The elder Koseltzoff, having met a soldier of his regiment in the street, was accompanied by him to the fifth bastion.
“Keep close to the wall, Excellency,” the soldier said.
“What for?”
“It is dangerous, Excellency.Heis already passing over us,” replied the soldier, listening to the whistling of the ball, which struck with a dry sound the other side of the hard road. But Koseltzoff continued on in the middle of the road without heeding this advice. There were the same streets, the same but more frequent flashes, the same sounds and the same groans, the same meeting of wounded men, the same batteries, parapet, and trenches, just as he had seen them in the spring. But now their aspect was more dismal, more sombre and more martial, so to speak. A greater number of houses was riddled, and there were no more lights in the windows—the hospital was the only exception—no more women in the street; and the character of the accustomed, careless life formerly imprinted oneverything was effaced, and was replaced by the element of anxious, weary expectation, and of redoubled and incessant effort.
He came at last to the farthermost intrenchment, and a soldier of the P—— regiment recognized his former company chief. There was the third battalion, as could be guessed in the darkness by the constrained murmur of voices and the clicks of the muskets placed against the wall, which the flash of the discharges lit up at frequent intervals.
“Where is the commander of the regiment?” asked Koseltzoff.
“In the bomb-proof with the marines, your Excellency,” replied the obliging soldier. “If you would like to go I will show you the way.”
Passing from one trench to another, he led Koseltzoff to the ditch, where a sailor was smoking his pipe. Behind him was a door, through the cracks of which shone a light.
“Can we go in?”
“I will announce you;” and the sailor entered the bomb-proof, where two voices could be heard.
“If Prussia continues to keep neutral, then Austria—” said one of them.
“What is Austria good for when the slavs—” said the other.—“Ah yes! ask him to come in,” added this same voice.
Koseltzoff, who had never before put his foot in these bomb-proof quarters, was struck by their elegance. A polished floor took the place of boards, a screen hid the entrance door. In a corner was a great icon representing the holy Virgin, with its gilt frame lighted by a small pink glass lamp. Two beds were placed along the wall, on one of which a naval officer was sleeping in his clothes, on the other, near a table on which two open bottles of wine were standing, sat the new regimental chief and an aide-de-camp. Koseltzoff, who was not bashful, and who felt himself in nowise guilty, either towards the State or towards the chief of the regiment, felt, nevertheless, at the sight of the latter—his comrade until very recently—a certain apprehension.
“It is strange,” he thought, seeing him rise to listen to him. “He has commanded the regiment scarcely six weeks, and power is already visible in his bearing, in his look, inhis clothes. Not a long while ago this same Batretcheff amused himself in our quarters, wore for whole weeks the same dark calico shirt, and ate his hash and his sour cream without inviting any one to share it, and now an expression full of hard pride can be read in his eyes, which say to me, ‘Although I am your comrade, for I am a regimental chief of the new school, you may be sure I know perfectly well that you would give half your life to be in my place.’”
“You have been treating yourself to a rather long absence,” said the colonel, coldly, looking at him.
“I have been ill, colonel, and my wound is not yet altogether healed.”
“If that’s so, what did you come back for?” Koseltzoff’s corpulence inspired his chief with defiance. “Can you do your duty?”
“Certainly I can.”
“All right. Ensign Zaïtzeff will conduct you to the ninth company, the one you have already commanded. You will receive the order of the day. Be so good as to send me the regimental aide-de-camp as you go out,” and his chief, bowing slightly, gave himto understand by this that the interview was ended.
On his way out Koseltzoff muttered indistinct words and shrugged his shoulders several times. It might readily be believed that he felt ill at ease, or that he was irritated, not exactly against his regimental chief, but rather against himself and against all his surroundings.
Before going to find his officers he went to look up his company. The parapets built of gabions, the trenches, the cannon in front of which he passed, even the fragments and the shells themselves over which he stumbled, and which the flashes of the discharges lighted up without pause or relaxation, everything was familiar to him, and had been deeply engraven on his memory three months before, during the fortnight he had lived in the bastion. Notwithstanding the dismal side of these memories, a certain inherent charm of the past came out of them, and he recognized the places and things with an unaffected pleasure, as if the two weeks had been full of only agreeable impressions. His company was placed along the covered way which led to the sixth bastion.
Entering the shelter open on one side, he found so many soldiers there that he could scarcely find room to pass. At one end burned a wretched candle, which a reclining soldier was holding over a book that his comrade was spelling out. Around him, in the twilight of a thick and heavy atmosphere, several heads could be seen turned towards the reader, listening eagerly. Koseltzoff recognized the A B C of this sentence: “P-r-a-y-e-r a-f-t-e-r s-t-u-d-y. I give Thee thanks, my Cre-a-tor.”
“Snuff the candle!” some one shouted. “What a good book!” said the reader, preparing to go on. But at the sound of Koseltzoff’s voice calling the sergeant-major it was silent. The soldiers moved, coughed, and blew their noses, as always happens after an enforced silence. The sergeant-major arose from the middle of the group, buttoning his uniform, stepping over his comrades, and trampling on their feet, which for lack of room they did not know where to stow, approached the officer.
“How do you do, my boy? Is this our company?”
“Health to your Excellency! We congratulate you on your return,” replied the sergeant-major, gayly and good-naturedly. “You are cured, Excellency? God be praised for that! for we missed you a good deal.”
Koseltzoff, it was evident, was beloved by his company. Voices could immediately be heard spreading the news that the old company chief had come back, he who had been wounded—Mikhaïl Semenovitch Koseltzoff. Several soldiers, the drummer among others, came to greet him.
“How do you do, Obanetchouk?” said Koseltzoff. “Are you safe and sound? How do you do, children?” he then added, raising his voice.
The soldiers replied in chorus,
“Health to your Excellency!”
“How goes it, children?”
“Badly, your Excellency. The French have the upper hands. He fires from behind the intrenchments, but he doesn’t show himself outside.”
“Now, then, who knows? perhaps I shallhave the chance of seeing him come out of the intrenchments, children. It won’t be the first time we have fought him together.”
“We are ready to do our best, your Excellency,” said several voices at the same time.
“He is very bold, then?”
“Terribly bold,” replied the drummer in a low tone, but so as to be heard, and speaking to another soldier, as if to justify his chief for having made use of the expression, and to persuade his comrade that there was nothing exaggerated nor untrue in it.
Koseltzoff left the soldiers in order to join the officers in the barracks.
The great room of the barracks was filled with people—a crowd of naval, artillery, and infantry officers. Some were sleeping, others were talking, seated on a caisson or on the carriage of a siege-gun. The largest group of the three, seated on their cloaks spread on the ground, were drinking porter and playing cards.
“Ah! Koseltzoff’s come back! Bravo! And your wound?” said divers voices from different sides.
Here also he was liked, and they were rejoiced at his return.
After having shaken hands with his acquaintances, Koseltzoff joined the gay group of card-players. One of them, thin, with a long nose, and a large mustache which encroached on his cheeks, cut the cards with his white, slender fingers on one of which was a great seal ring. He seemed disturbed, and dealt with an affected carelessness. On his right, lying half raised on his elbow, a gray-haired major staked and paid a half-ruble every time with exaggerated calmness. On his left, crouching on his heels, an officer with a red and shining face joked and smiled with an effort, and when his card was laid down, one of his hands moved in the empty pocket of his trousers. He played a heavy game, but without any money—a fact which visibly irritated the dark officer with the handsome face. Another officer, pale, thin, and bald, with an enormous nose and a large mouth, walking about the room with a bundle of bank-notes in his hand, counted down the money on the bank and won every time.
Koseltzoff drank a small glass of brandy and sat down beside the players.
“Come, Mikhaïl Semenovitch, come; put up your stake!” said the officer who was cutting the cards; “I’ll bet you have brought back a lot of money.”
“Where could I have got it? On the contrary, I spent my last penny in town!”
“Really! You must have fleeced some one at Sympheropol, I’m sure!”
“What an idea!” replied Koseltzoff, not wanting his words to be believed, and unbuttoning his uniform, to be more comfortable, he took a few old cards.
“I have nothing to risk, but, devil take me! who can foresee luck? A gnat can sometimes accomplish wonders! Let’s go on drinking to keep our courage up.”
Shortly after he swallowed a second small glass of brandy, a little porter into the bargain, and lost his last three rubles, while a hundred and fifty were charged to the account of the little officer with the sweat-moistened face.
“Have the kindness to send me the money,” said the banker, interrupting the deal to look at him.
“Allow me to put off sending it until to-morrow,” replied the one addressed, rising.His hand was nervously moving in his empty pocket.
“Hum!” said the banker, spitefully throwing the last cards of the pack right and left. “We can’t play in this way,” he rejoined; “I will stop the game. It can’t be done, Zakhar Ivanovitch. We are playing cash down, and not for credit.”
“Do you distrust me? That would be strange indeed!”
“From whom have I to get eight rubles?” the major who had just won asked at this moment. “I have paid out more than twenty, and when I win I get nothing.”
“How do you think I can pay you when there is no money on the table?”
“That’s nothing to me!” cried the major, rising. “I am playing with you, and not with this gentleman!”
“As long as I tell you,” said the perspiring officer—“as long as I tell you I will pay you to-morrow, how do you dare insult me?”
“I’ll say what I like. This is no way of doing!” cried the major, excited.
“Come, be quiet, Fédor Fédorovitch!” shouted several players at once, turning around.
Let us drop the curtain on this scene. To-morrow, perhaps to-day, each of these men will go to meet death gayly, proudly, and will die calmly and firmly. The only consolation of a life the conditions of which freeze with horror the coldest imagination, of a life which has nothing human in it, to which all hope is interdicted, is forgetfulness, annihilation of the consciousness of the reality. In the soul of every man lies dormant the noble spark which at the proper time will make a hero of him; but this spark grows tired of shining always. Nevertheless, when the fatal moment comes, it will burst into a flame which will illumine grand deeds.
The next day the bombardment continued with the same violence. About eleven o’clock in the forenoon Volodia Koseltzoff joined the officers of his battery. He became accustomed to these new faces, asked them questions, and, in his turn, shared his impressions with them. The modest but slightly pedantic conversation of the artillery-men pleased him and inspired his respect.On the other hand, his own sympathetic appearance, his timid manner, and his simplicity predisposed these gentlemen in his favor. The oldest officer of the battery, a short, red-haired captain with a foretop, and with well-smoothed locks on his temples, brought up in the old traditions of artillery, amiable with ladies, and posing for a savant, asked him questions about his acquaintance with this science or that, about the new inventions, joked in an affectionate way about his youth and his handsome face, and treated him like a son, all of which charmed Volodia. Sub-lieutenant Dedenko, a young officer with an accent of Little Russia, with shaggy hair and a torn overcoat, pleased him also, in spite of his loud voice, his frequent quarrels, and his brusque movements, for under this rude exterior Volodia saw a brave and worthy man. Dedenko eagerly offered his services to Volodia, and tried to prove to him that the cannon at Sebastopol had not been placed according to rule. On the other hand, Lieutenant Tchernovitzky, with high-arched eyebrows, who wore a well-cared-for but worn and mended overcoat, and a gold chain on a satin waistcoat, didnot inspire him with any sympathy, although superior to the others in politeness. He continually asked Volodia details about the emperor, the minister of war, related with factitious enthusiasm the heroic exploits accomplished at Sebastopol, expressed his regrets at the small number of true patriots, made a show of a great deal of knowledge, of wit, of exceedingly noble sentiments, but in spite of all that, and without being able to tell why, all these discourses sounded false in his ears, and he even noticed that the officers in general avoided speaking to Tchernovitzky. The yunker, Vlang, whom he had waked up the evening before, sat modestly in a corner, kept silent, laughed sometimes at a joke, always ready to recall what had been forgotten, presented to the officers in turn the small glass of brandy, and rolled cigarettes for all. Charmed by the simple and polite manners of Volodia, who did not treat him like a boy, and by his agreeable appearance, his great, fine eyes never left the face of the new-comer. Urged by a feeling of great admiration, he divined and forestalled all his wishes, a fact which the officers immediately noticed, andwhich furnished the subject of unsparing jokes.
A little before dinner second-captain Kraut, relieved from duty on the bastion, joined the little company. A blond, fine-looking fellow, of a lively turn of mind, proud possessor of a pair of red mustaches, and side-whiskers of the same color, he spoke the language to perfection, but too correctly and too elegantly for a pure-blooded Russian. Quite as irreproachable in duty as in his private life, perfection was his failing. A perfect comrade, to be counted on beyond proof in all affairs of interest, he lacked something as a man, just because everything in him was an accomplishment. In striking contrast with the ideal Germans of Germany, he was, after the example of the Russian Germans, in the highest degree practical.
“Here he is! here’s our hero!” shouted the captain at the moment Kraut came in, gesticulating and clanking his spurs. “What’ll you have, Frederic Christianovitch—tea or brandy?”
“I am having some tea made, but I won’t refuse brandy while I am waiting, for my soul’s consolation! Happy to make youracquaintance! Please get fond of us, and be well-disposed towards us,” he said to Volodia, who had arisen to salute him. “Second-captain Kraut! The artificer told me you came last evening.”
“Allow me to thank you for your bed, which I profited by last night.”
“Did you at least sleep comfortably there? Because one of the legs is gone, and no one can repair it during the siege. You have to keep wedging it up.”
“So then you got out of it safely?” Dedenko asked him.
“Yes, thank God! but Skvortzoff was hit. We had to repair one of the carriages; the side of it was smashed to pieces.”
He suddenly arose and walked up and down. It could be seen that he felt the agreeable sensation of a man who has just come safe and sound out of great danger.
“Now, Dmitri Gavrilovitch,” he said, tapping the captain’s knee in a friendly manner, “how are you, brother? What has become of your presentation for advancement? Has it finally been settled?”
“No; nothing has come of it.”
“And nothing will come of it,” said Dedenko; “I’ve proved it to you already.”
“Why will nothing come of it?”
“Because your statement is badly made.”
“Ah, what a violent wrangler!” said Kraut, gayly. “A truly obstinate Little Russian. All right; you will see that they will make you lieutenant to pay for your mortification.”
“No, they won’t do anything.”
“Vlang,” added Kraut, speaking to the yunker, “fill my pipe and bring it to me, please.”
Kraut’s presence had waked them all up. Chatting with each one, he gave the details of the bombardment, and asked questions about what had taken place during his absence.
“Now, then, are you settled?” Kraut asked of Volodia. “But, pardon me, what is your name—both your names? It’s our custom in the artillery. Have you a saddle-horse?”
“No,” answered Volodia, “and I am much troubled about it. I have spoken to the captain. I shall have neither horse nor money until I get my forage-money and mytravelling expenses. I would like to ask the commander of the battery to lend me his horse, but I am afraid he will refuse.”
“You would like to ask this of Apollo Serguéïtch?” said Kraut, looking at the captain, while he made a sound with his lips which expressed doubt.
“Well,” said the latter, “if he refuses, there is no great harm done. To tell the truth, there is seldom need of a horse here. I will undertake to ask him to-day even.”
“You don’t know him,” said Dedenko. “He would refuse anything else, but he wouldn’t refuse his horse to this gentleman. Would you like to bet on it?”
“Oh, I know you are ripe for contradiction, you—”
“I contradict when I know a thing! He isn’t generous usually, but he will lend his horse, because he has no interest in refusing it.”
“How no interest? When oats cost eight rubles here it is evidently in his interest. He will have one horse the less to keep.”
“Vladimir Semenovitch!” cried Vlang, coming back with Kraut’s pipe. “Ask for the spotted one; it is a charming horse.”
“That’s the one you fell into the ditch with, eh, Vlang?” observed the second-captain.
“But you are mistaken in saying that oats are eight rubles,” maintained Dedenko, in the mean time, continuing the discussion. “According to the latest news they are ten-fifty. It is evident that there is no profit in—”
“You would like to leave him nothing, then? If you were in his place you would not lend your horse to go into town either. When I am commander of the battery my horses, brother, will have four full measures to eat every day! I sha’n’t think of making an income, rest assured!”
“He who lives will see,” replied the second-captain. “You will do the same when you have a battery, and he also,” pointing to Volodia.
“Why do you suppose, Frederic Christianovitch, that this gentleman would also like to reserve for himself some small profit? If he has a certain amount of money, what will he do it for?” Tchernovitzky asked in his turn.
“No—I—excuse me, captain,” said Volodia, blushing up to his ears. “That would be dishonest in my eyes.”
“Oh! oh! what milk porridge!” Kraut said to him.
“This is another question, captain, but it seems to me that I couldn’t take money for myself which doesn’t belong to me.”
“And I will tell you something else,” said the second-captain, in a more serious tone. “You must learn that, being battery commander, there is every advantage in managing affairs well. You must know that the soldier’s food doesn’t concern him. It has always been that way with us in the artillery. If you don’t succeed in making both ends meet, you will have nothing left. Let us count up your expenses. You have first the forage”—and the captain bent one finger; “next the medicine”—he bent a second one; “then the administration—that makes three; then the draft-horses, which certainly cost five hundred rubles—that makes four; then the refitting of the soldiers’ collars; then the charcoal, which is used in great quantities, and at last the table of your officers; lastly, as chief of thebattery you must live comfortably, and you need a carriage, a cloak, etc.”
“And the principal thing is this, Vladimir Semenovitch,” said the captain, who had been silent up to this moment. “Look at a man like me, for example, who has served twenty years, receiving at first two, then three hundred rubles pay. Well, then, why shouldn’t the Government reward him for his years of service by giving him a morsel of bread for his old days.”
“It can’t be discussed,” rejoined the second-captain; “so don’t be in a hurry to judge. Serve a little while and you will see.”
Volodia, quite ashamed of the remark which he had thrown out without stopping to reflect, murmured a few words, and listened in silence how Dedenko set about defending the opposite thesis. The discussion was interrupted by the entrance of the colonel’s orderly announcing that dinner was ready.
“You ought to tell Apollo Serguéïtch to give us wine to-day,” said Captain Tchernovitzky, buttoning his coat. “Devil take his avarice! He will be shot, and no one will get any.”
“Tell him yourself.”
“Oh no, you are my elder; the hierarchy before everything!”
A table, covered with a stained tablecloth, was placed in the middle of the room in which Volodia had been received by the colonel the evening before. The latter gave him his hand, and asked him questions about Petersburg and about his journey.
“Now, gentlemen, please come up to the brandy. The ensigns don’t drink,” he added, with a smile.
The commander of the battery did not seem as stern to-day as the day before; he had rather the air of a kind and hospitable host than that of a comrade among his officers. In spite of that, all, from the old captain to Ensign Dedenko, evinced respect for him which betrayed itself in the timid politeness with which they spoke to him and came up in line to drink their little glass of brandy.
The dinner consisted of cabbage-soup, served in a great tureen in which swam lumps of meat with fat attached, laurelleaves, and a good deal of pepper, Polishzrasiwith mustard,koldouniwith slightly rancid butter; no napkins; the spoons were of pewter and of wood, the glasses were two in number. On the table was a single water decanter with broken neck. The conversation did not flag. They first spoke of the battle of Inkerman, in which the battery took a part. Each related his impressions, his opinions on the causes of the failure, keeping silent as soon as the battery commander spoke. Then they complained of the lack of cannon of a certain calibre; they talked of certain other improvements, which gave Volodia an opportunity of showing his knowledge. The curious part was that the talk did not even touch upon the frightful situation of Sebastopol, which seemed to mean that each one, on his part, thought too much about it to speak of it.
Volodia, very much astonished, and even vexed, that there was no question of the duties of his service, said to himself that he seemed to have come to Sebastopol only in order to give the details about the new cannon and to dine with the battery commander.
During the repast a shell burst very nearthe house. The floor and the wall were shaken by it as by an earthquake, and powder-smoke spread over the window outside.
“You certainly didn’t see that at Petersburg, but here we often have these surprises. Go, Vlang,” added the commander, “and see where the shell burst.”
Vlang went to look, and announced that it had burst in the yard. After that they did not speak of it again.
A little before the end of the dinner one of the military clerks came in to give to his chief three sealed envelopes. “This one is very urgent. A Cossack has just brought it from the commander of the artillery,” he said. The officers watched the practised fingers of their superior with anxious impatience while he broke the seal of the envelope, which bore the words “in haste,” and drew a paper from it.
“What can that be?” each one thought. “Can it be the order to leave Sebastopol for a rest, or the order to bring out the whole battery upon the bastion?”
“Once more!” cried the commander, angrily, throwing the sheet of paper on the table.
“What is it, Apollo Serguéïtch?” asked the oldest of the officers.
“They want an officer and men for a mortar battery. I have only four officers, and my men are not up to the full number,” he growled, “and now they ask for some of them. However, some one must go, gentlemen,” he continued, after a moment; “they must be there at seven o’clock. Send me the sergeant-major. Now, gentlemen, who will go? Decide it among yourselves.”
“But here is this gentleman who hasn’t yet served,” said Tchernovitzky, pointing to Volodia.
“Yes; I wouldn’t ask for anything better,” said Volodia, feeling a cold sweat moisten his neck and his backbone.
“No—why not?” interrupted the captain. “No one ought to refuse; but it is useless to ask him to go; and since Apollo Serguéïtch leaves us free, we will draw lots, as we did the other time.”
All consented to this. Kraut carefully cut several little paper squares, rolled them up, and threw them into a cap. The captain cracked a few jokes and profited by this occasion to ask the colonel for wine,“to give us courage,” he added. Dedenko had a depressed air, Volodia smiled, Tchernovitzky declared that he would be chosen by the lot. As to Kraut, he was perfectly calm.
They offered Volodia the first chance. He took one of the papers, the longest, but immediately changed it for another, shorter and smaller, and unrolling it, read the word “Go.”
“It is I,” he said, with a sigh.
“All right. May God protect you! It will be your baptism of fire,” said the commander, looking with a pleasant smile at the disturbed face of the ensign. “But get ready quickly, and in order that it may be pleasanter, Vlang will go with you in the place of the artificer.
Vlang, delighted with his mission, ran away to dress, and came back at once to assist Volodia to make up his bundles, advising him to take his bed, his fur cloak, an old number of the “Annals of the Country,” a coffee-pot with an alcohol lamp, and other useless articles. The captain, in his turn,advised Volodia to read in the “Manual for the use of Artillery Officers” the passage relating to firing mortars, and to copy it at once! Volodia set himself to work at it immediately, happy and surprised to feel that the dread of danger, especially the fear of passing for a coward, was less strong than on the evening before. His impressions of the day and his occupation had partly contributed to diminish the violence of this; and then it is well known that an acute sensation cannot last long without weakening. In a word, his fear was being cured. At seven in the evening, at the moment the sun was setting behind the Nicholas barracks, the sergeant-major came to tell him that the men were ready, and were waiting for him.
“I have given the list to Vlang, your Excellency; you can ask him for it,” he said.
“Must I make a little speech to them?” thought Volodia, on his way, accompanied by the yunker, to join the twenty artillery-men who, swords by their sides, were waiting for him outside—“or must I simply say to them, ‘How do you do, children?’ or, indeed, say nothing at all? Why not say‘How do you do, children?’ I think I ought to;” and with his full and sonorous voice he cried boldly, “How do you do, children?” The soldiers replied cheerfully to his salutation; his young and fresh voice sounded agreeably in their ears. He put himself at their head, and although his heart was beating as if he had just run several furlongs, his walk was light and his face was smiling. When they got near the Malakoff mamelon, he noticed, while climbing up it, that Vlang, who did not leave his heels, and who had seemed so courageous down below in their quarters, stooped and ducked his head as if the bullets and shells which were whistling without cessation were coming straight towards him. Several soldiers did the same, and the majority of the faces expressed, if not fear, at least disquiet. This circumstance reassured him and revived his courage.
“Here I am, then, I also, on the Malakoff mamelon. I imagined it a thousand times more terrible, and I am walking, I am advancing, without saluting the bullets! I am less afraid than the others, and I am not a coward, then,” he said to himself joyfully, with the enthusiasm of satisfied self-love.
This feeling was, however, shaken by the spectacle that presented itself to his eyes. When he reached in the twilight the Korniloff battery, four sailors, some holding by the legs, others by the arms, the bloody corpse of a man with bare feet and no coat, were in the act of throwing him over the parapet. (The second day of the bombardment they threw the dead into the ditch, because they had no time to carry them off.) Volodia, stupefied, saw the corpse strike the upper part of the rampart, and slide from there into the ditch. Fortunately for him, he met at this very moment the commander of the bastion, who gave him a guide to lead him to the battery and into the bomb-proof quarters of the men. We will not relate how often our hero was exposed to danger during that night. We will say nothing of how he was undeceived when he noticed that instead of finding them firing here according to the precise rules such as they practise at Petersburg on the plain of Volkovo, he saw himself in front of two broken mortars, one with its muzzle bruised bya shell, the other still upright on the pieces of a destroyed platform. We will not tell how it was impossible for him to get the soldiers in order to repair it before daylight, how he found no charge of the calibre indicated in the “Manual,” nor describe his feelings at seeing two of his soldiers fall, hit before his eyes, nor how he himself, even, escaped death twenty times by a hair’s-breadth. Happily for him, the captain of the mortar, who had been given him for an assistant, a tall sailor attached to these mortars since the beginning of the siege, assured him that they could make use of them still, and promised him while he was walking on the bastion, lantern in hand, as calmly as if he were in his kitchen-garden, to put them in good condition before morning.
The bomb-proof reduct into which his guide conducted him was only a great, long cavern dug in the rocky earth, two fathoms deep, protected by oaken timbers eighteen inches thick. There he established himself with his soldiers.
As soon as Vlang noticed the little low door which led into it, he threw himself in the first with such haste that he nearly fellon the stone-paved floor, cowered down in a corner, and did not care to come out of it. The soldiers placed themselves on the ground along the wall. Some of them lighted their pipes, and Volodia arranged his bed in a corner, stretched himself on it, lighted a candle in his turn, and smoked a cigarette. Over their heads could be heard, deadened by the bomb-proof, the uninterrupted roar of the discharges. A single cannon close beside them shook their shelter every time it thundered. In the interior everything was quiet. The soldiers, still intimidated by the presence of the new officer, only exchanged a word with each other now and then to ask for a light or a little room. A rat was scratching somewhere among the stones, and Vlang, who had not yet recovered from his emotion, occasionally sighed deeply as he looked about him. Volodia, on his bed in this peaceful corner crammed with people, lighted by a single candle, gave himself up to the feeling of comfort which he had often had as a child when, playing hide-and-seek, he slipped into a wardrobe or under his mother’s skirt, holding his breath, stretching his ears, being very much afraid of thedark, and feeling at the same time an unconscious impression of well-being.
In the same way here, without being altogether at his ease, he felt rather disposed to be cheerful.
At the end of ten minutes the soldiers got bold and began to talk. Near the officer’s bed, in the circle of light, were placed the highest in rank—the two artificers, one an old gray-haired man, his breast adorned with a mass of medals and crosses, among which the cross of Saint George was wanting, however, the other a young man, smoking cigarettes which he was rolling, and the drummer, who placed himself, as is the custom, at the orders of the officer, in the background. In the shadow of the entrance, behind the bombardier and the medalled soldiers seated in front, the “humbles” kept themselves. They were the first to break silence. One of them, running in frightened from outside, served as a theme for their conversation.
“Eh! say there, you didn’t stay long in the street. Young girls are not playing there, hey?” said a voice.
“On the contrary, they are singing wonderful songs. You don’t hear such ones in the village,” replied the new-comer, with a laugh, and all out of breath.
“Vassina doesn’t like the shells; no, he doesn’t like them!” some one cried from the aristocratic side.
“When it is necessary it is another story,” slowly replied Vassina, whom everybody listened to when he spoke. “The twenty-fourth, for example, they fired so that it was a blessing, and there is no harm in that. Why let us be killed for nothing? Do the chiefs thank us for that?”
These words provoked a general laugh.
“Nevertheless, there is Melnikoff, who is outside all the time,” said some one.
“It is true. Make him come in,” added the old artificer, “otherwise he will get killed for nothing.”
“Who is this Melnikoff?” asked Volodia.
“He is, your Excellency, an animal who is afraid of nothing. He is walking about outside. Please examine him; he looks like a bear.”
“He practises witchcraft,” added Vassina, in his calm voice.
Melnikoff, a very corpulent soldier (a rare thing), with red hair, a tremendously bulging forehead, and light blue projecting eyes, came in just at this moment.
“Are you afraid of bomb-shells?” Volodia asked him.
“Why should I be afraid of them?” repeated Melnikoff, scratching his neck. “No bomb-shell will kill me, I know.”
“Do you like to live here?”
“To be sure I do; it is very entertaining,” and he burst out laughing.
“Then you must be sent out in a sortie. Would you like to? I will speak to the general,” said Volodia, although he knew no general.
“Why not like to? I should like to very much!” and Melnikoff disappeared behind his comrades.
“Come, children, let’s play ‘beggar my neighbor!’ Who has cards?” asked an impatient voice, and the game immediately began in the farthest corner. The calling of the tricks could be heard, the sound of taps on the nose and the bursts of laughter. Volodia in the mean time drank tea prepared by the drummer, offering some to the artificers, joking and chatting with them, desirous of making himself popular, and very well satisfied with the respect they showed him. The soldiers having noticed that the “barine” was a good fellow, became animated, and one of them announced that the siege was soon going to come to an end, for a sailor had told him for a certainty that Constantine, the Czar’s brother, was coming to deliver them with the ‘merican’[H]fleet; that there would soon be an armistice of two weeks to rest, and that seventy-five kopeks would have to be paid for every shot that was fired during the truce.
Vassina, whom Volodia had already noticed—the short soldier with fine great eyes and side-whiskers—related in his turn, in the midst of a general silence, which was next broken by bursts of laughter, the joy that had been felt at first on seeing him come back to his village on his furlough, and how his father had then sent him to work in the fields every day, while the lieutenant-forester sent to fetch his wife in a carriage. Volodia was amused by all these tales. Hehad no longer the least fear, and the strong odors which filled their reduct did not cause him any disgust. He felt, on the contrary, very gay, and in a very agreeable mood.
Several soldiers were snoring already. Vlang was also lying on the ground, and the old artificer, having spread his overcoat on the earth, crossed himself with devotion and mumbled the evening prayer, when Volodia took a fancy to go and see what was going on out of doors.
“Pull in your legs!” the soldiers immediately said to one another as they saw him get up, and each one drew his legs back to let him pass.
Vlang, who was supposed to be asleep, got up and seized Volodia by the lapel of his coat. “Come, don’t go! what is the use?” he said, in a tearful and persuasive voice. “You don’t know what it is. Bullets are raining out there. We are better off here.”
But Volodia went out without heeding him, and sat down on the very threshold of their quarters by the side of Melnikoff.
The air was fresh and pure, especially after that he had just been breathing, and thenight was clear and calm. Through the roar of the cannonade could be heard the creak of the wheels of the carts bringing gabions, and the voices of those working in the magazine. Over their heads sparkled the starry sky, striped by the luminous furrows of the projectiles. On the left was a small opening, two feet and a half high, leading to a bomb-proof shelter, where could be perceived the feet and the backs of the sailors who lived there, and who were plainly heard talking. Opposite rose the mound which covered the magazine, in front of which figures, bent double, passed and repassed. On the very top of the eminence, exposed to bullets and shells which did not stop whistling at that spot, was a tall black figure, with his hands in his pockets, trampling on the fresh earth which was brought in bags. From time to time a shell fell and burst two paces from him. The soldiers who were carrying sacks bent down and separated, while the black silhouette continued quietly to level the earth with his feet without changing his position.
“Who is it?” Volodia asked Melnikoff.
“I don’t know; I am going to see.”
“Don’t go; it is no use.”
But Melnikoff rose without listening to him, went up to the black man, and remained immovable a long time beside him with the same indifference to danger.
“It is the guardian of the magazine, your Excellency,” he said, on his return. “A shell made a hole in it, and they are covering it up with earth.”
When the shells seemed to fly straight upon the bomb-proof quarters Volodia squeezed himself into the corner, and then came out raising his eyes to the sky to see if others were coming. Although Vlang, still lying down, had more than once begged him to come in, Volodia passed three hours seated on the threshold, finding a certain pleasure in thus exposing himself, as well as in watching the flight of the projectiles. Towards the end of the evening he knew perfectly well the number of the cannon and the direction they fired, and where their shots struck.
The next day—the 27th of August—after ten hours of sleep, Volodia came outof the bomb-proof fresh and well. Vlang followed him, but at the first hissing of a cannon-ball he bounded back and threw himself through the narrow opening, knocking his head as he went, to the general laugh of the soldiers, all of whom, with the exception of Vlang, of the old artificer, and two or three others who rarely showed themselves in the trenches, had slipped outside to breathe the fresh morning air. In spite of the violence of the bombardment, they could not be prevented from remaining there, some near the entrance, others sheltered by the parapet. As to Melnikoff, he had been going and coming between the batteries since daybreak, looking in the air with indifference.
On the very threshold of the quarters were seated three soldiers, two old and one young one. The latter, a curly-headed Jewish infantryman attached to the battery, picked up a bullet which rolled at his feet, and flattening it against a stone with a piece of a shell, he cut out of it a cross on the model of that of Saint George, while the others chatted, watching his work with interest, for he succeeded well with it.
“I say that if we stay here some time yet, when peace comes we shall be retired.”
“Sure enough. I have only four years more to serve, and I have been here six months!”
“That doesn’t count for retirement,” said another, at the moment when a cannon-ball whizzing over the group struck the earth a yard away from Melnikoff, who was coming towards them in the trench.
“It almost killed Melnikoff!” cried a soldier.
“It won’t kill me,” replied the former.
“Here, take this cross for your bravery,” said the young Jewish soldier, finishing the cross and giving it to him.
“No, brother, here the months count for years without exception. There was an order about it,” continued the talker.
“Whatever happens, there will surely be, on the conclusion of peace, a review by the Emperor at Warsaw, and if we are not retired we shall have an unlimited furlough.”
Just at this instant a small cannon-ball passing over their heads with a ricochet, seemed to moan and whistle together and fell on a stone.
“Attention!” said one of the soldiers. “Perhaps between now and night you will get your definite furlough!”
Everybody began to laugh. Two hours had not passed, evening had not yet come, before two of them had, in effect, received their “definite furlough,” and five had been wounded, but the rest continued to joke as before.
In the morning the two mortars had been put in order, and Volodia received at ten o’clock the order from the commander of the bastion to assemble his men and go with them upon the battery. Once at work, there remained no trace of that terror which the evening before showed itself so plainly. Vlang alone did not succeed in overcoming it; he hid himself, and bent down every instant. Vassina had also lost his coolness, he was excited andsaluted. As to Volodia, stirred by an enthusiastic satisfaction, he thought no more of the danger. The joy he felt at doing his duty well, at being no longer a coward, at feeling himself, on the contrary, full of courage, the feeling of commanding and the presence of twenty men, who he knew were watching him with curiosity, had made a real hero of him. Beingeven a little vain of his bravery, he got up on thebanquette, unbuttoning his coat so as to be well observed. The commander of the bastion, in going his rounds, although he had been accustomed during eight months to courage in all its forms, could not help admiring this fine-looking boy with animated face and eyes, his unbuttoned coat exposing a red shirt, which confined a white and delicate neck, clapping his hands, and crying in a voice of command, “First! second!” and jumping gayly on the rampart to see where his shell had fallen. At half-past eleven the firing stopped on both sides, and at noon precisely began the assault on the Malakoff mamelon, as well as upon the second, third, and fifth bastions.
On this side of the bay, between Inkerman and the fortifications of the north, two sailors were standing, in the middle of the day, on Telegraph Height. Near them an officer was looking at Sebastopol through a field-glass, and another on horseback, accompanied by a Cossack, had just rejoined him near the great signal-pole.
The sun soared over the gulf, where the water, covered with ships at anchor, and with sail and row boats in motion, played merrily in its warm and luminous rays. A light breeze, which scarcely shook the leaves of the stunted oak bushes that grew beside the signal-station, filled the sails of the boats, and made the waves ripple softly. On the other side of the gulf Sebastopol was visible, unchanged, with its unfinished church, its column, its quay, the boulevard which cut the hill with a green band, the elegant library building, its little lakes of azure blue, with their forests of masts, its picturesque aqueducts, and, above all that, clouds of a bluish tint, formed by powder-smoke, lighted up from time to time by the red flame of the firing. It was the same proud and beautiful Sebastopol, with its festal air, surrounded on one side by the yellow smoke-crowned hills, on the other by the sea, deep blue in color, and sparkling brilliantly in the sun. At the horizon, where the smoke of a steamer traced a black line, white, narrow clouds were rising, precursors of a wind. Along the whole line of the fortifications, along the heights, especially on the left side, spurtedout suddenly, torn by a visible flash, although it was broad daylight, plumes of thick white smoke, which, assuming various forms, extended, rose, and colored the sky with sombre tints. These jets of smoke came out on all sides—from the hills, from the hostile batteries, from the city—and flew towards the sky. The noise of the explosions shook the air with a continuous roar. Towards noon these smoke-puffs became rarer and rarer, and the vibrations of the air strata became less frequent.
“Do you know that the second bastion is no longer replying?” said the hussar officer on horseback; “it is entirely demolished. It is terrible!”
“Yes, and the Malakoff replies twice out of three times,” answered the one who was looking through the field-glass. “This silence is driving me mad! They are firing straight on the Korniloff battery, and that is not replying.”
“You’ll see it will be as I said; towards noon they will cease firing. It is always that way. Come and take breakfast, they are waiting for us. There is nothing more to see here.”
“Wait, don’t bother me,” replied, with marked agitation, the one looking through the field-glass.
“What is it?—what’s the matter?”
“There is a movement in the trenches; they are marching in close columns.”
“Yes, I see it well,” said one of the sailors; “they are advancing by columns. We must set the signal.”
“But see, there—see! They are coming out of the trenches!”
They could see, in fact, with the naked eye black spots going down from the hill into the ravine, and proceeding from the French batteries towards our bastions. In the foreground, in front of the former, black spots could be seen very near our lines. Suddenly, from different points of the bastion at the same time, spurted out the white plumes of the discharges, and, thanks to the wind, the noise of a lively fusillade could be heard, like the patter of a heavy rain against the windows. The black lines advanced, wrapped in a curtain of smoke, and came nearer. The fusillade increased in violence. The smoke burst out at shorter and shorter intervals, extended rapidly along the line ina single light, lilac-colored cloud, unrolling and enlarging itself by turns, furrowed here and there by flashes or rent by black points. All the noises mingled together in the tumult of one continued roar.
“It is an assault,” said the officer, pale with emotion, handing his glass to the sailor.
Cossacks and officers on horseback went along the road, preceding the commander-in-chief in his carriage, accompanied by his suite. Their faces expressed the painful emotion of expectation.
“It is impossible that it is taken!” said the officer on horseback.
“God in heaven!—the flag! Look now!” cried the other, choked by emotion, turning away from the glass. “The French flag is in the Malakoff mamelon!”
“Impossible!”
Koseltzoff the elder, who had had the time during the night to win and lose again all his winnings, including even the gold-pieces sewn in the seams of his uniform, was sleeping, towards morning, in the barracks of the fifth bastion, a heavy but deepsleep, when the sinister cry rang out, repeated by different voices, “The alarm!”
“Wake up, Mikhaïl Semenovitch! It is an assault!” a voice cried in his ear.
“A school-boy trick,” he replied, opening his eyes without believing the news; but when he perceived an officer, pale, agitated, running wildly from one corner to another, he understood all, and the thought that he might perhaps be taken for a coward refusing to join his company in a critical moment, gave him such a violent start that he rushed out and ran straight to find his soldiers. The cannon were dumb, but the musket-firing was at its height, and the bullets were whistling, not singly but in swarms, just as the flights of little birds pass over our heads in autumn. The whole of the place occupied by the battalion the evening before was filled with smoke, with cries, and with curses. On his way he met a crowd of soldiers and wounded, and thirty paces farther on he saw his company brought to a stand against a wall.
“The Swartz redoubt is occupied,” said a young officer. “All is lost!”
“What stuff and nonsense!” he angrilyreplied, and drawing his small rusty sword from its scabbard, shouted, “Forward, children! Hurrah!”
His strong and resounding voice stimulated his own courage, and he ran forward along the traverse. Fifty soldiers dashed after him with a shout. They came out on an open place, and a hail of bullets met them. Two struck him simultaneously, but he did not have time to understand where they had hit him, or whether they had bruised or had wounded him, for in the smoke before him blue uniforms and red trousers started up, and cries were heard which were not Russian. A Frenchman sitting on the rampart was waving his hat and shouting. The conviction that he would be killed whetted Koseltzoff’s courage. He continued to run forward; some soldiers passed him, others appeared suddenly from another side and began to run with him. The distance between them and the blue uniforms, who regained their intrenchments by running, remained the same, but his feet stumbled over the dead and the wounded. Arrived at the outer ditch, everything became confused before his eyes, and he felt a violentpain in his chest. A half hour later he was lying on a stretcher near the Nicholas barrack. He knew he was wounded, but he felt no pain. He would have liked, nevertheless, to drink something cold, and to feel himself lying more comfortably.
A stout little doctor with black whiskers came up to him and unbuttoned his overcoat. Koseltzoff looked over his chin at the face of the doctor, who was examining his wound without causing him the least pain. He, having covered the wounded man again with his shirt, wiped his fingers on the lapels of his coat, and turning aside his head, passed to another in silence. Koseltzoff mechanically followed with his eyes all that was going on about him, and remembering the fifth bastion, congratulated himself with great satisfaction. He had valiantly done his duty. It was the first time since he was in the service that he had performed it in a way that he had nothing to reproach himself for. The surgeon, who had just dressed another officer’s wound, pointed him out to a priest, who had a fine large red beard, and who stood there with a cross.
“Am I going to die?” Koseltzoff asked him, seeing him come near.
The priest made no reply, but recited a prayer and held the cross down to him. Death had no terror for Koseltzoff. Carrying the cross to his lips with weakening hands, he wept.
“Are the French driven back?” he asked the priest in a firm voice.
“Victory is ours along the whole line,” answered the latter, hiding the truth to spare the feelings of the dying man, for the French flag was already flying on the Malakoff mamelon.
“Thank God!” murmured the wounded man, whose tears ran down his cheeks unnoticed. The memory of his brother passed through his mind for a second. “God grant him the same happiness!” he said.
But such was not Volodia’s lot. While he was listening to a tale that Vassina was relating, the alarm cry, “The French are coming!” made his blood rush immediately back to his heart; he felt his cheeks pale and turn cold, and he remained a secondstupefied. Then looking around, he saw the soldiers button their coats and glide out one after the other, and he heard one of them, Melnikoff, probably, say, in a joking way, “Come, children, let’s offer him bread and salt.”
Volodia and Vlang, who did not leave his heels, went out together and ran to the battery. On one side as well as on the other the artillery had ceased firing. The despicable and cynical cowardice of the yunker still more than the coolness of the soldiers had the effect of restoring his courage.
“Am I like him?” he thought, rushing quickly towards the parapet, near which the mortars were placed. From there he distinctly saw the French dash across the space, free from every obstacle, and run straight towards him. Their bayonets, sparkling in the sun, were moving in the nearest trenches. A small, square-shouldered Zouave ran ahead of the others, sabre in hand, leaping over the ditches. “Grape!” shouted Volodia, throwing himself down from the parapet. But the soldiers had already thought of it, and the metallic noise of the grape, thrown first by one mortar and then bythe other, thundered over his head. “First! second!” he ordered, running across between the two mortars, completely forgetting the danger. Shouts and the musket reports of the battalion charged with the defence of the battery were heard on one side, and suddenly on the left arose a desperate clamor, repeated by many voices: “They are coming in our rear!” and Volodia, turning around, saw a score of Frenchmen. One of them, a fine man with a black beard, ran towards him, and halting ten paces from the battery, fired at him point-blank and went on. Volodia, petrified, could not believe his eyes. In front of him, on the rampart, were blue uniforms, and two Frenchmen who were spiking a cannon. With the exception of Melnikoff, killed by a bullet at his side, and Vlang, who with downcast eyes, and face inflamed by fury, was brandishing a hand-spike, no one was left.
“Follow me, Vladimir Semenovitch! follow me!” shouted Vlang, in a despairing tone, defending himself with the lever from the French who came behind him. The yunker’s menacing look, and the blow which he struck two of them, made them halt.
“Follow me, Vladimir Semenovitch!—What are you waiting for? Fly!” and he threw himself into the trench, from which our infantry were firing on the enemy. He immediately came out of it, however, to see what had become of his beloved lieutenant. A shapeless thing, clothed in a gray overcoat, lay, face to earth, on the spot where Volodia stood, and the whole place was filled by the French, who were firing at our men.
Vlang found his battery again in the second line of defence, and of the twenty soldiers who recently composed it, only eight were alive.
Towards nine o’clock in the evening Vlang and his men were crossing the bay in a steamboat in the direction of Severnaïa. The boat was laden with wounded, with cannon, and with horses. The firing had stopped everywhere. The stars sparkled in the sky as on the night before, but a strong wind was blowing and the sea was rough. On the first and second bastions flames flashed up close to the ground, preceding explosions which shook the atmosphere and showed stones and blackobjects of strange form thrown into the air. Something near the docks was on fire, and a red flame was reflected in the water. The bridge, covered with people, was lighted up by fires from the Nicholas battery. A great sheaf of flames seemed to rise over the water on the distant point of the Alexander battery, and lighted up the under side of a cloud of smoke which hovered over it. As on the preceding evening, the lights of the hostile fleet sparkled afar on the sea, calm and insolent. The masts of our scuttled vessels, slowly settling into the depths of the water, contrasted sharply against the red glow of the fires. On the deck of the steamboat no one spoke. Now and then, in the midst of the regular chopping of the waves struck by the wheels, and the hissing of escaping steam, could be heard the snorting of horses, the striking of their iron-shod hoofs on the planks, the captain speaking a few words of command, and also the dolorous groaning of the wounded. Vlang, who had not eaten since the day before, drew a crust of bread from his pocket and gnawed it, but at the thought of Volodia he broke out sobbing so violently that the soldiers were surprised at it.
“Look! our Vlang is eating bread and weeping,” said Vassina.
“Strange!” added one of them.
“See! they have burned our barracks!” he continued, sighing. “How many of our fellows are dead, and dead to no purpose, for the French have got possession!”
“We have scarcely come out alive. We must thank God for it,” said Vassina.
“It’s all the same. It is maddening!”
“Why? Do you think they will lead a happy life there? Wait a bit; we will take them back. We will still lose some of our men, possibly, but as true as God is holy, if the emperor orders it we will take them back! Do you think they have been left as they were? Come, come; these were only naked walls. The intrenchments were blown up. He has planted his flag on the mamelon, it is true, but he won’t risk himself in the town. Wait a bit; we won’t be behindhand with you! Only give us time,” he said, looking in the direction of the French.
“It will be so, that’s sure,” said another, with conviction.
On the whole line of the bastions of Sebastopol, where during whole months an ardent and energetic life was stirring, where during months death alone relieved the agony of the heroes, one after the other, who inspired the enemy’s terror, hatred, and finally admiration—on these bastions, I say, there was not a single soul, everything there was dead, fierce, frightful, but not silent, for everything all around was falling in with a din. On the earth, torn up by a recent explosion, were lying, here and there, broken beams, crushed bodies of Russians and French, heavy cast-iron cannon overturned into the ditch by a terrible force, half buried in the ground and forever dumb, bomb-shells, balls, splinters of beams, ditches, bomb-proofs, and more corpses, in blue or in gray overcoats, which seemed to have been shaken by supreme convulsions, and which were lighted up now every instant by the red fire of the explosions which resounded in the air.
The enemy well saw that something unusual was going on in formidable Sebastopol, and the explosions, the silence of death on the bastions, made them tremble. Under the impression of the calm and firm resistance of the last day they did not yet dare believe in the disappearance of their invincible adversary, and they awaited, silent and motionless, the end of the dismal night.
The army of Sebastopol, like a sea whose liquid mass, agitated and uneasy, spreads and overflows, moved slowly forward in the dark night, undulating into the impenetrable gloom, over the bridge on the bay, proceeding towards Severnaïa, leaving behind them those spots where so many heroes had fallen, sprinkling them with their blood, those places defended during eleven months against an enemy twice as strong as itself, and which it had received the order this very day to abandon without a fight.
The first impression caused by this order of the day weighed heavily on the heart of every Russian; next the fear of pursuit was the dominant feeling with all. The soldiers, accustomed to fight in the places they were abandoning, felt themselves without defence the moment they left those behind. Uneasy, they crowded together in masses at the entrance of the bridge, which was lifted by violent wind gusts. Through the obstruction of regiments, of militiamen, of wagons, some crowding the others, the infantry, whose muskets clashed together, andthe officers carrying orders, made a passage for themselves with difficulty. The inhabitants and the military servants accompanying the baggage begged and wept to be permitted to cross, while the artillery, in a hurry to go away, rolled along noisily, coming down towards the bay. Although the attention was distracted by a thousand details, the feeling of self-preservation, and the desire to fly as soon as possible from that fatal spot, filled each one’s soul. It was thus with the mortally wounded soldier lying among five hundred other unfortunates on the flag-stones of the Paul quay, begging God for death; with the exhausted militiaman, who by a last effort forces his way into the compact crowd to leave a free passage for a superior officer; with the general who is commanding the passage with a firm voice, and restraining the impatient soldiers; with the straggling sailor or the battalion on the march, almost stifled by the moving crowd; with the wounded officer borne by four soldiers, who, stopped by the crowd, lay down the stretcher near the Nicholas barracks; with the old artilleryman, who, during sixteen years, has not leftthe cannon which, with the assistance of his comrades and at the command of his chief, incomprehensible for him, he is about to tumble over into the bay; and, at length, with the sailors who have just scuttled their ships, and are vigorously rowing away in their boats.
Arrived at the end of the bridge, each soldier, with very few exceptions, takes off his cap and crosses himself. But besides this feeling he has another, more poignant, deeper—a feeling akin to repentance, to shame, to hatred; for it is with an inexpressible bitterness of heart that each of them sighs, utters threats against the enemy, and, as he reaches the north side, throws a last look upon abandoned Sebastopol.
FINIS.