Sevastopol Read online

made a move, thebattalion got under way, issued forth from behind the breastworks,marched forward a hundred paces, and came to a halt in columns. Pesthhad been ordered to take his stand on the right flank of the secondcompany.

  The yunker stood his ground, absolutely without knowing where he was,or why he was there, and, with restrained breath, and with a cold chillrunning down his spine, he had stared stupidly straight ahead into thedark beyond, in the expectation of something terrible. But, since therewas no firing in progress, he did not feel so much terrified as he didqueer and strange at finding himself outside the fortress, in the openplain. Again the battalion commander ahead said something. Again theofficers had conversed in whispers, as they communicated the orders,and the black wall of the first company suddenly disappeared. They hadbeen ordered to lie down. The second company lay down also, and Pesth,in the act, pricked his hand on something sharp. The only man who didnot lie down was the commander of the second company. His short form,with the naked sword which he was flourishing, talking incessantly thewhile, moved about in front of the troop.

  "Children! my lads! ... look at me! Don't fire at them, but at themwith your bayonets, the dogs! When I shout, Hurrah! follow me close ...the chief thing is to be as close together as possible ... let us showwhat we are made of! Do not let us cover ourselves with shame--shall we,hey, my children? For our father the Tsar!"

  "What is our company commander's surname?" Pesth inquired of a yunker,who was lying beside him. "What a brave fellow he is!"

  "Yes, he's always that way in a fight ..." answered the yunker. "Hisname is Lisinkovsky."

  At that moment, a flame flashed up in front of the company. Therewas a crash, which deafened them all, stones and splinters flew highin the air (fifty seconds, at least, later a stone fell from aboveand crushed the foot of a soldier). This was a bomb from an elevatedplatform, and the fact that it fell in the midst of the company provedthat the French had caught sight of the column.

  "So they are sending bombs!... Just let us get at you, and you shallfeel the bayonet of a three-sided Russian, curse you!" shouted thecommander of the company, in so loud a tone that the battalioncommander was forced to order him to be quiet and not to make so muchnoise.

  After this the first company rose to their feet, and after it thesecond. They were ordered to fix bayonets, and the battalion advanced.Pesth was so terrified that he absolutely could not recollect whetherthey advanced far, or whither, or who did what. He walked like adrunken man. But all at once millions of fires flashed from all sides,there was a whistling and a crashing. He shrieked and ran, becausethey were all shrieking and running. Then he stumbled and fell uponsomething. It was the company commander (who had been wounded at thehead of his men and who, taking the yunker for a Frenchman, seized himby the leg). Then when he had freed his leg, and risen to his feet,some man ran against his back in the dark and almost knocked him downagain; another man shouted, "Run him through! what are you staring at!"

  Then he seized a gun, and ran the bayonet into something soft. "Ah,Dieu!" exclaimed some one in a terribly piercing voice, and then onlydid Pesth discover that he had transfixed a Frenchman. The cold sweatstarted out all over his body. He shook as though in a fever, and flungaway the gun. But this lasted only a moment; it immediately occurredto him that he was a hero. He seized the gun again, and, shouting"Hurrah!" with the crowd, he rushed away from the dead Frenchman. Afterhaving traversed about twenty paces, he came to the trench. There hefound our men and the company commander.

  "I have run one man through!" he said to the commander.

  "You're a brave fellow, Baron."

  XII.

  "But, do you know, Praskukhin has been killed," said Pesth,accompanying Kalugin, on the way back.

  "It cannot be!"

  "But it can. I saw him myself."

  "Farewell; I am in a hurry."

  "I am well content," thought Kalugin, as he returned home; "I have hadluck for the first time when on duty. That was a capital engagement,and I am alive and whole. There will be some fine presentations, and Ishall certainly get a golden sword. And I deserve it too."

  After reporting to the general all that was necessary, he went to hisroom, in which sat Prince Galtsin, who had returned long before, andwho was reading a book, which he had found on Kalugin's table, whilewaiting for him.

  It was with a wonderful sense of enjoyment that Kalugin found himselfat home again, out of all danger, and, having donned his night-shirtand lain down on the sofa, he began to relate to Galtsin theparticulars of the affair, communicating them, naturally, from a pointof view which made it appear that he, Kalugin, was a very active andvaliant officer, to which, in my opinion, it was superfluous to refer,seeing that every one knew it and that no one had any right to doubtit, with the exception, perhaps, of the deceased Captain Praskukhin,who, in spite of the fact that he had considered it a piece ofhappiness to walk arm in arm with Kalugin, had told a friend, only theevening before, in private, that Kalugin was a very fine man, but that,between you and me, he was terribly averse to going to the bastions.

  No sooner had Praskukhin, who had been walking beside Mikhailoff,taken leave of Kalugin, and, betaking himself to a safer place, hadbegun to recover his spirits somewhat, than he caught sight of a flashof lightning behind him flaring up vividly, heard the shout of thesentinel, "Mortar!" and the words of the soldiers who were marchingbehind, "It's flying straight at the bastion!"

  Mikhailoff glanced round. The brilliant point of the bomb seemed tobe suspended directly over his head in such a position that it wasabsolutely impossible to determine its course. But this lasted onlyfor a second. The bomb came faster and faster, nearer and nearer, thesparks of the fuse were already visible, and the fateful whistle wasaudible, and it descended straight in the middle of the battalion.

  "Lie down!" shouted a voice.

  Mikhailoff and Praskukhin threw themselves on the ground. Praskukhinshut his eyes, and only heard the bomb crash against the hard earthsomewhere in the vicinity. A second passed, which seemed an hour--andthe bomb had not burst. Praskukhin was alarmed; had he felt cowardlyfor nothing? Perhaps the bomb had fallen at a distance, and it merelyseemed to him that the fuse was hissing near him. He opened his eyes,and saw with satisfaction that Mikhailoff was lying motionless on theearth, at his very feet. But then his eyes encountered for a moment theglowing fuse of the bomb, which was twisting about at a distance of anarshin from him.

  A cold horror, which excluded every other thought and feeling, tookpossession of his whole being. He covered his face with his hands.

  Another second passed--a second in which a whole world of thoughts,feelings, hopes, and memories flashed through his mind.

  "Which will be killed, Mikhailoff or I? Or both together? And if it isI, where will it strike? If in the head, then all is over with me; butif in the leg, they will cut it off, and I shall ask them to be sureto give me chloroform,--and I may still remain among the living. Butperhaps no one but Mikhailoff will be killed; then I will relate howwe were walking along together, and how he was killed and his bloodspurted over me. No, it is nearer to me ... it will kill me!"

  Then he remembered the twenty rubles which he owed Mikhailoff, andrecalled another debt in Petersburg, which ought to have been paid longago; the gypsy air which he had sung the previous evening recurredto him. The woman whom he loved appeared to his imagination in a capwith lilac ribbons, a man who had insulted him five years before, andwhom he had not paid off for his insult, came to his mind, thoughinextricably interwoven with these and with a thousand other memoriesthe feeling of the moment--the fear of death--never deserted him for aninstant.

  "But perhaps it will not burst," he thought, and, with the decisionof despair, he tried to open his eyes. But at that instant, throughthe crevice of his eyelids, his eyes were smitten with a red fire, andsomething struck him in the centre of the breast, with a frightfulcrash; he ran off, he knew not whither, stumbled over his sword, whichhad got between his legs, and fell over on his side.


  "Thank God! I am only bruised," was his first thought, and he triedto touch his breast with his hands; but his arms seemed fettered, andpincers were pressing his head. The soldiers flitted before his eyes,and he unconsciously counted them: "One, two, three soldiers; and thereis an officer, wrapped up in his cloak," he thought. Then a flashpassed before his eyes, and he thought that something had been firedoff; was it the mortars, or the cannon? It must have been the cannon.And there was still another shot; and there were more soldiers; five,six, seven soldiers were passing by him. Then suddenly he felt afraidthat they would crush him. He wanted to shout to them that he wasbruised; but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to his palateand he was tortured by a frightful thirst.

  He felt that he was wet about the breast: this sensation of dampnessreminded him of