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

of dark grey clouds; only here and there a few stars twinkled dimly among them. The moon had already sunk behind the near horizon of the black hills, visible to the right, and threw a faint trembling light on their peaks in sharp contrast to the impenetrable darkness which enveloped their base. The air was so warm and still that it seemed as if not one blade of grass, not one cloudlet, were moving. It was so dark that even objects close at hand could not be distinguished. On the sides of the road I seemed to see now rocks, now animals, now some strange kind of men, and I discovered that they were merely bushes only when I heard them rustle, or felt the dew with which they were sprinkled. In front of me I saw a dense heaving wall, followed by some dark moving spots: these were the cavalry vanguard, and the general with his suite. Another similar dark mass, only lower, moved beside us⁠—that was the infantry. The silence that reigned over the whole division was so great that all the mingling sounds of night, with their mysterious charm, were distinctly audible: the far-off, mournful howling of jackals, now like agonized weeping, then like chuckling; the monotonous, resounding song of crickets, frogs, and quails; a sort of rumbling I could not account for at all, but which seemed to draw nearer; scarcely audible motions of Nature, which can neither be understood nor defined, mingled into one beautiful harmony, which we call the stillness of night. This stillness was interrupted by, or rather combined with, the dull thud of hoofs and the rustling of the tall grass, produced by the slowly advancing detachment.

Only very occasionally you heard the clang of a heavy gun, the sound of bayonets striking together, hushed voices, or the snorting of a horse. Nature seemed to breathe with pacifying beauty and power. Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth, under those immeasurable starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men, ought, one would think, to vanish at the touch of Nature: that most direct expression of beauty and goodness.

VII

We had been riding for more than two hours. I was beginning to shiver and feel drowsy. Through the gloom I still seemed to see the same indefinite forms; a little way in front, the same black wall and the moving spots. Close in front of me I saw the crupper of a white horse which swung its tail and threw its hind legs far apart; the back of a white Circassian coat, on which could be discerned a musket in a black case, and the glimmering butt of a pistol in an embroidered sheath; the glow of a cigarette illumined a fair moustache, a beaver collar, and a white chamois glove. Every now and then, I leant over my horse’s neck, shutting my eyes, and forgetting myself for a few minutes; then, startled by the familiar tramping and rustling, I glanced round, and felt as if I were standing still, and the black wall in front was moving towards me, or that it had stopped and I should in a moment ride into it. At one such moment the rumbling which increased and seemed to approach, and the cause of which I could not guess, struck me forcibly: it was the sound of water. We were entering a deep gorge and approaching a mountain-stream that was overflowing its banks. The rumbling increased, the damp grass grew thicker and taller and the bushes closer, while the horizon gradually narrowed. Now and then, here and there against the dark background of the hills, bright lights flashed and instantly vanished.

“Tell me, please, what are those lights?” I inquired, in a whisper, of a Tartar riding beside me.

“What, don’t you know?” he replied.

“I don’t.”

“It’s the hillsmen have tied straw to poles and are waving the lights about.”

“Why are they doing it?”

“So that everyone should know the Russians have come. Oh! oh! what a bustle is going on now in the aouls; everybody’s dragging his belongings into the ravine,” he said, laughing.

“Why, do they already know in the mountains that a detachment is on its way?” I asked him.

“Eh, how can one help knowing? They always know; our people are like that.”

“Then Shamil3 too is preparing for action?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, shaking his head, “Shamil won’t go into action; Shamil will send his naibs,4 and he himself will look on through a telescope from above.”

“Does he live far away?”

“Not far. To the left, some eight miles.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “Have you been there?”

“I have; our people have all been.”

“Have you seen Shamil?”

“Eh! such as we don’t see Shamil! There are a hundred, three hundred, a thousand murids, all round him, and Shamil’s in the centre,” he said, with an expression of servile admiration.

Looking up, it was possible to discern that the sky, now cleared, was beginning to grow lighter in the East, and the Pleiades to sink towards the horizon; but the ravine through which we were marching was still damp and gloomy.

Suddenly, a little way in front of us, several lights flashed through the darkness; at the same moment some whizzing bullets flew past, and shots and piercing cries resounded amid the surrounding silence. It was the enemy’s advanced picket. The Tartars that composed it raised a hue and cry, fired at random, and then ran in different directions.

All became silent again. The General called up an interpreter. A Tartar in a white Circassian coat rode up to him and, gesticulating and whispering, talked with him for a while.

“Colonel Hasanov! Order the cordon to take open order,” commanded the