Sevastopol Read online

it.

  But all at once he caught sight of an officer running aimlessly fromone corner to the other, with such a pale face that he understood itall. The thought that he might be taken for a coward, who did not wishto go out to his company at a critical moment, struck him with terribleforce. He ran to his corps at the top of his speed. Firing had ceasedfrom the heavy guns; but the crash of musketry was at its height. Thebullets whistled, not singly like rifle-balls, but in swarms, like aflock of birds in autumn, flying past overhead. The entire spot onwhich his battalion had stood the night before was veiled in smoke, andthe shouts and cries of the enemy were audible. Soldiers, both woundedand unwounded, met him in throngs. After running thirty paces further,he caught sight of his company, which was hugging the wall.

  "They have captured Schwartz," said a young officer. "All is lost!"

  "Nonsense!" said he, angrily, grasping his blunt little iron sword, andhe began to shout:--

  "Forward, children! Hurrah!"

  His voice was strong and ringing; it roused even Kozeltzoff himself.He ran forward along the traverse; fifty soldiers rushed after him,shouting as they went. From the traverse he ran out upon an opensquare. The bullets fell literally like hail. Two struck him,--butwhere, and what they did, whether they bruised or wounded him, he hadnot the time to decide.

  In front, he could already see blue uniforms and red trousers, andcould hear shouts which were not Russian; one Frenchman was standing onthe breastworks, waving his cap, and shouting something. Kozeltzoff wasconvinced that he was about to be killed; this gave him courage.

  He ran on and on. Some soldiers overtook him; other soldiers appearedat one side, also running. The blue uniforms remained at the samedistance from him, fleeing back from him to their own trenches; butbeneath his feet were the dead and wounded. When he had run to theoutermost ditch, everything became confused before Kozeltzoff's eyes,and he was conscious of a pain in the breast.

  Half an hour later, he was lying on a stretcher, near the Nikolaevskybarracks, and knew that he was wounded, though he felt hardly any pain;all he wanted was something cooling to drink, and to be allowed to liestill in peace.

  A plump little doctor, with black side-whiskers, approached him, andunbuttoned his coat. Kozeltzoff stared over his chin at what the doctorwas doing to his wound, and at the doctor's face, but he felt no pain.The doctor covered his wound with his shirt, wiped his fingers on theskirts of his coat, and, without a word or glance at the wounded man,went off to some one else.

  Kozeltzoff's eyes mechanically took note of what was going on beforehim, and, recalling the fact that he had been in the fifth bastion,he thought, with an extraordinary feeling of self-satisfaction, thathe had fulfilled his duty well, and that, for the first time in allhis service, he had behaved as handsomely as it was possible for anyone, and had nothing with which to reproach himself. The doctor, afterbandaging the other officer's wound, pointed to Kozeltzoff, and saidsomething to a priest, with a huge reddish beard, and a cross, who wasstanding near by.

  "What! am I dying?" Kozeltzoff asked the priest, when the latterapproached him.

  The priest, without making any reply, recited a prayer and handed thecross to the wounded man.

  Death had no terrors for Kozeltzoff. He grasped the cross with his weakhands, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.

  "Well, were the French repulsed?" he inquired of the priest, in firmtones.

  "The victory has remained with us at every point," replied the priest,in order to comfort the wounded man, concealing from him the fact thatthe French standard had already been unfurled on the Malakoff mound.

  "Thank God!" said the wounded man, without feeling the tears which weretrickling down his cheeks.

  The thought of his brother occurred to his mind for a single instant."May God grant him the same good-fortune," he said to himself.

  XXV.

  But the same fate did not await Volodya. He was listening to a talewhich Vasin was in the act of relating to him, when there was acry,--"The French are coming!" The blood fled for a moment to Volodya'sheart, and he felt his cheeks turn cold and pale. For one second heremained motionless, but, on glancing about him, he perceived thatthe soldiers were buttoning up their coats with tolerable equanimity,and crawling out, one after the other. One even, probably Melnikoff,remarked, in a jesting way:--

  "Go out and offer them the bread and salt of hospitality, children!"

  Volodya, in company with Vlang, who never separated from him by so muchas a step, crawled out of the bomb-proof, and ran to the battery.

  There was no artillery firing whatever in progress on either side. Itwas not so much the sight of the soldiers' composure which arousedhis courage as the pitiful and undisguised cowardice of Vlang. "Isit possible for me to be like him?" he said to himself, and he ranon gayly up to the breastworks, near which his mortars stood. It wasclearly apparent to him that the French were making straight for himthrough an open space, and that masses of them, with their bayonetsglittering in the sun, were moving in the nearest trenches.

  One, a short, broad-shouldered fellow, in zouave uniform, and armedwith a sword, ran on in front and leaped the ditch.

  "Fire grape-shot!" shouted Volodya, hastening from the banquette;but the soldiers had already made their preparations without waitingfor his orders, and the metallic sound of the grape-shot which theydischarged shrieked over his head, first from one and then from theother mortar.

  "First! second!" commanded Volodya, running from one mortar to theother, and utterly oblivious of danger.

  On one side, and near at hand, the crash of musketry from our men undershelter, and anxious cries, were heard.

  All at once a startling cry of despair, repeated by several voices, washeard on the left: "They are surrounding us! They are surrounding us!"

  Volodya looked round at this shout. Twenty Frenchmen made theirappearance in the rear. One of them, a handsome man with a black beard,was in front of all; but, after running up to within ten paces of thebattery, he halted, and fired straight at Volodya, and then ran towardshim once more.

  For a second, Volodya stood as though turned to stone, and did notbelieve his eyes. When he recovered himself and glanced about him,there were blue uniforms in front of him on the ramparts; two Frenchmenwere even spiking a cannon not ten paces distant from him.

  There was no one near him, with the exception of Melnikoff, who hadbeen killed by a bullet beside him, and Vlang, who, with a handspikeclutched in his hand, had rushed forwards, with an expression of wrathon his face, and with eyes lowered.

  "Follow me, Vladimir Semyonitch! Follow me!" shouted the desperatevoice of Vlang, as he brandished his handspike over the French, whowere pouring in from the rear. The yunker's ferocious countenancestartled them. He struck the one who was in advance, on the head; theothers involuntarily paused, and Vlang continued to glare about him,and to shout in despairing accents: "Follow me, Vladimir Semyonitch!Why do you stand there? Run!" and ran towards the trenches in which layour infantry, firing at the French. After leaping into the trench, hecame out again to see what his adored ensign was doing. Something in acoat was lying prostrate where Volodya had been standing, and the wholeplace was filled with Frenchmen, who were firing at our men.

  XXVI.

  Vlang found his battery on the second line of defence. Out of thetwenty soldiers who had been in the mortar battery, only eight survived.

  At nine o'clock in the evening, Vlang set out with the battery on asteamer loaded down with soldiers, cannon, horses, and wounded men, forSevernaya.

  There was no firing anywhere. The stars shone brilliantly in thesky, as on the preceding night; but a strong wind tossed the sea. Onthe first and second bastions, lightnings flashed along the earth;explosions rent the atmosphere, and illuminated strange black objectsin their vicinity, and the stones which flew through the air.

  Something was burning near the docks, and the red glare was reflectedin the water. The bridge, covered with people, was lighted up by thefire from the Ni
kolaevsky battery. A vast flame seemed to hang over thewater, from the distant promontory of the Alexandrovsky battery, andilluminated the clouds of smoke beneath, as it rose above them; andthe same tranquil, insolent, distant lights as on the preceding eveninggleamed over the sea, from the hostile fleet.

  The fresh breeze raised billows in the bay. By the red light of theconflagrations, the masts of our sunken ships, which were settlingdeeper and deeper into the water, were visible. Not a sound ofconversation was heard on deck; there was nothing but the regular swishof the parted waves, and the steam, the neighing and pawing of thehorses, the words of command from the captain, and the groans of thewounded. Vlang, who had had nothing to eat all day, drew a bit of breadfrom his pocket, and began to chew it; but all at once he recalledVolodya, and burst into such loud weeping that the soldiers who werenear him heard it.

  "See how our Vlang_a_[N] is eating his bread