Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

unbuttoned his cloak. Kozeltsóf looked over his chin to see what the doctor was doing to his wound, and at the doctor’s face, but he still felt no pain. The doctor covered the wound with the shirt, wiped his fingers on the skirt of his cloak, and silently, without looking at the wounded man, passed on to another patient. Kozeltsóf watched unconsciously what was going on around him, and remembering what had happened at the Fifth Bastion with an exceedingly joyful feeling of self-satisfaction, thought that he had performed his duty well⁠—that for the first time during his whole service, he had acted as well as was possible and had nothing to reproach himself with. The doctor, bandaging another man, pointed to Kozeltsóf and said something to a priest with a large red beard who stood nearby with a cross.

“Am I dying?” asked Kozeltsóf, when the priest approached him.

The priest, without replying, said a prayer and held the cross to the lips of the wounded man.

Death did not frighten Kozeltsóf. He took the cross with his weak hands, pressed it to his lips and began to weep.

“Were the French driven back?” he asked the priest.

“The victory is ours at all points,” answered the latter to console the wounded man, hiding from him the fact that from the Maláhof Redoubt the French standard was already waving.

“Thank God!” exclaimed the dying man. He did not feel the tears that ran down his cheeks.

The thought of his brother flashed through his brain:

“God grant him as good a fate,” thought he.

XXV

But a different fate awaited Volódya. He was listening to a tale Vásin was telling when he heard the cry, “The French are coming!” The blood rushed suddenly to his heart, and he felt his cheeks grow cold and pale. He remained immovable for a moment, but glancing round, he saw the soldiers pretty coolly fastening their uniforms and crawling out one after the other. One of them⁠—Mélnikof probably⁠—even joked, saying, “Let’s meet them with bread and salt.”78

Volódya and Vlang, who followed him like his shadow, climbed out of the bombproof and ran to the battery. There was no artillery firing at all on either side. The quiet appearance of the soldiers did less to rouse Volódya than the pitiful cowardice of the Junker. “Can I possibly be like him?” he thought, and ran gaily up to the breastwork where his mortars stood. He could plainly see the French running straight towards him across the open ground, and crowds of them moving in the nearer trenches, their bayonets glittering in the sunshine. One short, broad-shouldered fellow in a Zouave uniform ran in front, sword in hand, jumping across the pits.

“Fire with case-shot!” cried Volódya, running down from the banquette; but the soldiers had made their arrangements without waiting for his orders, and the metallic ring of the escaping case-shot whistled over his head, first from one mortar and then from the other. “One⁠—Two!” ordered Volódya, running the distance between the two mortars and quite forgetting the danger. From one side, and near at hand, the clatter of the muskets of our supports mingled with excited cries.

Suddenly a wild cry of despair arose on the left. “They’re behind us! behind us!” was repeated by several voices. Volódya looked round. About twenty Frenchmen appeared behind him. One of them, a handsome man with a black beard, was ahead of the rest, but when he had run up to within ten paces of the battery he stopped, fired point-blank at Volódya, and then again started running towards him. For a moment Volódya stood petrified, unable to believe his eyes. When he recollected himself and glanced round, he saw French uniforms on the breastwork in front of him; two Frenchmen, about ten paces from him, were even spiking a cannon. No one was near but Mélnikof, who had fallen at his side killed by a bullet, and Vlang, who had seized a linstock and was rushing forward with a furious look on his face, rolling his eyes and shouting. “Follow me, Vladímir Semyónitch!⁠ ⁠… Follow me!” cried Vlang in a desperate voice, brandishing his linstock at the Frenchmen who had come up from behind. The ferocious figure of the Junker perplexed them. Vlang hit the front one on the head; the others involuntarily hesitated, and continually looking back and shouting desperately, “Follow me, Vladímir Semyónitch; why are you stopping? run!” he ran to the trench where our infantry lay firing at the French. Having jumped in, he climbed out again to see what his adored Ensign was doing. Something in a cloak lay prostrate where Volódya had stood, and the whole of that part was covered with Frenchmen firing at our men.

XVI

Vlang found his company at the second line of defence. Of the twenty soldiers who had gone to the mortar battery, only eight had escaped.

Towards nine in the evening Vlang with the battery crossed over to the North Side on a steamer filled with soldiers, cannon, horses, and wounded men. There was no firing anywhere. The stars shone as brightly in the sky as they had done the night before, but a strong wind rocked the waves. On the First and Second Bastions flames kept bursting up along the ground; explosions rent the air and lit up around them strange dark objects and stones flying in the air. Something was burning near the docks, and the red glare was reflected in the water. The bridge, thronged with people, was illuminated by the fire on the Nicholas Battery. A large flame seemed to stand above the water on the distant little headland of the Alexander Battery, lighting up from below the clouds of smoke that hung above it; and quiet, insolent, distant lights gleamed over the sea, as they had done yesterday, from the fleet of the enemy. A fresh wind rocked the Roadstead. By the glaring light of the conflagrations one could see the masts of our