Sevastopol Page 3

the calf. "And my bestgun-captain was killed to-day; he was struck plump in the forehead,"says another. "Who's that? Mitiukhin?" "No!... What now, are they goingto give me any veal? the villains!" he adds to the servant of the inn."Not Mitiukhin, but Abrosimoff. Such a fine young fellow!--he was in thesixth sally."

  At another corner of the table, over a dish of cutlets with peas, anda bottle of sour Crimean wine called "Bordeaux," sit two infantryofficers; one with a red collar, who is young and has two stars on hiscoat, is telling the other, with a black collar and no stars, about theaffair at Alma. The former has already drunk a good deal, and it isevident, from the breaks in his narrative, from his undecided glanceexpressive of doubt as to whether he is believed, and chiefly fromthe altogether too prominent part which he has played in it all, andfrom the excessive horror of it all, that he is strongly disinclinedto bear strict witness to the truth. But these tales, which you willhear for a long time to come in every corner of Russia, are nothingto you; you prefer to go to the bastions, especially to the fourth,of which you have heard so many and such diverse things. When any onesays that he has been in the fourth bastion, he says it with a peculiarair of pride and satisfaction; when any one says, "I am going to thefourth bastion," either a little agitation or a very great indifferenceis infallibly perceptible in him; when any one wants to jest aboutanother, he says, "You must be stationed in the fourth bastion;" whenyou meet litters and inquire whence they come, the answer is generally,"From the fourth bastion." On the whole, two totally different opinionsexist with regard to this terrible bastion; one is held by those whohave never been in it, and who are convinced that the fourth bastion isa regular grave for every one who enters it, and the other by thosewho live in it, like the white-lashed midshipman, and who, when theymention the fourth bastion, will tell you whether it is dry or muddythere, whether it is warm or cold in the mud hut, and so forth.

  During the half-hour which you have passed in the inn, the weather haschanged; a fog which before spread over the sea has collected intodamp, heavy, gray clouds, and has veiled the sun; a kind of melancholy,frozen mist sprinkles from above, and wets the roofs, the sidewalks,and the soldiers' overcoats.

  Passing by yet another barricade, you emerge from the door at the rightand ascend the principal street. Behind this barricade, the houses areunoccupied on both sides of the street, there are no signs, the doorsare covered with boards, the windows are broken in; here the cornersare broken away, there the roofs are pierced. The buildings seem tobe old, to have undergone every sort of vicissitude and deprivationcharacteristic of veterans, and appear to gaze proudly and somewhatscornfully upon you. You stumble over the cannon-balls which strewthe way, and into holes filled with water, which have been excavatedin the stony ground by the bombs. In the street you meet and overtakebodies of soldiers, sharpshooters, officers; now and then you encountera woman or a child, but it is no longer a woman in a bonnet, but asailor's daughter in an old fur cloak and soldier's boots. As youproceed along the street, and descend a small declivity, you observethat there are no longer any houses about you, but only some strangeheaps of ruined stones, boards, clay, and beams; ahead of you, upon asteep hill, you perceive a black, muddy expanse, intersected by canals,and this that is in front is the fourth bastion. Here you meet stillfewer people, no women are visible, the soldiers walk briskly, you comeacross drops of blood on the road, and you will certainly encounterthere four soldiers with a stretcher and upon the stretcher a paleyellowish face and a blood-stained overcoat. If you inquire, "Whereis he wounded?" the bearers will say angrily, without turning towardsyou, "In the leg or the arm," if he is slightly wounded, or they willpreserve a gloomy silence if no head is visible on the stretcher and heis already dead or badly hurt.

  The shriek of a cannon-ball or a bomb close by surprises youunpleasantly, as you ascend the hill. You understand all at once,and quite differently from what you have before, the significance ofthose sounds of shots which you heard in the city. A quietly cheerfulmemory flashes suddenly before your fancy; your own personality beginsto occupy you more than your observations; your attention to allthat surrounds you diminishes, and a certain disagreeable feeling ofuncertainty suddenly overmasters you. In spite of this decidedly basevoice, which suddenly speaks within you, at the sight of danger, youforce it to be silent, especially when you glance at a soldier whoruns laughing past you at a trot, waving his hands, and slipping downthe hill in the mud, and you involuntarily expand your chest, throw upyour head a little higher, and climb the slippery, clayey hill. As soonas you have reached the top, rifle-balls begin to whiz to the rightand left of you, and, possibly, you begin to reflect whether you willnot go into the trench which runs parallel with the road; but thistrench is full of such yellow, liquid, foul-smelling mud, more thanknee-deep, that you will infallibly choose the path on the hill, themore so as you see that _every one uses the path_. After traversing acouple of hundred paces, you emerge upon a muddy expanse, all ploughedup, and surrounded on all sides by gabions, earthworks, platforms,earth huts, upon which great cast-iron guns stand, and cannon-ballslie in symmetrical heaps. All these seem to be heaped up without anyaim, connection, or order. Here in the battery sit a knot of sailors;there in the middle of the square, half buried in mud, lies a brokencannon; further on, a foot-soldier, with his gun, is marching throughthe battery, and dragging his feet with difficulty through the stickysoil. But everywhere, on all sides, in every spot, you see brokendishes, unexploded bombs, cannon-balls, signs of encampment, all sunkin the liquid, viscous mud. You seem to hear not far from you the thudof a cannon-ball; on all sides, you seem to hear the varied soundsof balls,--humming like bees, whistling sharply, or in a whine like acord--you hear the frightful roar of the fusillade, which seems to shakeyou all through with some horrible fright.

  "So this is it, the fourth bastion, this is it--that terrible, reallyfrightful place!" you think to yourself, and you experience a littlesensation of pride, and a very large sensation of suppressed terror.But you are mistaken, this is not the fourth bastion. It is theYazonovsky redoubt--a place which is comparatively safe; and not at alldreadful.

  In order to reach the fourth bastion, you turn to the right, throughthis narrow trench, through which the foot-soldier has gone. In thistrench you will perhaps meet stretchers again, sailors and soldierswith shovels; you will see the superintendent of the mines, mud huts,into which only two men can crawl by bending down, and there you willsee sharpshooters of the Black Sea battalions, who are changing theirshoes, eating, smoking their pipes, and living; and you will still seeeverywhere that same stinking mud, traces of a camp, and cast-off irondebris in every possible form. Proceeding yet three hundred paces,you will emerge again upon a battery,--on an open space, all cut upinto holes and surrounded by gabions, covered with earth, cannon, andearthworks. Here you will perhaps see five sailors playing cards underthe shelter of the breastworks, and a naval officer who, perceivingthat you are a new-comer, and curious, will with pleasure show hishousehold arrangements, and everything which may be of interest to you.

  This officer rolls himself a cigarette of yellow paper, with so muchcomposure as he sits on a gun, walks so calmly from one embrasureto another, converses with you so quietly, without the slightestaffectation, that, in spite of the bullets which hum above youeven more thickly than before, you become cool yourself, questionattentively, and listen to the officer's replies.

  This officer will tell you, but only if you ask him, about thebombardment on the 5th, he will tell you how only one gun in hisbattery could be used, and out of all the gunners who served it onlyeight remained, and how, nevertheless, on the next morning, the 6th, hefired all the guns; he will tell you how a bomb fell upon a sailor'searth hut on the 5th, and laid low eleven men; he will point out toyou, from the embrasures, the enemy's batteries and entrenchments,which are not more than thirty or forty fathoms distant from thispoint. I fear, however, that, under the influence of the whizzingbullets, you may thrust yourself out of the embrasure in order to viewthe enemy; yo
u will see nothing, and, if you do see anything, you willbe very much surprised that that white stone wall, which is so near youand from which white smoke rises in puffs,--that that white wall is theenemy--_he_, as the soldiers and sailors say.

  It is even quite possible that the naval officer will want to dischargea shot or two in your presence, out of vanity or simply for his ownpleasure. "Send the captain and his crew to the cannon;" and fourteensailors step up briskly and merrily to the gun and load it--onethrusting his pipe into his pocket, another one chewing a biscuit,still another clattering his heels on the platform.

  Observe the faces, the bearing, the movements of these men. In everywrinkle of that sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones, in everymuscle, in the breadth of those shoulders, in the stoutness of thoselegs shod in huge boots, in