everything. We did live together,” he added, without the least expression of pleasure, looking questioningly at Volodya.

“This is my brother, he has just arrived from St. Petersburg.”

“ Hm ! And I have received my full discharge,” he said, with a scowl. ” Oh, how it pains ! I wish I were dead ! ”

He raised his legs, and, continuing to twitch his toes with increased rapidity, covered his face with his hands.

“ He must be left alone,” the Sister said, in a wliisper, with tears in her eyes. ” He is in a bad condition.”

The brothers had decided while still on the Northern side to go to the fifth bastion. But, as they emerged from the Nicholas battery, they seemed to have agreed not to subject themselves to unnecessary danger, and, without saying anything on this point, they decided to go each his own way.

” But how will you find it, Volddya ? ” said the elder brother. ” Nikolaev will take you to the Shipwharf, and I will go by myself, and will be with you to-morrow.”

Nothing else was said in this last farewell between the two brothers.

XI.

The booming of the cannon was continued with the same force, but the Ekaterfnenskaya Street, through which Volodya was walking, with taciturn Nikolaev at his heels, was deserted and quiet. In the dusk he could see only the broad street, with the white walls of large houses mostly in ruins, and the stone sidewalks, over which he was marching : occasionally he met some soldiers and officers. Passing on the left side by the Admiralty, he could discern, in the glaring fire which was burning beyond the wall, the acacias planted along the sidewalk, with their green supports, and the wretched, dust-covered leaves of these trees. He distinctly heard his steps and those of Nikolaev, who was walking behind him, breathing heavily. He thought of nothing in particular: the pretty Sister of Mercy, Martsdv’s foot with its toes twitching in the stocking, the bombs, and various pictures of death dimly passed through his imagination. All his youthful, impressionable soul was compressed and pining under the consciousness of his loneliness and of the universal indifference to his fate in danger.

” I shall be killed, shall suffer and writhe, and nobody will weep for me ! ” And all this in place of the life of a hero, full of energy and sympathy, of which he had had such glorious dreams. The bombs exploded and whistled nearer and nearer ; Nikolaev sighed more frequently, without breaking the silence. As he crossed the bridge, which led to the Shipwharf, he saw something strike the water not far from him, with a whistling sound : for a second it cast a blood-red glamour on the violet waves, then it disappeared, and again rose from it with the spray.

“I declare, she is not dead yet!” said Nikolaev, hoarsely.

” Yes,” he answered, involuntarily and unexpectedly to himself, in a thin, piping voice.

They encountered stretchers with wounded soldiers, and again regimental carts with gabions ; at the Shipwharf they fell in with a regiment ; horsemen passed by them. One of them was an officer, with a Cossack. He was riding at a gallop, but seeing Volodya, he checked his horse near him, looked into his face, turned away, and rode off, striking his horse with the whip.

” Alone, all alone ! It makes no difference to anybody whether I exist or not,” thought the boy, and he wanted to weep in earnest.

Having ascended a hill, past a high, white wall, he entered a street of demolished little cottages, which were constantly illuminated by bombs. A drunken, slatternly woman, who came out of a gate with a sailor, stumbled upon him.

” Because, if he were a gentleman,” she mumbled, ” pardon, your Honour, Mr. Officer ! ”

The poor boy’s heart was becoming heavier and heavier ; lightnings flashed oftener and offener against the black horizon, and bombs offener and offener whistled and burst about him. Nikolaev sighed and suddenly began to speak, in what appeared to Volddya a voice of restrained terror.

” There we were in a hurry to leave the province. Journeying all the time. A fine place to hurry to ! ”

” Brother is well now,” replied Volddya, hoping by a conversation to dispel the terrible feeling which had taken possession of him.

” Well ? You don’t call him well, do you ? Even those who are completely well had better stay in a hospital at such a time. What pleasure is there to be found here ? A man loses a leg or an arm, that is all ! Misfortunes are happening here all the time ! It is not in the city here as in the bastion, but it is bad as it is. You walk and you say your prayers. I declare that beast is whizzing past me,” he added, listening to the sound of a splinter buzzing past him. “Now,” added Nikolaev, ” I am told to accompany your Honour. Of course, it is our duty to obey orders ; but we have left our cart with a soldier, and a bundle is open — Go, accompany him ! And if anything is lost of the property, Nikolaev will be responsible.”

After taking a few more steps, they emerged in a square. Nikolaev remained silent, and sighed.

“ There your artillery is stationed, your Honour ! ” he suddenly said. “ Ask the sentry : he will show you.”

Volodya took a few more steps and no longer heard the sound of Nikolaev’s sighs.

All at once he felt himself completely, absolutely, alone. This consciousness of loneliness in the danger preceding death, as it seemed to him, weighed as a terribly heavy, cold stone upon his heart. He stopped in the middle of the square, looked around him, to see whether anybody saw.him, clasped his head, and in terror thought and said : ” O Lord ! Am I indeed a coward, a contemptible, despicable, low coward — for my country, for the Tsar, for whom I had but lately joyfully dreamed to die ? No, I am an unfortunate, wretched creature ! ” And Volodya, with a genuine feeling of despair and disenchantment in himself, asked the sentry for the house of the commander of the battery, and went in the direction pointed out to him.

XII.

The dwelling of the commander of the battery, which the sentry had pointed out to him, was a small house of two stories, with an entrance from the yard. In one of the windows, pasted over with paper, glimmered a feeble candle-light. The orderly sat on the porch and smoked a pipe. He went in to report to the commander of the battery, and led Volodya into a room. In the room, between two windows, beneath a broken mirror, stood a table, covered with official papers, a few chairs, and an iron bed with clean bedclothes, and a small rug near it.

At the very door stood a handsome man with a long moustache, a sergeant, with his short sword and clad in his overcoat, on which hung a cross and a Hungarian medal. In the middle of the room paced an undersized officer of the staff, about forty years of age, his swollen cheek wrapped up, wearing an old, thin overcoat.

“ I have the honour of presenting myself, Ensign Kozeltsdv the second, ordered to report at the fifth light battery,” Volodya uttered the phrase which he had learned by rote, upon entering the room.

The commander of the battery dryly returned his salute, and, without offering him his hand, invited him to be seated.

Volddya timidly sat down on the chair near the writingdesk, and began to finger a pair of scissors on which he had laid his hands. The commander of the battery, folding his hands behind his back and lowering his head, silently paced the room, with the expression of a man who

is trying to recollect something, and now and then looked at the hands that were twirling the scissors.

The commander of the battery was a fairly stout man, with a large bald spot on the crown of his head, a thick moustache, left to grow at will, and covering his mouth, and pleasing hazel eyes. His hands were beautiful, clean, and plump; his feet were small, with toes well turned out, and they stepped with conviction and with a certain dandyism, which bore evidence that the commander of the battery was not a bashful man.

” Yes,” he said, stopping in front of the sergeant, ” beginning with to-morrow we must add a measure of grain for each horse of the caisson, for they are looking rather lean. What do you think about it ? ”

” Well, we can add it, your Honour ! Oats are cheaper now,” replied the sergeant, moving the fingers of his hands, which he held straight down along the seams, but which he evidently was fond of displaying as an aid to conversation. ” Forager Franchuk brought me yesterday a note from the baggage-train, your Honour, that we must buy our axles there, — they say they are cheap. So what is your order ? “

“ Buy them ! He has the money.” And the commander of the battery again started to walk up and down the room. ” Where are your things ? ” he suddenly asked Volodya, halting in front of him.

Poor Volodya was so assailed by the idea that he was a coward that in every glance, in every word, he discovered contempt for him, the wretched coward. It seemed to him that the commander of the battery had already made out his secret, and that he was making light of him. He answered confusedly that his things were on the Gräfskaya wharf, and that his brother had promised to bring them on the next day.

But the lieutenantcolonel was not listening to him ; turning to the sergeant, he asked :

” Where shall we locate the ensign ? “

” The ensign ? ” asked the sergeant, still more embarrassing Volddya with a cursory glance, expressive of the question, ” What kind of an ensign is he ? ” ” Well, below, your Honour, with the staffcaptain, we may place the ensign,” he continued, after a moment’s thought. ” The staffcaptain is now in the bastion, so his cot is unoccupied.”

” Won’t you take it, then, for the time being ? ” said the commander of the battery. ” I suppose you are tired. To-morrow we shall fix it better.”

Volddya rose and bowed.

“Wouldn’t you like some tea?” said the commander of the battery, as he was approaching the door. ” You may order the samovar.”

Volddya bowed and went out. The colonel’s orderly took him down-stairs, and led him into a bare, dirty room, in which all kinds of lumber were lying around and an iron bed was standing without bedding or coverlet. On the bed slept a man in a pink shirt, covered with a thick overcoat.

Volddya took him for a soldier.

“Peter Nikolaevich !” said the orderly, pushing the sleeping man by the shoulder. “ The ensign will lie down here— This is our yunker,” he added, turning to the ensign.

“ Oh, please do not trouble yourself,” said Volodya ; but the yunker, a tall, solidly built young man, with a handsome, but very stupid face, rose from the bed, threw the overcoat over his shoulders, and, evidently not yet fully awake, went out of the room.

“ That’s all right, I will sleep in the yard,” he muttered.

XIII.

When Volodya was left alone with his thoughts, his first sensation was a dread of the disorderly and disconsolate condition in which his soul was. He wanted to fall asleep and to forget everything that surrounded him, but especially himself. He put out the candle, lay down on the bed, and, taking off his overcoat, covered his head over with it, so as to free himself of the terror of darkness, to which he had been subject from childhood. Suddenly he was struck by the thought that a bomb would reach the house, pierce the roof, and kill him. He listened attentively ; above him could be heard the steps of the commander of the battery.

” Still, if it does reach here,” he thought, ” it will first kill up-stairs, and me only afterward ; at least, I shall not be the only one.” This thought calmed him a little ; he was beginning to doze off. ” But what will happen if Sevastopol is taken to-night, and the French make an irruption here ? What shall I defend myself with ? ” He again got up, and began to pace the room. The terror of the real danger suppressed the mysterious terror of the darkness. There was no solid object in the room but a saddle and a samovar.

” I am a scoundrel, a coward, a vile coward ! ” he suddenly thought, and once more passed over to the oppressive feeling of contempt and even disgust with himself. He lay down again, and endeavoured not to think. Then the impressions of the day involuntarily rose in his imagination, under the accompaniment of the uninterrupted sounds which made the panes in the one window tremble, and they again reminded him of the danger : now it was the wounded and the blood that stood before him ; now bombs and splinters, that were Hying into the room ; now the pretty Sister of Mercy, who was dressing his mortal wound, and weeping over him ; now his mother, who was seeing him off in the provincial town, and fervently praying, with tears in her eyes, before the miracle-working image, — and again his dream seemed impossible to him. But suddenly the thought of Almighty God, who could do everything and receive every prayer, clearly entered into his mind. He knelt down, made the sign of the cross, and folded his hands as he had been taught to pray in childhood. This attitude suddenly transferred him to a long-forgotten blissful feeling.

” If I must die, if it is necessary that I should not be, take me, O Lord,” he thought, ” take me as soon as possible ; but if bravery, if firmness are needed, which I do not possess, give them to me, save me from shame and disgrace, which I am unable to bear, and teach me what to do in order to execute Thy will.”

The shy, childish, limited soul suddenly became manly and bright, and saw new, wide, bright horizons. Many, many things he thought and felt in the short time while this feeling lasted. He soon fell into quiet, undisturbed slumber, under the sounds of the protracted roar of the bombardment and the trembling of the windows.

Almighty God ! Thou alone hast heard and knowest those simple, but ardent and despairing prayers of ignorance and of dim repentance, and the entreaties to heal their bodies and enlighten their minds, which have risen to Thee from this terrible place of death, issuing from the mouth of a general, who but a second before had been dreaming of the Cross of St. George on his neck, but now with terror was aware of Thy nearness, down to the

common soldier, who fell down on the bare floor of the Nicholas battery and implored Thee to give him there the unconsciously anticipated reward for all his sufferings !

XIV.

The elder Kozeltsov, having met in the street a soldier of his regiment, repaired with him at once to the fifth bastion.

“ Hold on to the wall, your Honour ! ” said the soldier.

« Why ? “

” It is dangerous, your Honour ; it is carrying across,” said the soldier, listening to the sound of a shell whistling past him and striking against the dry earth on the other side of the street.

Kozeltsov paid no attention to the soldier, but continued to walk briskly in the middle of the street.

The streets were the same; the fires, sounds, groans, and encounters of wounded men were the same, nay, more frequent. The batteries, breastworks, and trenches were the same as in the spring, when he had been in Sevastopol ; but all this was for some reason more melancholy now, and at the same time more energetic. There were more breaches in the houses, no lights whatsoever in the windows, except in Kushchm’s house (the hospital), not one woman was met with, and on everything lay not the former character of habit and carelessness, but the imprint of oppressive expectation and weariness.

Finally the last trench was reached, and there he heard the voice of a soldier of the P–- regiment, who had

recognized the former commander of his company, and there the third battalion stood in the darkness, crowding at the wall, occasionally illuminated by the fire of the

fusilade, but otherwise audible by their subdued conversation and clanking of guns.

” Where is the commander of the regiment ? ” asked Kozeltsov.

” In the blindage, with the naval men, your Honour ! ” replied the obliging soldier. “If you please, I will take you there.”

From one trench into another, the soldier brought Kozeltsov to a ditch in a trench. Here sat a sailor, smoking a pipe ; behind him could be seen a door, through the chink of which peeped a light.

” May I enter ? ”

” I shall announce you at once,” and the sailor went through the door.

Two voices were speaking behind the door.

” If Prussia will continue its neutrality,” said one voice, “ then Austria, too — “

“ What of Austria,” said another, “ when the Slavic countries — go beg them — “

Kozeltsov had never been in this blindage. It startled him by its elegance. The floor was ot parquetry, and a screen covered the door. Along the walls stood two beds ; in the corner stood a large image of the Virgin, in gold foil, and in front of it burnt a rose-coloured lamp. On one of the beds slept a sailor, with all his clothes on ; on the other, at a table, on which stood two half-full bottles of wine, sat the persons conversing, — the new commander of the regiment, and an adjutant. Though Kozeltsov was far from being a coward, and was guilty of absolutely nothing, either before the government or before the commander of the regiment, yet he lost his composure before the colonel, who but lately had been his comrade, — so proudly did this colonel rise and listen to him.

“ It is strange,” thought Kozeltsov, looking at his commander ; “ it is only seven weeks since he has assumed the command of the regiment, and how already in all his surroundings, in his attire, movements, and looks may be discerned the power of a commander of the regiment. How long ago is it,” he thought, ” since this very Batnsh-chev used to carouse with us, and to wear for weeks at a time a dark-coloured shirt, and to eat all the time chopped steak and cheese pie without inviting any one to his room ? And now ! There is an expression of chill haughtiness in his eyes, which says to you: ‘Though I am a comrade of yours, being a regimental commander of the new school, yet believe me, I know how gladly you would give up half your life, if you could be in my place ! ‘ ”

“ You have been rather long convalescing,” the colonel said coldly to Kozeltsov, looking at him.

“ I was ill, colonel ! Even now the wound is not all healed over.”

“ Then there was no use coming,” said the colonel, eyeing the officer’s whole form with a suspicious glance. ” But can you attend to duty ? ”

“Certainly I can.”

“ I am glad of it. Take then from Ensign Zaytsev the ninth company, — the one you had before ; you will get the order at once.”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ Be so kind as to send to me the adjutant of the regiment, when you leave,” concluded the commander of the regiment, letting him know by a slight inclination of his head that the interview was at an end.

Coming out of the blindage, Kozeltsov grumbled something several times and shrugged his shoulders, as though something pained, annoyed, and mortified him ; it was not the commander of the regiment who mortified him (there was no reason for that), but he was somehow dissatisfied with himself and with all that surrounded him.

XV.

Before meeting his officers, Kozeltsov went to greet his company and to find out where it was stationed. The breastwork of gabions, the forms of the trenches, the cannon that he passed, even the splinters and bombs against which he stumbled on his way, — all this continually illuminated by the fires of the discharges, was quite familiar to him ; all this had been well impressed upon his memory three months before, during the two weeks he had passed without interruption in this very bastion. Though there was much of a terrifying nature in these reminiscences, yet there was mingled with them a certain charm of the past, and it gave him pleasure to recognize the familiar places and objects, as though he had passed two agreeable weeks here. The company was stationed near the defensive wall on the side of the sixth bastion.

Kozeltsov entered a long blindage, which was entirely open on the side of the entrance, and in which he was told the ninth company was stationed. There literally was left no space to step foot in the whole blindage : it was so choked with soldiers up to the very entrance. On one side was burning a crooked tallow dip, which a soldier was holding, while lying down, to throw light on a book from which another soldier was reading by syllables. Near the candle in the stiffing half-light of the blindage were seen craning heads, eagerly listening to the reader. The book was a primer. Upon entering the blindage, Kozeltsov heard the following :

” Pray-er aft-er study. I thank Thee, Cre-a-tor — “

” Snuff the candle ! ” said a voice. ” It is a fine book.” ” My — God — ” continued the reader.

When Kozeltsdv asked for the sergeant, the reader stopped, the soldiers began to stir, to clear their throats, and to sniffle, as is always the case after a repressed conversation ; the sergeant, buttoning himself, rose near the group around the reader, and, stepping over and upon the legs of those who could not find a place to draw them back, went out to the officer.

” Good evening, brother ! Is this all our company ? “

” I wish you health ! I congratulate your Honour upon your arrival ! ” answered the sergeant, looking merrily and in a friendly manner at Kozeltsdv. ” How is your health, your Honour ? Thank God. It was dull without you.”

It was evident that Kozeltsdv was loved by his company.

In the depth of the blindage could be heard voices: “The old captain is back, the one that was wounded, Kozeltsov, Mikhaylo Seménych,” and so forth ; some even moved toward him, and his drummer saluted him.

“ Good evening, Obanchuk ! ” said Kozeltsov. ” Are you hale ? Good evening, boys ! ” he then said, raising his voice.

“We wish you health ! ” was roared forth in the blindage.

” How are you getting on, boys ? “

“ Poorly, your Honour. The French are getting the best of us, that’s bad ; they are shooting from behind the entrenchment, and that’s all ! They do not come out into the field.’’

“ Maybe, with God’s aid, it will be my luck to see them come out into the field, boys ! ” said Kozeltsdv. “ It will not be our first time ; we will stab them again.”

“ It will give us pleasure to do our best,” said several voices.

” He is, really, brave,” said a voice.

” He is mightily brave ! ” said the drummer, not aloud, but audibly enough, turning to another soldier, as though finding his justification in the words of the commander of the company, and convincing him that there was nothing boastful and improbable in these words.

From the soldiers, Kozeltsov passed over to the defensive barracks, to his fellow officers.

XVI.

In the large room of the barracks there was an immense throng of naval, artillery, and infantry officers. Some were asleep, others conversed, sitting on a caisson and the carriage of a fortress cannon ; others again, forming the largest and noisiest group under the vault, were seated on the floor, on two spread felt mantles, drinking porter and playing cards.

” Ah, Kozeltsov, Kozeltsov ! It is good of you to have come, you are a brave fellow ! — How is the wound ? ” they said on all sides. It was evident that they liked him here, too, and that they were glad to see him back.

Having pressed the hands of his acquaintances, Kozeltsov joined the noisy group, which was formed by several officers playing cards. Among them also were his acquaintances. A handsome, sparse, dark-complexioned man, with a long thin nose and long moustache standing out from his cheeks, was keeping bank with his white thin fingers, on one of which was a large gold ring with a coat of arms. He was paying bank, thrusting the money straight and irregularly, evidently agitated by something, though he wished to appear careless. Near him, on his right, lay, leaning on his arm, a gray-haired major, who with an affectation of cold-bloodedness punted at half a rouble, and immediately paid the stakes. On the left squatted an officer with a red, perspiring face, smiling forcedly, and jesting. When his cards were beaten, he kept moving one of his hands in the empty pocket of his

trousers. He was playing at large stakes, but obviously no longer with cash, and it was this which angered the handsome, dark-complexioned man. Up and down the room walked, with a large package of paper money in his hands, a bald-headed, haggard, pale officer, with a huge nose and mouth, and he constantly put up cash on the cards, and won the stakes.

Kozeltsov took a drink of brandy and sat down near the players.

“Won’t you take a punt, Mikhail Seménych?” the cashier said to him. ” I suppose you have brought a pile of money with you.”

” Where was I to get the money from ? On the contrary, I spent the last in the city.”

” I don’t believe it ! You must have fleeced somebody at Simferopol.”

” Really, I have very little,” said Kozeltsov, but evidently not wishing to be taken at his word, he unbuttoned his coat, and took the old cards into his hands.

” Well, I’ll try my luck ; the devil sometimes plays funny tricks ! Even a gnat, you know, can do tilings. Only I must fortify myself by a drink.”

After taking another wine-glass of brandy and some porter, he in a short time lost his last three roubles.

Against the short perspiring officer was written one hundred and fifty roubles.

” No, I have no luck,” he said, carelessly taking a new card.

” Will you kindly send it ? ” said the cashier, stopping for a moment in his dealing, and looking at him.

” Permit me to send it to-morrow,” answered the perspiring officer, getting up and convulsively rummaging through his empty pocket.

“Hm!” grumbled the cashier, and, angrily dealing to the right and left, he gave out the whole pack. ” But really, this won’t do,” he said, putting down his cards.

” I pass. This will not do, Zakhar Ivänych,” he added. “We were playing for cash, and not to charge up.”

” Do you doubt me ? That is strange ! ”

” From whom am I to get it ? ” growled the major, who had won sometliing like eight roubles. “ I have sent up more than twenty roubles, and having won I receive nothing.”

“ What am I to pay with when there is no money on the table ? ” said the cashier.

“ That is not my business ! ” cried the major, rising. ” I am playing with you, and not with them.”

The perspiring officer suddenly became excited.

” I tell you I will pay to-morrow ; how dare you, then, insult me ? ”

“ I say what I please ! That is no way of doing ! ” cried the major.

“Stop it, Fédor Fédorych!” they all said at once, keeping back the major.

But we will draw down the curtain over the scene immediately. To-morrow, maybe this very night, every one of these men will go merrily and proudly to meet death, and will die firm and calm ; but the only consolation in life, under conditions that horrify the coldest imagination, when everything humane is absent and there is no hope of emerging from the horrors, — the only consolation is forgetfulness, the annihilation of consciousness. At the bottom of the soul of each of them lies a noble spark which will make a hero of him ; but this spark is not burning brightly, — there will come the fatal moment, and it will burst into a flame and will illumine great deeds.

XVII.

On the following day the bombardment was continued with the same force. At about eleven o’clock in the morning, Volodya Kozeltsdv was sitting in the circle of the battery officers, and, having become a little accustomed to them, was watching the new faces, observing, questioning, and himself talking. The modest conversation of the artillerists, with a slight pretence at learning, impressed and pleased him, while the shy, innocent, handsome exterior of Volodya gained the officers’ favour for him.

The older officer of the battery, a captain, — an undersized, red-haired man, with a tuft on his crown, and with smooth temples, brought up in the old traditions of the artillery, a lady’s man and presumably learned, — was interested in Volodya’s knowledge of artillery, asked him about new inventions, graciously jested about his youth and handsome face, and, in general, treated him like a son, which was extremely agreeable to Volodya.

Sub-Lieutenant Dyadénko, a young officer with a Little-Russian accent, in a torn overcoat and dishevelled hair, talked in a loud voice, was all the time looking for a chance for a heated dispute, and was quick in all his motions; but he nevertheless pleased Volodya, who could not help noticing under this coarse exterior a very good and exceedingly kind man. Dyadénko continually offered his services to Volodya, and proved to him that all the ordnance at Sevastopol was not placed according to the rules.

Lieutenant Chernovitski, with high arching eyebrows, though more polite than the rest, and dressed in a fairly clean coat, which, if it was not new, was carefully mended, and showing a gold chain on his velvet waistcoat, did not please Volodya. He kept asking what the emperor and the Minister of War were doing, told him with an unnatural ecstasy the deeds of bravery which had been performed at Sevastopol, regretted the small number of real patriots, and, in general, displayed much learning, wit, and noble sentiments ; but for some reason or other all this seemed disagreeable and unnatural to Volodya. The main thing was, he had observed that the other officers did not speak to Chernovitski. Yunker Viang, whom he had awakened the day before, was there also. He did not say anything, but, sitting modestly in the corner, laughed whenever anything funny was said, reminded people of things they had forgotten, and passed the brandy and rolled the cigarettes for the officers. Whether it was the modest, civil bearing of Volodya, who treated him like an officer, and did not disdain him like a boy, or whether it was his pleasant exterior, which so captivated Vlanga (as the soldiers called him, for some reason or other making his name a feminine), — he did not take his large kindly eyes away from the new officer, guessed and anticipated all his wishes, and all the time dwelt in a kind of amorous transport, which, of course, the officers noticed and ridiculed.

Before dinner the staffcaptain was relieved in the bastion, and he joined their company. StaffCaptain Kraut was a blond, handsome, audacious officer, with long sandy moustache and whiskers ; he spoke Russian excellently, but a little too well and too regularly for a Russian. In his service and in life he was the same as with his language ; he served beautifully, was an excellent companion, a most reliable man in monetary affairs ; but simply, as a man, even because everything was so good, there was something lacking. Like all Russian Germans he was,

in strange contradistinction to the ideal German Germans, in the highest degree practical.

” Here he is coming, our hero ! ” said the captain, as Kraut entered the room, waving his arms and clattering with his spurs. “ What do you prefer, Friedrich Kresty any ch, tea or brandy ? “

” I have ordered tea got ready for me, but in the meantime I will take a dram to soothe my spirit. Very happy to make your acquaintance ; I beg you to have me in your graces,” he said to Volodya, who, rising, saluted him. ” StaffCaptain Kraut — The cannoneer in the bastion told me that you arrived yesterday.”

” I am very much obliged to you for your bed : I slept on it.”

” But did you rest well ? One of its legs is broken ; but there is no time to fix it, — we are in a stage of siege, — something ought to be put under.”

“ Have things gone well while you were on duty ? ” asked Dyadénko.

“Passable. Only Skvortsov caught it, and one gun-carriage was mended yesterday. They had smashed the cheek into splinters.”

He rose from his seat and began to walk around ; it was evident he was under the influence of the pleasant sensation of a man who has just escaped a danger.

“Well, Dmitri Gavrflych,” he said, shaking the captain’s knees, ” how are you getting on ? How is your advancement ? Still mum ? ”

” Nothing yet.”

” And there will be nothing,” said Dyadénko. ” I have proved it to you before.”

” Why not ? ”

“ Because you did not make the right report.”

” Always disputing ! ” said Kraut, smiling merrily. ” You are a real stubborn Little-Bussian ! And just to annoy you, you will get a Heute nancy.”

« No, I won’t.”

“ Viang ! Please fetch my pipe, and fill it for me,” he said, turning to the yunker, who obligingly ran away to fetch the pipe.

Kraut animated them all : he told of the bombardment, asked for the news during his absence, and talked with everybody.

XVIII.

“Well? Are you all settled here, among us?” Kraut asked Volodya. ” Pardon me, what is your name and patronymic ? Such is the custom with us, in the artillery. Have you supplied yourself with a riding-horse ? “

” No,” said Volodya, “ I do not know what to do. I told the captain that I had no horse and no money, unless I got my forage and travelling money. I should like for the time being to ask the commander of the battery for a horse, but I am afraid he will refuse it.”

“ Apollon Sergyéich ! ” and he produced a sound with his lips, expressive of strong doubt, and glanced at the captain. ” Hardly ! ”

“ Well, if he does refuse, there will be no great misfortune,” said the captain. ” To tell the truth, no horses are needed here. Still, we might try ; I will ask him to-day.”

” You evidently do not know him,” Dyadénko put in his word. ” Whatever else he may refuse, he will not refuse the horse. Do you want to wager ? ”

” Of course, you must contradict, as usual.”

“ I contradict because I know. He is stingy on everything else, but he will give horses, because it is not to his interest to refuse them.”

“ How can he help refusing them when oats are at eight roubles ? ” said Kraut. “ It is to his interest not to keep a superfluous horse ! ”

” Ask for Starling, Vladimir Seménych ! ” said Viang, returning with Kraut’s pipe. “ It is an excellent horse.”

“ From which you fell into a ditch at Magpie-ville ? Ah ? Vlânga ? ” remarked the staffcaptain.

” What of it if oats are at eight roubles, as you say,” Dyadénko continued to dispute, ” if he marks it down at ten and a half. Of course it is to his interest.”

” Why should there not something stick to his hands ? If you were the commander of a battery, you would not let a horse go down-town ! ”

“ When I shall be commander of a battery, my horses will get four measures of grain a day, and I will not make anything on them.”

” We shall see,” said the staffcaptain. ” You will do just the same, and so will he, when he commands a battery,” he added, pointing to Volddya.

” What makes you think, Friedrich Krestyänych, that he will take advantage of his position ? ” Chernovltski chimed in. ” Maybe he has wealth of his own, and won’t have to take advantage.”

“No, I — pardon me, captain,” said Volddya, blushing up to his ears. “ I regard this as ignoble.”

« Oho ! He has grit ! ” said Kraut.

“ It seems to me like this : if it is not my money, I have no right to take it.”

” But let me tell you something, young man,” the captain began, in a more serious tone. “ You know, that when you command a battery, nothing will be said, provided you do things right ; the commander of the battery does not interfere with the commissary stores of the soldiers, — such has been the custom in the artillery since time immemorial. If you are a poor master, you will have nothing left. Now, this is what you have to spend money on, contrary to regulations: for shoeing — one (he bent one finger) ; for the drugs — two (he bent another finger) ; for the chancery — three ; for off horses you have to pay as high as five hundred roubles apiece, my dear — that is four; you must change the soldiers’

collars ; much money goes for coal ; you board the officers. If you are a commander of a battery, you have to live in proper style: you need a carriage, a fur coat, and this and that — what is the use of mentioning it all ? “

“ But above everything else,” interrupted the captain, who had all the time kept silent. ” You must consider this, Vladimir Seménych : take a man like me, — he has to serve twenty years, first at a salary of two hundred, and then at three hundred roubles. Why should he not in his old age provide a piece of bread for himself ? ”

” What’s the use of talking ? ” again spoke the staffcaptain. ” Don’t be in a hurry to pass an opinion. Serve awhile, and then judge.”

Volodya was dreadfully embarrassed and ashamed for having expressed himself without proper consideration, and he mumbled something and continued to listen in silence, while Dyadénko was with the greatest passion disputing the matter and proving the opposite.

The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of the colonel’s orderly, calling to dinner.

« Tell Apollon Sergyéich to serve some wine,” said Chernovitski, buttoning his coat, to the captain. “ What makes him so stingy ? If he is killed, nobody will get anything ! ”

” Tell him yourself ! ”

” No, you are the senior officer: it is necessary to have order in everything.”

XIX.

The table was removed from the wall, and covered with a soiled cloth, in the very room where Volodya had reported to the colonel the evening before. The commander of the battery this time gave him his hand, and asked him about St. Petersburg and the journey.

” Well, gentlemen, he who drinks brandy, let him help himself. Ensigns don’t drink,” he added, smiling.

The commander of the battery did not seem as stern as on the previous day ; on the contrary, he had the appearance of a kind, hospitable host and a senior comrade of the officers. Nevertheless, all the officers, from the old captain down to Ensign Dyadénko, expressed their great respect for him, by their manner of speech, while looking deferentially into his eyes, and by the shy reserve with which they went up one after another to take a drink of brandy.

The dinner consisted of a large bowl of beet soup, in which swam around fat pieces of beef and an immense quantity of pepper and laurel leaves, of Polish forcemeat with mustard, and of tripe with not very fresh butter. There were no napkins, the spoons were of tin and wood, there were only two glasses, and on the table stood only a decanter of water with a broken neck ; but the dinner was not dull : the conversation never flagged.

At first, the conversation turned on the battle at Inkerman, in which the battery had taken part ; each one gave his impressions and reflected on the causes of its failure, and stopped speaking, every time the commander had

anything to say ; then the conversation naturally passed to the insufficiency of the calibre of the light guns, and to the new lighter cannon, which gave Volodya a chance to display his knowledge of artillery. The conversation did not dwell on the present terrible condition of Sevastopol, as though each had been thinking too much of the subject to mention it. Similarly, the duties of the service, which were to devolve on Volodya, were not referred to at all, to his surprise and mortification, as though he had arrived in Sevastopol only to tell of the lighter guns, and to dine with the commander of the battery. During their dinner, a bomb fell not far from the house where they were sitting. The floor and walls shook as from an earthquake, and the windows were shrouded by a powder smoke.

” I suppose you have not seen anything like this in St. Petersburg ; here we get such surprises often,” said the commander of the battery.

” Viang, go and see where it has exploded.”

Viang went out and reported that it was in the square, and that was the last thing said about the bomb.

Just before the end of the dinner, an old man, the scribe of the battery, entered the room with three sealed envelopes, which he handed to the commander of the battery.

‘ This one is very pressing. A Cossack has brought it from the chief of artillery.”

All the officers looked in impatient expectancy at the fingers of the commander, which were quite used to breaking such seals, and which took out the very pressing document. ” What could it be ? ” each one asked himself. It might mean leaving Sevastopol altogether, taking a rest, or an order for the whole battery to take up positions in the bastions.

” Again ! ” said the commander of the battery, angrily flinging the paper on the table.

“ What is it, Apolldn Sergyéich ? ” asked the senior officer.

” They are asking for an officer with the crew for some mortar battery. As it is, I lack four officers and the crew for the full complement,” grumbled the commander of the battery, “and they want to take away another— Well, somebody will have to go, gentlemen,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “ The order is to be on the barricade at seven o’clock — Send for the sergeant ! Gentlemen, who will go ? Decide,” he repeated.

» ” He has not been yet,” said Chemovitski, pointing to Volodya.

The commander of the battery made no reply.

” Yes, I should like to,” said Volodya, feeling a cold perspiration on his back and neck.

” Why should he ? ” the captain interrupted him. ” Of course, no one will refuse, neither would one beg for the favour ; if Apollon Sergyéich leaves the matter to us, let us cast lots, as we did the last time.”

Everybody agreed to it. Kraut cut some slips of paper, rolled them up, and threw them into a cap. The captain was playful and even had the courage to ask the colonel for some wine, in order to brace himself, as he said. Dyadénko was gloomy, Volddya had a smile on his face. Chemovitski insisted that he would have to go, and Kraut was entirely at ease.

Volddya was the first to draw. He picked up a paper which was longer than the rest, but it suddenly occurred to him to exchange it for another, which was smaller and thinner, and, upon opening it, he read, “ To go ! ”

” I have to,” he said, with a sigh.

” Well, God protect you ! You’ll get your fire baptism at once,” said the commander of the battery, glancing with a kindly smile at the disturbed face of the ensign. ” Get ready at once ! To make it more cheerful for you, Viang will go with you as gun-sergeant.”

XX.

Vlang was exceedingly well satisfied with his appointment, ran at once to get ready, and, all dressed up, came back to help Volodya; he tried to persuade him to take along a cot, a fur coat, some old numbers of the ” Memoirs of the Fatherland,” the coffee-pot with the spirit-lamp, and other unnecessary things. The captain advised Volodya first to read from the Manual about the firing from mortars, and to copy out the tables. Volodya at once sat down to work, and, to his agreeable surprise, he discovered that, although he was still disturbed by the terror of the danger and even more by his dread of being a coward, these feelings were not so powerful as on the previous day. This was partly due to the influence of daylight and his activity, and partly to the fact that fear, like every powerful sensation, cannot last in the same measure for any length of time. In short, he had emerged from his affright. At about seven o’clock, just as the sun was beginning to set behind the Nicholas barracks, the sergeant entered and announced that the men were in readiness, and waiting for him.

” I have given Vlânga the list. Please ask him for it, your Honour ! ” he said.

About twenty artillerymen, in short swords without their loading implements, were standing around the corner of the house. Volodya walked over to them with the yunker.

” Shall I deliver a short speech to them, or simply say, ‘ Good evening, boys ! ‘ and nothing else ? ” he thought.

“ Why should I not say, ‘ Good evening, boys ! ‘ It is certainly proper.” He boldly shouted in his sonorous voice, ” Good evening, boys ! ” The soldiers cheerfully returned the greeting ; his youthful, fresh voice rang agreeably to their ears.

Volodya marched briskly at the head of the soldiers, and though his heart beat as though he had run several versts at full speed, his gait was light and his face cheerful. As they were ascending the hill leading to the Malakhov Mound, he noticed that Viang, who did not fall a step behind him, and who at home had the appearance of such a courageous man, constantly walked to one side and lowered his head, as though all the bombs and shells, which were whistling past with extraordinary frequency, were flying straight at him. A few of the soldiers acted in the same manner, and in most faces, in general, was expressed restlessness, if not fear. These circumstances completely calmed Volodya and gave him courage.

” So, here I am myself on the Malakhov Mound, winch I had imagined a thousand times more terrible ! I, too, can walk without stooping before the shells, and I am less frightened than the rest ! So I am not a coward ! ” he thought, with delight and even with a certain measure of rapturous self-satisfaction.

This sentiment was soon shaken by the spectacle which he encountered at dusk in the Kornilov battery, while trying to find the chief of the bastion. Four sailors, near the breastwork, were holding a bloodstained corpse of a soldier without boots and overcoat, and were swinging it, in their attempt to throw it over the breastwork. (On the second day of the bombardment they did not in all places succeed in taking all the bodies away from the bastions, and so they threw them into the ditch in order to get them out of the way.)

Volodya stood petrified for a minute when he saw the

body strike the top of the breastwork and then roll down into the ditch ; but, fortunately for him, he here met the chief of the bastion, who gave him his orders and provided him with a guide to take him to the battery and to the blindage intended for his crew. We shall not stop to tell how many more dangers and disenchantments our hero passed through on that night ; how, instead of the firing which he had seen on the Volkhov Field, under all the conditions of precision and order, which he had expected to find here, he found two smashed mortars, the mouth of one of which had been dented by a cannonball, while the other was standing on the splinters of a demolished platform ; how he could not get any workmen before morning, in order to mend the platform ; how not a single charge was of the weight laid down in the Manual ; how two soldiers under his command were wounded ; and how his life had been hanging on a hair more than twenty times.

Luckily he was assisted by a gun-captain of enormous size, a sailor, who had been with the mortars in the beginning of the siege, and who convinced him of the possibility of putting them in action. He led him, with a lamp in his hand, all night through the bastion, as though it were his garden, and promised to fix everything in the morning.

The blindage to which his guide took him had been dug out in the stony ground ; it was an elongated ditch of about two cubic fathoms in size, covered with oak yard beams. Here he took up his position with all his soldiers. The moment Viang caught sight of the low three-foot door of the blindage, he rushed headlong into it before all the rest, and almost hurt himself against the stone floor, in trying to reach the farthest corner, from which he did not emerge. When all the soldiers had seated themselves on the floor along the wall, and some of them had lighted their pipes, Volodya arranged his bed

in the corner, lighted a candle, began to smoke a cigarette, and lay down on the cot. >

Above the blindage continuous reports were heard, but not very loudly except from one gun, which stood near by, and with its booming shook the blindage. In the blindage itself, everything was quiet ; but now and then the soldiers, still feeling strange before their new officer, wo.uld talk softly to each other, asking this one to move a little and that one to give them a light for their pipes ; or a rat was scratching somewhere between the stones ; or Viang, who had not yet regained his composure, and wildly looked about him, suddenly uttered a loud sigh. Volodya on his bed, in his quiet corner crowded by people and lighted up by one candle, experienced the sensation of comfort which used to come over him when as a child he played hide-and-seek and concealed himself in the safe, or under his mother’s skirt, where, not daring to breathe, he listened attentively, and was afraid of the darkness, but at the same time derived pleasure from it. He was both a little ill at ease and cheerful.

XXI.

Some ten minutes later the soldiers grew bolder, and began to converse. Near the light and the officer’s bed, two soldiers of more importance, being cannoneers, had taken up their position : one of them was gray-haired and old, and had all the medals but the Cross of St. George ; the other, a young cantonist,1 was smoking twisted cigarettes. The drummer, as usual, took upon himself the duty of waiting on the officer. The bombardiers and cavaliers sat next, and farther in the shadow, near the door, the ” submissive ” took up their seats. It was among the latter that the conversation began. The cause for it was the noise produced by a man who darted into the blindage.

” Well, brother, you could not sit it out in the street ? Are the girls singing merry songs ? ” said one voice.

” They are singing marvellous songs, such as we have never heard in the village,” said, smiling, the man who had rushed into the blindage.

“ Väsin is not fond of bombs, no, he isn’t ! ” said one in the aristocratic corner.

” Well, when there is any need, it is a different matter ! ” slowly spoke Vasin, and whenever he said something, all the others kept silent. ” On the 24th there was a terrible fire ; but what is there bad in this ? You will only be killed uselessly, and the authorities don’t say ‘ Thanks ‘ to us fellows for it.”

1 Soldiers brought up since early childhood in special colonies called cantons.

At these words of Väsin all laughed.

” Now there is Mélnikov, and he is all the time sitting outside,” somebody remarked.

” Call him in, that Mélnikov,” added the old cannoneer.

“ Really, he will be only killed, for nothing.”

” Who is that Mélnikov ? ” asked Volddya.

” One of our foolish soldiers, your Honour. He is afraid of absolutely nothing, and is all the time walking about outside. You ought to see him : he looks just like a bear.”

” He knows a charm,” Väsin said, in a drawling voice, from the farther corner.

Mélnikov entered the blindage. He was stout (this is extraordinary among soldiers), red-haired, and red in his face, with an enormous arched brow, and bulging, light blue eyes.

” Are you afraid of the bombs ?” Volodya asked him.

” What sense is there in being afraid of bombs ? ” replied Mélnikov, crouching, and scratching himself. ” I shan’t be killed by a bomb, I know that.”

” 8o you would like to live here ? ”

” Of course, I should like to. It is jolly here ! ” he said, suddenly bursting forth in a laugh.

” Then we shall have to take you out on a sortie ! If you want to, I will tell the general,” said Volddya, though he did not know a single general.

” Why should I not want to go ? I do want to ! ”

Mélnikov disappeared behind the others.

” Let us play at noski,1 boys ! Who has cards ? ” was heard his hurried voice.

Indeed, in a short time a game was started in the farther corner, and one could hear them striking the nose, laughing, and calling trumps. Volddya drank some tea from the samovar, which the drummer had made for him,

1 A game at cards, in which the loser is struck on the nose with the cards.

treated the cannoneers, joked, talked with them, wishing to become popular with them, and was very much satisfied with the respect which they showed him. The soldiers, too, talked more freely when they noticed that their officer was a simple man. One of them was saying that the siege of Sevastopol would soon be raised, because a reliable naval man had told him that Constantine, the Tsar’s brother, was coming to our relief with a Merican fleet, and that soon there would be made a truce not to fire for two weeks, and whosoever should fire would have to pay seventy-five kopeks for every shot.

Vasin, who, as Volodya could make out, was a small man, with large, kindly eyes and with whiskers, told, amidst a universal silence, and then laughter, how, when he had gone home on a leave of absence, they were at first delighted to see him, but how later his father sent him out to work and the forester sent his carriage for his wife. All tins amused Volodya greatly. He not only did not experience the slightest fear or displeasure from the closeness and oppressive odour in the blindage, but everything was cheerful and pleasant to him.

Many soldiers were snoring. Viang, too, had stretched himself out on the floor, and the old cannoneer, having spread his overcoat and making the sign of the cross, was mumbling some prayers before his sleep, when Volodya took it into his head to go out and see what was going on.

” Remove your legs ! ” the soldiers cried to each other, when he got up, and the legs drew back and made a way for him.

Viang, who seemed to be asleep, suddenly raised his head and took Volodya by the fold of his overcoat.

” Don’t go, I beg you ! What’s the use ? ” he said, in a tone of tearful persuasiveness. ” You do not know, evidently, that the shells are falling there all the time • it is better here.”

In spite of Viang’s entreaties, Volodya made his way out of the blindage, and sat down on the threshold, where Mélnikov was already sitting.

The air was pure and fresh, — especially as compared with the blindage, — and the night was clear and calm. Amidst the roar of the cannonade could be heard the sounds of the wheels and carts that brought the gabions, and the conversation of the men working on a powder-room. Overhead was the high starry heaven, through which constantly flashed the fiery streaks of the bombs ; toward the left, at a distance of three feet, a small opening led into another blindage, in which could be seen the legs and backs of the sailors who were living in it, and could be heard their voices; in front was visible the elevation of the powder-room, past which flitted the figures of stooping men, and on the very summit of which, under the bullets and bombs which uninterruptedly whistled about that place, stood a tall form in a black mantle, with its hands in its pockets, stamping down the earth which others brought there in bags. Quite frequently a bomb flew by and burst near the powder-room. The soldiers who were carrying the dirt crouched and sidled, but the black figure did not move ; it continued to stamp down the earth with its feet, remaining all the time in one spot.

“Who is that black figure?” Volddya asked of Mélnikov.

” I do not know. I will go and see.”

” Don’t go ! It is unnecessary.”

But Mélnikov paid no attention, got up, walked over to the man in black, and for quite awhile stood just as unconcerned and immovable near him.

” He is in charge of the powder-room, your Honour ! ” he said, upon returning. “The powder-room has been torn up by a bomb, so the infantrymen are putting on some earth.”

Occasionally the bombs flew straight at the floor of the blindage, it seemed. Then Volodya pressed himself into the corner, and again came out to see whether they were flying in his direction. Though Viang, inside the blindage, entreated him several times to come back, Volodya remained about three hours on the threshold, experiencing a certain pleasure in tempting fate, and watching the flight of the bombs. Toward the end of the evening he was able to make out how many guns were in operation, and where they were stationed, and where the projectiles lodged.

XXII.

On the following day, the 27th, Volodya, after a ten hours’ sleep, went out early in the morning on the threshold of the blindage, feeling refreshed and full of life. Viang came out with him, but at the first sound of a bullet he rushed headlong into the opening of the blindage, making a way for himself with his head, amidst the universal laughter of the soldiers, most of whom had come out into the fresh air. Only Viang, the old cannoneer, and a few others rarely went out into the trench ; it was impossible to keep the others back : all of them rushed out of the foul blindage into the fresh morning air, and, in spite of the bombardment, which continued as severe as on the previous day, they lay down near the threshold and the breastwork. Mélnikov had been strolling along the batteries ever since daybreak, glancing upwards with indifference.

Near the threshold sat two old soldiers and a young curly-headed Jew, who had been detailed from the infantry. This Jew picked up a bullet, which was lying near him, and with a piece of iron flattened it against a stone ; then he cut out of it with a knife a cross resembling the Cross of St. George ; the others were talking and watching his work. The cross was really well made.

“If we are to stay here any length of time,” said one of them, ” we shall get our discharge as soon as peace is concluded.”

” Of course. I have only four years left to my discharge, and I have passed five months in Sevastopol.”

“ That does not count toward the discharge, do you hear ? ” said another.

Just then a cannonball whistled past the heads of the speakers, and struck the ground within three feet of Mélnikov, who was walking up to them in the trench.

” It almost killed Mélnikov,” said one.

” No, it won’t,” replied Mélnikov.

” Here, take this cross for your bravery,” said the young soldier who had made the cross, and handed it to Mélnikov.

“No, brother, here a month is counted a year, — there was such an order,” they continued their conversation.

” Take it as you please, but as soon as peace is concluded, there will be a review by the Tsar at Warsaw, and if they will not give us our discharge, they will give us an unlimited leave of absence.”

Suddenly a winning, deflected bullet flew above the heads of the speakers, and struck against a stone.

“ If you don’t look out, you will get a clear discharge before evening,” said one of the soldiers.

Everybody laughed.

And not as late as the evening, but two hours later, two of them received a clear discharge, and five were wounded ; but the rest joked as before.

In the morning two mortars were so far mended that it was possible to shoot from them. At about ten o’clock, the order having been received from the chief of the bastion, Volodya called out his command, and with it went to the battery.

Not a particle of that feeling of fear, which had been expressed in the soldiers’ faces the evening before, when they first came out for their work, was noticeable in them now. Viang alone could not control himself : he kept hiding and crouching as before, and Vasin lost something of his composure, and was flurried and constantly squatted. But Volodya was in a rapturous state : the thought of danger did not even occur to him. The joy of doing his duty, of finding himself not only not a coward, but even a brave man, the sensation of commanding, and the presence of twenty men, who, he knew, watched him with curiosity, made of him a gallant fellow. He was even proud of his bravery, showed off before his soldiers, walked out on the banquette, and purposely unbuttoned his overcoat so that he could be easily noticed. The chief of the bastion, who at this time was making the round of his estate, as he expressed himself, though he had become accustomed to all kinds of bravery in the last eight months, could not help admiring this handsome boy, in his unbuttoned overcoat, beneath which could be seen a red shirt clasping a white, tender neck, with his face and eyes aflame, clapping his hands, and commanding in a sonorous voice, ” First, second ! ” and gaily rushing out on the breastwork to see where his bomb would settle. At half-past eleven the firing died down on both sides, and precisely at twelve o’clock began the storming of the second, third, and fifth bastions of the Malakhov Mound.

XXIII.

On the nearer side of the bay, between Inkerman and the Northern fortification, on a telegraph mound, two sailors were standing about noon -, one, an officer, was looking through the telescope at Sevastopol, and the other had just come on horseback to the high post with a Cossack.

The sun stood bright and high above the bay, which was resplendent with a gay, warm sheen, as it swayed its moored ships and moving sails and boats. A light breeze barely rustled the leaves of the withering oak brush near the telegraph, filled the sails of the boats, and rocked the waves. Sevastopol, the same as before, with its unfinished church, its column, its quay, its boulevard, gleaming in its green colour on the hill, its artistic library building, its diminutive azure inlets, filled with masts, its picturesque aqueduct arches, and its clouds of blue powder smoke, now and then illuminated by the purple flame of the gun fires, — the same proud, festive Sevastopol, surrounded on one side by yellow smoking hills, and on the other by the bright green sea glimmering in the sun, was visible on the other side of the bay.

Above the horizon of the sea, where a streak of black smoke rose from a steamer, crept a long white cloud, portending a wind. Along the whole line of the fortifications, especially along the hills on the left side, constantly puffed up masses of thick, compressed white smoke, several at a time, accompanied by flashes which now and then gleamed forth even in the bright midday light ; they spread, assuming various forms, rose in the air, and were tinged with darker hues against the sky. These puffs, flashing now here, now there, had their birth on the hills, in the batteries of the enemy, in the city, and high up in the air. The sounds of explosions were never interrupted, and, mingling, shook the air.

About noon the puffs of smoke became rarer and rarer, and the atmosphere was less shaken by the booming of the cannon.

” The second bastion is not returning the fire at all,” said the officer of the hussars, who was on horseback. ” It is all smashed ! It is terrible ! “

” And Malakhov seems to be returning one shot to three of theirs,” said the one who was looking through the telescope. ” It drives me wild to hear their silence. They are continually hitting the Kornilov battery, but there is no reply.”

” Just see ! I told you that they always stopped bombarding about noon. It is just so to-day. Come, let us ride to our breakfast — they are waiting for us — there is no use looking — ”

” Wait, don’t bother me ! ” answered the one who was watching through the glasses, looking with unusual curiosity at Sevastopol.

« What is it ? What ? “

” There is some motion in the trenches : they are marching in close columns.”

” That can be seen with the naked eye,” said the sailor. ” They are marching in columns. I must give a signal.”

” Look there, look ! They have come out of the trenches.”

In fact, it could be seen with the naked eye that dark spots were moving down the hill, across the ravine, from the French batteries to the bastions. In front of these dots could be observed dark streaks near our line. In the bastions the white smoke of shots puffed up in different

places, as though running across. The wind carried the sound of an uninterrupted musketry fire, like the pattering of the rain against the window-panes. The black streaks moved about in the smoke, coming nearer and nearer. The sounds of the fusilade, growing stronger and stronger, blended into one prolonged, rumbling peal. The smoke, rising more and more frequently, passed rapidly along the line and finally fused into one contracting and expanding lilac cloud, in which now and then flashed fires and black dots. All the sounds were united in one rumbling, crackling noise.

” An assault ! ” said the officer, with a pale face, passing the telescope to the sailor.

Cossacks galloped by along the road. Officers on horseback, the commander-in-chief in a carriage and accompanied by his suite, passed by. On each face could be seen heavy agitation and breathless expectancy.

” It is impossible they should have taken it ! ” said the officer on horseback.

” Upon my word, a banner ! Look ! look ! ” said the other, choking with excitement and going away from the telescope. ” A French banner on Malakhov Mound.”

” Impossible ! ”

XXIV.

Kozeltsôv the elder, who had managed in the night to win back all he had lost and again to lose everything, even the gold coins which were sewn into the lining, was early in the morning sleeping an unhealthy, oppressive, but profound sleep in the defensive barracks of the fifth bastion when, repeated by different voices, the fatal cry was passed.

” Alarm ! “

« Get up, Mikhâylo Seménych ! There is an assault ‘ ” shouted somebody.

” Some schoolboy,” he said, incredulously, opening his eyes.

But suddenly he saw an officer who was running without any obvious purpose from one corner into another and with such a pale face that he understood everything. The thought that he might be taken for a coward who did not wish to go out with his company at a critical minute affected him powerfully. He flew to his company at full speed. The firing from the ordnance had stopped, but the crackling of the musketry fire was at full blast. The bullets whistled not one at a time, as from carbines, but in swarms, like birds of passage in the autumn, flying overhead. The whole place, where the day before had stood his battalion, was shrouded in smoke, and there were heard discordant cries and shouts. Soldiers, wounded and not wounded, he encountered in throngs. After running some thirty paces more he saw his company pressing against the wall.

” They have taken Schwartz,” said a young officer. ” Everything is lost ! ”

« Nonsense,” he said, angrily, drawing his small dull iron sword and shouting :

” Forward, boys ! Hurrah ! ”

His voice was loud and sonorous. It awoke Kozeltsdv himself. He ran ahead along the traverse. About fifty soldiers rushed after him. He ran out from behind the traverse upon the open square. Bullets flew literally like hail. Two of them struck him ; but where, and what they had done, whether they had bruised or wounded him, he had no time to decide. In front of him he could in the smoke see blue uniforms, red trousers, and hear the sounds of a foreign speech. One Frenchman was standing on the breastwork, waving his cap and shouting something. Kozeltsov was convinced that he would be killed, and this gave him more courage. He ran forward, ever onward. A few soldiers outran him. Other soldiers appeared from both sides and were running too. The blue uniforms remained at the same distance, running from him back to their trenches, but under his feet he stepped on wounded and dead soldiers. Having reached the outer ditch everything became confused in Kozeltsov’s eyes and he felt a pain in his breast.

Half an hour later he lay on a stretcher near the Nicholas barracks and he knew that he was wounded; but he felt hardly any pain. All he wanted was to get something cold to drink and to lie down quietly.

A short fat doctor with large black whiskers went up to him and unbuttoned his overcoat. Kozeltsov looked down his chin at what the doctor was doing with his wound and at the doctor’s face, but he felt no pain. The doctor covered the wound with the shirt, wiped his fingers on the folds of his overcoat, and silently, without looking at the wounded officer, walked over to another. Kozeltsov unconsciously followed with his eyes everything that was going on in his presence, and, recalling what had happened in the fifth bastion, thought with an extremely pleasant sensation of self-satisfaction of his having well executed his duty, of having for the first time during his service acted well, and of having no cause whatsoever for regrets. The doctor, who was dressing the wound of another wounded soldier, pointed to Kozeltsov and said something to a priest with a long red beard who was standing near by with a cross.

“Shall I die?” Kozeltsov asked the priest, when the latter went up to him.

The priest did not reply, but said a prayer, and handed the cross to the wounded man.

Death did not frighten Kozeltsdv. He took the cross with his feeble hands, pressed it to his lips, and sobbed.

“Well, have the French been repulsed?” he firmly asked the priest.

” Victory is entirely with us,” replied the priest, in order to console the wounded man, concealing from him the fact that on Malakhov Mound the French banner was already floating.

” Thank God,” said the wounded man, unconscious of the tears that coursed down his cheeks.

The thought of his brother for an instant crossed his mind. ” God grant him the same good fortune ! ” he thought.

XXV.

But a different fate awaited Volddya. He was listening to a fable, which Vasin was telling him, when there came the shout, ” The French are coming ! ” The blood rushed at once to Volodya’s heart, and he felt his cheeks grow cold and pale. He remained motionless for a second ; but, on looking around, he saw that the soldiers were buttoning their overcoats with a great deal of composure, and leaving the blindage one after another ; one of them, Mélnikov in all probability, said, jestingly :

” Meet them with bread and salt, boys ! “

Volodya crept with Viang, who did not leave him a pace’s length, out of the blindage, and ran to the battery. There was no artillery fire, neither on this, nor on the other side. He was roused not so much by the sight of the soldiers’ composure, as at the yunker’s pitiable, undisguised cowardice. “Is it possible I could be like him ? ” he thought, and cheerfully ran to the breastwork, near which stood his mortars. He could plainly see how the French were running straight at him across the clear space, and how crowds of them, with their bayonets gleaming in the sun, were stirring in the nearest trenches.

A short, broad-shouldered man, in a zouave uniform and short sword, was running in front and leaping over ditches. “Fire the canister-shot!” shouted Volodya, running down from the banquette ; but the soldiers had taken measures without him, and the metallic sound of the discharged canister-shot whistled over his head, first from one mortar, and then from the other. “ The first !

The second ! ” commanded Volddya, running along from one mortar to another, entirely forgetful of the danger. On both sides of him were heard the crackling of the musketry fire of our epaulement, and the shouts of bustling people.

Suddenly a piercing cry of despair, repeated by several voices, was heard on the left : “ They are outflanking us ! They are outflanking us!” Volddya turned back to look in the direction of the cries. Some twenty Frenchmen appeared from behind. One of them, with a black beard, a handsome man, was in the lead ; having run up to within ten steps of the battery, he stopped and fired straight at Volodya, then again ran toward him. For a second Volddya stood as if petrified, and did not trust his eyes. When he regained his senses and looked around, the blue uniforms appeared in front of him, on the breastwork ; and within ten paces of him two Frenchmen were spiking a cannon. Around him was no one but Melnikov, who had been killed at his side, and Viang, who had seized a handspike and, with a furious expression on his face and with downcast pupils, had rushed forward.

“ Follow me, Vladimir Seménych ! After me ! ” cried the desperate voice of Viang, who was flourishing the handspike in the face of the Frenchmen who had come up from behind. The furious figure of the yunker baffled them. To the one in front he dealt a blow on the head, the others involuntarily stopped, and Viang, continually looking around and crying, “After me, Vladimir Seménych ! Why do you stand ? Run ! ” dashed down to the trench, where lay our infantry, shooting at the French. After leaping into the trench, he again raised his head from it, to see what his beloved ensign was doing. Something, wrapped in an overcoat, was lying prone in the place where Vclddya had been standing, and all that place was occupied by Frenchmen firing at us.

XXVI.

Vlang found his battery on the second defensive line. Out of the number of twenty soldiers who had been with the mortar battery, only eight had saved themselves.

At nine o’clock in the evening, Viang with his battery crossed to the Northern side on a steamer that was filled with soldiers, guns, horses, and wounded. There was no firing. The stars gleamed brightly in the sky as on the previous night ; but a stiff breeze was agitating the sea. In the first and second bastions fires flashed low to the ground ; explosions shook the air and illuminated about them strange black objects and the stones that were flying in the air. Something was on fire near the docks, and the red flames were reflected in the water. The bridge, filled with people, was lighted up by the fire from the Nicholas battery. A large flame seemed to be hovering over the water on the distant promontory of the Alexander battery, illuminating the lower part of a cloud of smoke that hung over it, and the same quiet, bold, distant fires glimmered on the sea from the hostile fleet. A fresh breeze swayed the bay. In the light of the burning structures could be seen the masts of our sinking vessels disappearing deeper and deeper in the water.

There was no conversation on deck ; only, between the even sounds of the parted waves and the puffing chimney, one could hear the horses snorting and stamping their feet on the ferry, the orders of the captain, and the groans of the wounded. Viang, who had not eaten anything the whole day, drew a piece of bread from his pocket and 470

began to munch it, but suddenly he thought of Volddya, and began to weep so loudly that the soldiers, who sat near him, could hear it.

” I declare, our Vlanga is eating bread by himself and weeping by himself,” said Vasin.

“ Wonderful ! ” said another.

” See there, they have set fire to our barracks,” continued he, sighing. ” How many of our brothers have lost their lives there ! And after all the French got it ! ”

” At least we got out alive, and the Lord be praised for that !” said Vasin.

“ Still it is aggravating ! ”

” What is aggravating ? Do you suppose he will have an easy time here ? Not a bit of it ! You will see, ours will take it back! No matter how many of us shall be killed, let God want it, and the emperor wish it, and it will be retaken ! Do you think we will leave it to him ? Not a bit of it ! Nothing but the bare walls left : the bulwarks are blown up — he has placed his pennon on the Mound, but dares not go down to the city.”

“Just wait, we will square up accounts with you,— just give us a chance,” he concluded, addressing the Frenchmen.

” Of course we will ! ” said another, with conviction.

All along the bastions of Sevastopol, which had for so many months been boiling with such extraordinary energetic life, winch had for so many months seen heroes taking the place of those who had been killed, only to die themselves, and which for so many months had inspired terror, hatred, and finally the raptures of the enemy, all along the bastions of Sevastopol there was nobody left. Everything was dead, wild, terrible, but not quiet; the work of destruction was still going on. On the uneven ground, ploughed up by new explosions, lay everywhere twisted gun-carriages, jamming down the corpses of Russian and French soldiers; heavy cast-iron

cannon, for ever silenced and by a tremendous force hurled down into ditches and half-covered with dirt, bombs, shells ; again corpses, ditches, splinters of beams, of blindages, and again silent corpses in gray and blue overcoats. All this was frequently convulsed and illuminated by the purple flame of explosions, which continued to shake the air.

The enemies saw that something incomprehensible was taking place in Sevastopol. These explosions and the dead silence in the bastions made them shudder ; but they did not dare to believe, under the influence of the quiet, forceful defence of the day, that their imperturbable foe had disappeared, and they awaited in silence, without stirring, and with trepidation, the end of the gloomy night.

The army of Sevastopol, like the sea in a gloomy, billowing night, surging and receding, and agitatedly quivering in all its mass, swaying near the bay, on the bridge and on the Northern side, moved slowly in the impenetrable darkness, away from the place, where it had left so many brave brothers, — away from the place, which had been watered by its blood, — from the place, which for eleven months had withstood an enemy twice as numerous, and which now it was to abandon without a battle.

The first impression of this order was incomprehensibly heavy for every Russian. The next feeling was a fear of being pursued. Men felt themselves defenceless the moment they left the places where they had been accustomed to fight, and with trepidation crowded at the entrance of the bridge, which swayed in the stiff breeze. Clanking their bayonets against each other, crowding between the baggage and ordnance, the infantry were making their way with difficulty ; officers on horseback carrying orders pushed their way through the masses ; the inhabitants and orderlies, with their baggage which was not permitted across, wept and entreated in vain ; the artillery, with rattling wheels, descended to the bay, hastening to get away as soon as possible.

Aside from their different absorbing occupations, the feeling of self-preservation and the desire to get away at once from this terrible place of death was present in the soul of each. Tins feeling was present in the mortally wounded soldier, lying among five hundred similarly wounded men, on the stony ground of the St. Paul’s quay and asking for death ; in the reserve militiaman, using his utmost effort to press himself into the dense throng, in order to make way for the general on horseback ; in the general, superintending with firmness the retreat across the bay, and restraining the undue haste of the soldiers ; in the sailor, caught in the moving battalion and almost choked to death by a swaying throng ; in the wounded officer, carried on a stretcher by four soldiers, who, oppressed by the congested mass, put him down on the ground near the Nicholas battery ; in the artillerist, who, having served with his gun for sixteen years, was now executing an order of his superiors, quite incomprehensible to him, and with the aid of his comrades pushing the gun down the steep embankment into the bay ; and in the sailors of the fleet, who, having scuttled their vessels, were giving way on the boats in which they were rowing away from them.

Upon reaching the other side of the bridge, nearly every soldier took off his cap and made the sign of the cross. But behind this feeling was another, oppressive, gnawing, deeper feeling, one that resembled repentance, shame, and anger. Nearly every soldier, looking from the Northern side upon deserted Sevastopol, sighed with an inexpressible bitterness in his heart, and swore vengeance on the foe.