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Title: Sevastopol

Author: graf Leo Tolstoy

Translator: Isabel Florence Hapgood

Release date: October 25, 2014 [eBook #47197]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVASTOPOL
***

COUNT TOLSTOÏ'S WORKS.

ANNA KARÉNINA $1.75
CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, AND YOUTH 1.50
IVAN ILYITCH 1.25
MY RELIGION 1.00
MY CONFESSION 1.00
WHAT TO DO? 1.25
THE INVADERS 1.25
A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR 1.50
NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 1.00
THE LONG EXILE 1.25
LIFE 1.25
SEVASTOPOL 1.00
THE COSSACKS 1.00
POWER AND LIBERTY .75
WHAT MEN LIVE BY (booklet) .30
THE TWO PILGRIMS (booklet) .30
WHERE LOVE IS (booklet) .30

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.,
PUBLISHERS,
13 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK.

SEVASTOPOL

BY

COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN

BY

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

AUTHORIZED EDITION.

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

13 Astor Place

Copyright, 1888, by
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

CONTENTS.

page
Sevastopol in December, 1854 5
Sevastopol in May, 1855 37
Sevastopol in August, 1855 123

SEVASTOPOL.

SEVASTOPOL IN DECEMBER, 1854.

The flush of morning has but just begun to tinge the sky above Sapun
Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already cast aside the shades
of night and awaits the first ray to begin a play of merry gleams; cold and
mist are wafted from the bay; there is no snow—all is black, but the
morning frost pinches the face and crackles underfoot, and the far-off,
unceasing roar of the sea, broken now and then by the thunder of the firing
in Sevastopol, alone disturbs the calm of the morning. It is dark on board
the ships; it has just struck eight bells.
Toward the north the activity of the day begins gradually to replace the
nocturnal quiet; here the relief guard has passed clanking their arms, there
the doctor is already hastening to the hospital, further on the soldier has
crept out of his earth hut and is washing his sunburnt face in ice-encrusted
water, and, turning towards the crimsoning east, crosses himself quickly as
he prays to God; here a tall and heavy camel-wagon has dragged creaking
to the cemetery, to bury the bloody dead, with whom it is laden nearly to the
top. You go to the wharf—a peculiar odor of coal, manure, dampness, and
of beef strikes you; thousands of objects of all sorts—wood, meat, gabions,
flour, iron, and so forth—lie in heaps about the wharf; soldiers of various
regiments, with knapsacks and muskets, without knapsacks and without
muskets, throng thither, smoke, quarrel, drag weights aboard the steamer
which lies smoking beside the quay; unattached two-oared boats, filled with
all sorts of people,—soldiers, sailors, merchants, women,—land at and
leave the wharf.
“To the Grafsky, Your Excellency? be so good.” Two or three retired
sailors rise in their boats and offer you their services.
You select the one who is nearest to you, you step over the half-
decomposed carcass of a brown horse, which lies there in the mud beside
the boat, and reach the stern. You quit the shore. All about you is the sea,

already glittering in the morning sun, in front of you is an aged sailor, in a
camel's-hair coat, and a young, white-headed boy, who work zealously and
in silence at the oars. You gaze at the motley vastness of the vessels,
scattered far and near over the bay, and at the small black dots of boats
moving about on the shining azure expanse, and at the bright and beautiful
buildings of the city, tinted with the rosy rays of the morning sun, which are
visible in one direction, and at the foaming white line of the quay, and the
sunken ships from which black tips of masts rise sadly here and there, and
at the distant fleet of the enemy faintly visible as they rock on the crystal
horizon of the sea, and at the streaks of foam on which leap salt bubbles
beaten up by the oars; you listen to the monotonous sound of voices which
fly to you over the water, and the grand sounds of firing, which, as it seems
to you, is increasing in Sevastopol.
It cannot be that, at the thought that you too are in Sevastopol, a
certain feeling of manliness, of pride, has not penetrated your soul, and that
the blood has not begun to flow more swiftly through your veins.
“Your Excellency! you are steering straight into the Kistentin,”[A] says
your old sailor to you as he turns round to make sure of the direction which
you are imparting to the boat, with the rudder to the right.
“And all the cannon are still on it,” remarks the white-headed boy,
casting a glance over the ship as we pass.
“Of course; it's new. Korniloff lived on board of it,” said the old man,
also glancing at the ship.
“See where it has burst!” says the boy, after a long silence, looking at a
white cloud of spreading smoke which has suddenly appeared high over the
South Bay, accompanied by the sharp report of an exploding bomb.
“He is firing to-day with his new battery,” adds the old man, calmly
spitting on his hands. “Now, give way, Mishka! we'll overtake the barge.”
And your boat moves forward more swiftly over the broad swells of the
bay, and you actually do overtake the heavy barge, upon which some bags
are piled, and which is rowed by awkward soldiers, and it touches the
Grafsky wharf amid a multitude of boats of every sort which are landing.
Throngs of gray soldiers, black sailors, and women of various colors
move noisily along the shore. The women are selling rolls, Russian peasants

with samovárs are crying hot sbiten;[B] and here upon the first steps are
strewn rusted cannon-balls, bombs, grape-shot, and cast-iron cannon of
various calibers; a little further on is a large square, upon which lie huge
beams, gun-carriages, sleeping soldiers; there stand horses, wagons, green
guns, ammunition-chests, and stacks of arms; soldiers, sailors, officers,
women, children, and merchants are moving about; carts are arriving with
hay, bags, and casks; here and there Cossacks make their way through, or
officers on horseback, or a general in a drosky. To the right, the street is
hemmed in by a barricade, in whose embrasures stand some small cannon,
and beside these sits a sailor smoking his pipe. On the left a handsome
house with Roman ciphers on the pediment, beneath which stand soldiers
and blood-stained litters—everywhere you behold the unpleasant signs of a
war encampment. Your first impression is inevitably of the most
disagreeable sort. The strange mixture of camp and town life, of a beautiful
city and a dirty bivouac, is not only not beautiful, but seems repulsive
disorder; it even seems to you that every one is thoroughly frightened, and
is fussing about without knowing what he is doing. But look more closely at
the faces of these people who are moving about you, and you will gain an
entirely different idea. Look at this little soldier from the provinces, for
example, who is leading a troïka of brown horses to water, and is purring
something to himself so composedly that he evidently will not go astray in
this motley crowd, which does not exist for him; but he is fulfilling his duty,
whatever that may be,—watering the horses or carrying arms,—with just as
much composure, self-confidence, and equanimity as though it were taking
place in Tula or Saransk. You will read the same expression on the face of
this officer who passes by in immaculate white gloves, and in the face of
the sailor who is smoking as he sits on the barricade, and in the faces of the
working soldiers, waiting with their litters on the steps of the former club,
and in the face of yonder girl, who, fearing to wet her pink gown, skips
across the street on the little stones.
Yes! disenchantment certainly awaits you, if you are entering
Sevastopol for the first time. In vain will you seek, on even a single
countenance, for traces of anxiety, discomposure, or even of enthusiasm,
readiness for death, decision,—there is nothing of the sort. You will see the
tradespeople quietly engaged in the duties of their callings, so that, possibly,
you may reproach yourself for superfluous raptures, you may entertain
some doubt as to the justice of the ideas regarding the heroism of the

defenders of Sevastopol which you have formed from stories, descriptions,
and the sights and sounds on the northern side. But, before you doubt, go
upon the bastions, observe the defenders of Sevastopol on the very scene of
the defence, or, better still, go straight across into that house, which was
formerly the Sevastopol Assembly House, and upon whose roof stand
soldiers with litters,—there you will behold the defenders of Sevastopol,
there you will behold frightful and sad, great and laughable, but wonderful
sights, which elevate the soul.
You enter the great Hall of Assembly. You have but just opened the
door when the sight and smell of forty or fifty seriously wounded men and
of those who have undergone amputation—some in hammocks, the
majority upon the floor—suddenly strike you. Trust not to the feeling which
detains you upon the threshold of the hall; be not ashamed of having come
to look at the sufferers, be not ashamed to approach and address them: the
unfortunates like to see a sympathizing human face, they like to tell of their
sufferings and to hear words of love and interest. You walk along between
the beds and seek a face less stern and suffering, which you decide to
approach, with the object of conversing.
“Where are you wounded?” you inquire, timidly and with indecision,
of an old, gaunt soldier, who, seated in his hammock, is watching you with
a good-natured glance, and seems to invite you to approach him. I say “you
ask timidly,” because these sufferings inspire you, over and above the
feeling of profound sympathy, with a fear of offending and with a lofty
reverence for the man who has undergone them.
“In the leg,” replies the soldier; but, at the same time, you perceive, by
the folds of the coverlet, that he has lost his leg above the knee. “God be
thanked now,” he adds,—“I shall get my discharge.”
“Were you wounded long ago?”
“It was six weeks ago, Your Excellency.”
“Does it still pain you?”
“No, there's no pain now; only there's a sort of gnawing in my calf
when the weather is bad, but that's nothing.”
“How did you come to be wounded?”

“On the fifth bastion, during the first bombardment. I had just trained a
cannon, and was on the point of going away, so, to another embrasure when
it struck me in the leg, just as if I had stepped into a hole and had no leg.”
“Was it not painful at the first moment?”
“Not at all; only as though something boiling hot had struck my leg.”
“Well, and then?”
“And then—nothing; only the skin began to draw as though it had
been rubbed hard. The first thing of all, Your Excellency, is not to think at
all. If you don't think about a thing, it amounts to nothing. Men suffer from
thinking more than from anything else.”
At that moment, a woman in a gray striped dress and a black kerchief
bound about her head approaches you.
She joins in your conversation with the sailor, and begins to tell about
him, about his sufferings, his desperate condition for the space of four
weeks, and how, when he was wounded, he made the litter halt that he
might see the volley from our battery, how the grand-duke spoke to him and
gave him twenty-five rubles, and how he said to him that he wanted to go
back to the bastion to direct the younger men, even if he could not work
himself. As she says all this in a breath, the woman glances now at you,
now at the sailor, who has turned away as though he did not hear her and
plucks some lint from his pillow, and her eyes sparkle with peculiar
enthusiasm.
“This is my housewife, Your Excellency!” the sailor says to you, with
an expression which seems to say, “You must excuse her. Every one knows
it's a woman's way—she's talking nonsense.”
You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol. For some reason,
you feel ashamed of yourself in the presence of this man. You would like to
say a very great deal to him, in order to express to him your sympathy and
admiration; but you find no words, or you are dissatisfied with those which
come into your head,—and you do reverence in silence before this taciturn,
unconscious grandeur and firmness of soul, this modesty in the face of his
own merits.

“Well, God grant you a speedy recovery,” you say to him, and you halt
before another invalid, who is lying on the floor and appears to be awaiting
death in intolerable agony.
He is a blond man with pale, swollen face. He is lying on his back,
with his left arm thrown out, in a position which is expressive of cruel
suffering. His parched, open mouth with difficulty emits his stertorous
breathing; his blue, leaden eyes are rolled up, and from beneath the wadded
coverlet the remains of his right arm, enveloped in bandages, protrude. The
oppressive odor of a corpse strikes you forcibly, and the consuming,
internal fire which has penetrated every limb of the sufferer seems to
penetrate you also.
“Is he unconscious?” you inquire of the woman, who comes up to you
and gazes at you tenderly as at a relative.
“No, he can still hear, but he's very bad,” she adds, in a whisper. “I
gave him some tea to-day,—what if he is a stranger, one must still have
pity!—and he hardly tasted it.”
“How do you feel?” you ask him.
The wounded man turns his eyeballs at the sound of your voice, but he
neither sees nor understands you.
“There's a gnawing at my heart.”
A little further on, you see an old soldier changing his linen. His face
and body are of a sort of cinnamon-brown color, and gaunt as a skeleton.
He has no arm at all; it has been cut off at the shoulder. He is sitting with a
wide-awake air, he puts himself to rights; but you see, by his dull, corpse-
like gaze, his frightful gauntness, and the wrinkles on his face, that he is a
being who has suffered for the best part of his life.
On the other side, you behold in a cot the pale, suffering, and delicate
face of a woman, upon whose cheek plays a feverish flush.
“That's our little sailor lass who was struck in the leg by a bomb on the
5th,” your guide tells you. “She was carrying her husband's dinner to him in
the bastion.”
“Has it been amputated?”

“They cut it off above the knee.”
Now, if your nerves are strong, pass through the door on the left. In
yonder room they are applying bandages and performing operations. There,
you will see doctors with their arms blood-stained above the elbow, and
with pale, stern faces, busied about a cot, upon which, with eyes widely
opened, and uttering, as in delirium, incoherent, sometimes simple and
touching words, lies a wounded man under the influence of chloroform. The
doctors are busy with the repulsive but beneficent work of amputation. You
see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy, white body, you see the
wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with a piercing cry and
curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputated arm into a corner, you
see another wounded man, lying in a litter in the same apartment, shrink
convulsively and groan as he gazes at the operation upon his comrade, not
so much from physical pain as from the moral torture of anticipation.—You
behold the frightful, soul-stirring scenes; you behold war, not from its
conventional, beautiful, and brilliant side, with music and drum-beat, with
fluttering flags and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase
—in blood, in suffering, in death.
On emerging from this house of pain, you will infallibly experience a
sensation of pleasure, you will inhale the fresh air more fully, you will feel
satisfaction in the consciousness of your health, but, at the same time, you
will draw from the sight of these sufferings a consciousness of your
nothingness, and you will go calmly and without any indecision to the
bastion.
“What do the death and sufferings of such an insignificant worm as I
signify in comparison with so many deaths and such great sufferings?” But
the sight of the clear sky, the brilliant sun, the fine city, the open church,
and the soldiers moving about in various directions soon restores your mind
to its normal condition of frivolity, petty cares, and absorption in the present
alone.
Perhaps you meet the funeral procession of some officer coming from
the church, with rose-colored coffin, and music and fluttering banners;
perhaps the sounds of firing reach your ear from the bastion, but this does
not lead you back to your former thoughts; the funeral seems to you a very
fine military spectacle, and you do not connect with this spectacle, or with

the sounds, any clear idea of suffering and death, as you did at the point
where the bandaging was going on.
Passing the barricade and the church, you come to the most lively part
of the city. On both sides hang the signs of shops and inns. Merchants,
women in bonnets and kerchiefs, dandified officers,—everything speaks to
you of the firmness of spirit, of the independence and the security of the
inhabitants.
Enter the inn on the right if you wish to hear the conversations of
sailors and officers; stories of the preceding night are sure to be in progress
there, and of Fenka, and the affair of the 24th, and of the dearness and
badness of cutlets, and of such and such a comrade who has been killed.
“Devil take it, how bad things are with us to-day!” ejaculates the bass
voice of a beardless naval officer, with white brows and lashes, in a green
knitted sash.
“Where?” asks another.
“In the fourth bastion,” replies the young officer, and you are certain to
look at the white-lashed officer with great attention, and even with some
respect, at the words, “in the fourth bastion.” His excessive ease of manner,
the way he flourishes his hands, his loud laugh, and his voice, which seems
to you insolent, reveal to you that peculiar boastful frame of mind which
some very young men acquire after danger; nevertheless, you think he is
about to tell you how bad the condition of things on the fourth bastion is
because of the bombs and balls. Nothing of the sort! things are bad because
it is muddy. “It's impossible to pass through the battery,” says he, pointing
at his boots, which are covered with mud above the calf. “And my best gun-
captain was killed to-day; he was struck plump in the forehead,” says
another. “Who's that? Mitiukhin?” “No!... What now, are they going to 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 the sixth
sally.”
At another corner of the table, over a dish of cutlets with peas, and a
bottle of sour Crimean wine called “Bordeaux,” sit two infantry officers;
one with a red collar, who is young and has two stars on his coat, is telling
the other, with a black collar and no stars, about the affair at Alma. The

former has already drunk a good deal, and it is evident, from the breaks in
his narrative, from his undecided glance expressive of doubt as to whether
he is believed, and chiefly from the altogether too prominent part which he
has played in it all, and from the excessive horror of it all, that he is
strongly disinclined to bear strict witness to the truth. But these tales, which
you will hear for a long time to come in every corner of Russia, are nothing
to 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 one says that he
has been in the fourth bastion, he says it with a peculiar air of pride and
satisfaction; when any one says, “I am going to the fourth bastion,” either a
little agitation or a very great indifference is infallibly perceptible in him;
when any one wants to jest about another, he says, “You must be stationed
in the fourth bastion;” when you meet litters and inquire whence they come,
the answer is generally, “From the fourth bastion.” On the whole, two
totally different opinions exist with regard to this terrible bastion; one is
held by those who have never been in it, and who are convinced that the
fourth bastion is a regular grave for every one who enters it, and the other
by those who live in it, like the white-lashed midshipman, and who, when
they mention the fourth bastion, will tell you whether it is dry or muddy
there, 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 has
changed; a fog which before spread over the sea has collected into damp,
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 right
and ascend the principal street. Behind this barricade, the houses are
unoccupied on both sides of the street, there are no signs, the doors are
covered with boards, the windows are broken in; here the corners are
broken away, there the roofs are pierced. The buildings seem to be old, to
have undergone every sort of vicissitude and deprivation characteristic of
veterans, and appear to gaze proudly and somewhat scornfully upon you.
You stumble over the cannon-balls which strew the way, and into holes
filled with water, which have been excavated in the stony ground by the
bombs. In the street you meet and overtake bodies of soldiers,
sharpshooters, officers; now and then you encounter a woman or a child,

but it is no longer a woman in a bonnet, but a sailor's daughter in an old fur
cloak and soldier's boots. As you proceed along the street, and descend a
small declivity, you observe that there are no longer any houses about you,
but only some strange heaps of ruined stones, boards, clay, and beams;
ahead of you, upon a steep hill, you perceive a black, muddy expanse,
intersected by canals, and this that is in front is the fourth bastion. Here you
meet still fewer people, no women are visible, the soldiers walk briskly, you
come across drops of blood on the road, and you will certainly encounter
there four soldiers with a stretcher and upon the stretcher a pale yellowish
face and a blood-stained overcoat. If you inquire, “Where is he wounded?”
the bearers will say angrily, without turning towards you, “In the leg or the
arm,” if he is slightly wounded, or they will preserve a gloomy silence if no
head is visible on the stretcher and he is already dead or badly hurt.
The shriek of a cannon-ball or a bomb close by surprises you
unpleasantly, as you ascend the hill. You understand all at once, and quite
differently from what you have before, the significance of those sounds of
shots which you heard in the city. A quietly cheerful memory flashes
suddenly before your fancy; your own personality begins to occupy you
more than your observations; your attention to all that surrounds you
diminishes, and a certain disagreeable feeling of uncertainty suddenly
overmasters you. In spite of this decidedly base voice, which suddenly
speaks within you, at the sight of danger, you force it to be silent, especially
when you glance at a soldier who runs laughing past you at a trot, waving
his hands, and slipping down the hill in the mud, and you involuntarily
expand your chest, throw up your head a little higher, and climb the
slippery, clayey hill. As soon as you have reached the top, rifle-balls begin
to whiz to the right and left of you, and, possibly, you begin to reflect
whether you will not go into the trench which runs parallel with the road;
but this trench is full of such yellow, liquid, foul-smelling mud, more than
knee-deep, that you will infallibly choose the path on the hill, the more so
as you see that every one uses the path. After traversing a couple of hundred
paces, you emerge upon a muddy expanse, all ploughed up, and surrounded
on all sides by gabions, earthworks, platforms, earth huts, upon which great
cast-iron guns stand, and cannon-balls lie in symmetrical heaps. All these
seem to be heaped up without any aim, 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 broken cannon; further on, a foot-soldier, with his gun, is

marching through the battery, and dragging his feet with difficulty through
the sticky soil. But everywhere, on all sides, in every spot, you see broken
dishes, unexploded bombs, cannon-balls, signs of encampment, all sunk in
the liquid, viscous mud. You seem to hear not far from you the thud of a
cannon-ball; on all sides, you seem to hear the varied sounds of balls,—
humming like bees, whistling sharply, or in a whine like a cord—you hear
the frightful roar of the fusillade, which seems to shake you all through with
some horrible fright.
“So this is it, the fourth bastion, this is it—that terrible, really frightful
place!” you think to yourself, and you experience a little sensation of pride,
and a very large sensation of suppressed terror. But you are mistaken, this is
not the fourth bastion. It is the Yazonovsky redoubt—a place which is
comparatively safe; and not at all dreadful.
In order to reach the fourth bastion, you turn to the right, through this
narrow trench, through which the foot-soldier has gone. In this trench you
will perhaps meet stretchers again, sailors and soldiers with shovels; you
will see the superintendent of the mines, mud huts, into which only two
men can crawl by bending down, and there you will see sharpshooters of
the Black Sea battalions, who are changing their shoes, eating, smoking
their pipes, and living; and you will still see everywhere that same stinking
mud, traces of a camp, and cast-off iron débris in every possible form.
Proceeding yet three hundred paces, you will emerge again upon a battery,
—on an open space, all cut up into holes and surrounded by gabions,
covered with earth, cannon, and earthworks. Here you will perhaps see five
sailors playing cards under the shelter of the breastworks, and a naval
officer who, perceiving that you are a new-comer, and curious, will with
pleasure show his household arrangements, and everything which may be of
interest to you.
This officer rolls himself a cigarette of yellow paper, with so much
composure as he sits on a gun, walks so calmly from one embrasure to
another, converses with you so quietly, without the slightest affectation,
that, in spite of the bullets which hum above you even more thickly than
before, you become cool yourself, question attentively, and listen to the
officer's replies.

This officer will tell you, but only if you ask him, about the
bombardment on the 5th, he will tell you how only one gun in his battery
could be used, and out of all the gunners who served it only eight remained,
and how, nevertheless, on the next morning, the 6th, he fired all the guns;
he will tell you how a bomb fell upon a sailor's earth hut on the 5th, and laid
low eleven men; he will point out to you, from the embrasures, the enemy's
batteries and entrenchments, which are not more than thirty or forty
fathoms distant from this point. I fear, however, that, under the influence of
the whizzing bullets, you may thrust yourself out of the embrasure in order
to view the enemy; you will see nothing, and, if you do see anything, you
will be very much surprised that that white stone wall, which is so near you
and from which white smoke rises in puffs,—that that white wall is the
enemy—he, as the soldiers and sailors say.
It is even quite possible that the naval officer will want to discharge a
shot or two in your presence, out of vanity or simply for his own pleasure.
“Send the captain and his crew to the cannon;” and fourteen sailors step up
briskly and merrily to the gun and load it—one thrusting 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 every
wrinkle of that sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones, in every muscle,
in the breadth of those shoulders, in the stoutness of those legs shod in huge
boots, in every calm, firm, deliberate gesture, these chief traits which
constitute the power of Russia—simplicity and straightforwardness—are
visible; but here, on every face, it seems to you that the danger, misery, and
the sufferings of war have, in addition to these principal characteristics, left
traces of consciousness of personal worth, emotion, and exalted thought.
All at once a frightful roar, which shakes not your organs of hearing
alone but your whole being, startles you so that you tremble all over. Then
you hear the distant shriek of the shot as it pursues its course, and the dense
smoke of the powder conceals from you the platform and the black figures
of the sailors who are moving about upon it. You hear various remarks of
the sailors in reference to this shot, and you see their animation, and an
exhibition of a feeling which you had not expected to behold perhaps—a
feeling of malice, of revenge against the enemy, which lies hidden in the
soul of each man. “It struck the embrasure itself; it seems to have killed two

men—see, they've carried them off!” you hear in joyful exclamation. “And
now they are angry; they'll fire at us directly,” says some one; and, in fact,
shortly after you see a flash in front and smoke; the sentry, who is standing
on the breastwork, shouts “Can-non!” And then the ball shrieks past you,
strikes the earth, and scatters a shower of dirt and stones about it.
This ball enrages the commander of the battery; he orders a second and
a third gun to be loaded, the enemy also begins to reply to us, and you
experience a sensation of interest, you hear and see interesting things. Again
the sentry shouts, “Can-non!” and you hear the same report and blow, the
same shower, or he shouts “Mortar!” and you hear the monotonous, even
rather pleasant whistle of the bomb, with which it is difficult to connect the
thought of horror; you hear this whistle approaching you, and increasing in
swiftness, then you see the black sphere, the impact on the ground, the
resounding explosion of the bomb which can be felt. With the whistle and
shriek, splinters fly again, stones whiz through the air, and mud showers
over you. At these sounds you experience a strange feeling of enjoyment,
and, at the same time, of terror. At the moment when you know that the
projectile is flying towards you, it will infallibly occur to you that this shot
will kill you; but the feeling of self-love upholds you, and no one perceives
the knife which is cutting your heart. But when the shot has flown past
without touching you, you grow animated, and a certain cheerful,
inexpressibly pleasant feeling overpowers you, but only for a moment, so
that you discover a peculiar sort of charm in danger, in this game of life and
death, you want cannon-balls or bombs to strike nearer to you.
But again the sentry has shouted in his loud, thick voice, “Mortar!”
again there is a shriek, and a bomb bursts, but with this noise comes the
groan of a man. You approach the wounded man, at the same moment with
the bearers; he has a strange, inhuman aspect, covered as he is with blood
and mud. A part of the sailor's breast has been torn away. During the first
moments, there is visible on his mud-stained face only fear and a certain
simulated, premature expression of suffering, peculiar to men in that
condition; but, at the same time, as the stretcher is brought to him and he is
laid upon it on his sound side, you observe that this expression is replaced
by an expression of a sort of exaltation and lofty, inexpressible thought. His
eyes shine more brilliantly, his teeth are clenched, his head is held higher
with difficulty, and, as they lift him up, he stops the bearers and says to his

comrades, with difficulty and in a trembling voice: “Farewell, brothers!” He
tries to say something more, and it is plain that he wants to say something
touching, but he repeats once more: “Farewell, brothers!”
At that moment, one of his fellow-sailors steps up to him, puts the cap
on the head which the wounded man holds towards him, and, waving his
hand indifferently, returns calmly to his gun. “That's the way with seven or
eight men every day,” says the naval officer to you, in reply to the
expression of horror which has appeared upon your countenance, as he
yawns and rolls a cigarette of yellow paper.

Thus you have seen the defenders of Sevastopol, on the very scene of
the defence, and you go back paying no attention, for some reason or other,
to the cannon-balls and bullets, which continue to shriek the whole way
until you reach the ruined theatre,—you proceed with composure, and with
your soul in a state of exaltation.
The principal and cheering conviction which you have brought away is
the conviction of the impossibility of the Russian people wavering
anywhere whatever—and this impossibility you have discerned not in the
multitude of traverses, breastworks, artfully interlaced trenches, mines, and
ordnance, piled one upon the other, of which you have comprehended
nothing; but you have discerned it in the eyes, the speech, the manners, in
what is called the spirit of the defenders of Sevastopol. What they are doing
they do so simply, with so little effort and exertion, that you are convinced
that they can do a hundred times more—that they can do anything. You
understand that the feeling which makes them work is not a feeling of
pettiness, ambition, forgetfulness, which you have yourself experienced, but
a different sentiment, one more powerful, and one which has made of them
men who live with their ordinary composure under the fire of cannon, amid
hundreds of chances of death, instead of the one to which all men are
subject who live under these conditions amid incessant labor, poverty, and
dirt. Men will not accept these frightful conditions for the sake of a cross or
a title, nor because of threats; there must be another lofty incentive as a
cause, and this cause is the feeling which rarely appears, of which a Russian

is ashamed, that which lies at the bottom of each man's soul—love for his
country.
Only now have the tales of the early days of the siege of Sevastopol,
when there were no fortifications there, no army, no physical possibility of
holding it, and when at the same time there was not the slightest doubt that
it would not surrender to the enemy,—of the days when that hero worthy of
ancient Greece, Korniloff, said, as he reviewed the army: “We will die,
children, but we will not surrender Sevastopol;” and our Russians, who are
not fitted to be phrase-makers, replied: “We will die! hurrah!”—only now
have tales of that time ceased to be for you the most beautiful historical
legends, and have become real facts and worthy of belief. You comprehend
clearly, you figure to yourself, those men whom you have just seen, as the
very heroes of those grievous times, who have not fallen, but have been
raised by the spirit, and have joyfully prepared for death, not for the sake of
the city, but of the country. This epos of Sevastopol, whose hero was the
Russian people, will leave mighty traces in Russia for a long time to come.
Night is already falling. The sun has emerged from the gray clouds,
which cover the sky just before its setting, and has suddenly illuminated
with a crimson glow the purple vapors, the greenish sea covered with ships
and boats rocking on the regular swell, and the white buildings of the city,
and the people who are moving through its streets. Sounds of some old
waltz played by the regimental band on the boulevard, and the sounds of
firing from the bastions, which echo them strangely, are borne across the
water.

FOOTNOTES:
[A] The vessel Constantine.
[B] A drink made of water, molasses, laurel-leaves or salvia, which is drunk like
tea, especially by the lower classes.

SEVASTOPOL IN MAY, 1855.

I.

Six months have already passed since the first cannon-ball whistled from
the bastions of Sevastopol, and ploughed the earth in the works of the
enemy, and since that day thousands of bombs, cannon-balls, and rifle-balls
have been flying incessantly from the bastions into the trenches and from
the trenches into the bastions, and the angel of death has never ceased to
hover over them.
Thousands of men have been disappointed in satisfying their ambition;
thousands have succeeded in satisfying theirs, in becoming swollen with
pride; thousands repose in the embrace of death. How many red coffins and
canvas canopies there have been! And still the same sounds are echoed
from the bastions, and still on clear evenings the French peer from their
camp, with involuntary tremor, at the yellow, furrowed bastions of
Sevastopol, at the black forms of our sailors moving about upon them, and
count the embrasures and the iron cannon which project angrily from them;
the under officer still gazes through his telescope, from the heights of the
telegraph station, at the dark figures of the French at their batteries, at their
tents, at the columns moving over the green hill, and at the puffs of smoke
which issue forth from the trenches,—and a crowd of men, formed of divers
races, still streams in throngs from various quarters, with the same ardor as
ever, and with desires differing even more greatly than their races, towards
this fateful spot. And the question, unsolved by the diplomats, has still not
been solved by powder and blood.

II.

On the boulevard of the besieged city of Sevastopol, not far from the
pavilion, the regimental band was playing, and throngs of military men and

of women moved gayly through the streets. The brilliant sun of spring had
risen in the morning over the works of the English, had passed over the
bastions, then over the city, over the Nikolaevsky barracks, and,
illuminating all with equal cheer, had now sunk into the blue and distant
sea, which was lighted with a silvery gleam as it heaved in peace.
A tall, rather bent infantry officer, who was drawing upon his hand a
glove which was presentable, if not entirely white, came out of one of the
small naval huts, built on the left side of the Morskaya[C] street, and, staring
thoughtfully at the ground, took his way up the slope to the boulevard.
The expression of this officer's homely countenance did not indicate
any great mental capacity, but rather simplicity, judgment, honor, and a
tendency to solid worth. He was badly built, not graceful, and he seemed to
be constrained in his movements. He was dressed in a little worn cap, a
cloak of a rather peculiar shade of lilac, from beneath whose edge the gold
of a watch-chain was visible; in trousers with straps, and brilliantly polished
calfskin boots. He must have been either a German—but his features clearly
indicate his purely Russian descent—or an adjutant, or a regimental
quartermaster, only in that case he would have had spurs, or an officer who
had exchanged from the cavalry for the period of the campaign, or possibly
from the Guards. He was, in fact, an officer who had exchanged from the
cavalry, and as he ascended the boulevard, at the present moment, he was
meditating upon a letter which he had just received from a former comrade,
now a retired land-owner in the Government of T., and his wife, pale, blue-
eyed Natasha, his great friend. He recalled one passage of the letter, in
which his comrade said:—
“When our Invalid[D] arrives, Pupka (this was the name by which the
retired uhlan called his wife) rushes headlong into the vestibule, seizes the
paper, and runs with it to the seat in the arbor, in the drawing-room (in
which, if you remember, you and I passed such delightful winter evenings
when the regiment was stationed in our town), and reads your heroic deeds
with such ardor as it is impossible for you to imagine. She often speaks of
you. ‘There is Mikhaïloff,’ she says, ‘he's such a love of a man. I am ready
to kiss him when I see him. He fights on the bastions, and he will surely
receive the Cross of St. George, and he will be talked about in the
newspapers ...’ and so on, and so on ... so that I am really beginning to be
jealous of you.”

In another place he writes: “The papers reach us frightfully late, and,
although there is plenty of news conveyed by word of mouth, not all of it
can be trusted. For instance, the young ladies with the music, acquaintances
of yours, were saying yesterday that Napoleon was already captured by our
Cossacks, and that he had been sent to Petersburg; but you will comprehend
how much I believe of this. Moreover, a traveller from Petersburg told us
(he has been sent on special business by the minister, is a very agreeable
person, and, now that there is no one in town, he is more of a resource to us
than you can well imagine ...) well, he declares it to be a fact that our troops
have taken Eupatoria, so that the French have no communication whatever
with Balaklava, and that in this engagement two hundred of ours were
killed, but that the French lost fifteen thousand. My wife was in such
raptures over this that she caroused all night, and she declares that her
instinct tells her that you certainly took part in that affair, and that you
distinguished yourself.”
In spite of these words, and of the expressions which I have purposely
put in italics, and the whole tone of the letter, Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff
recalled, with inexpressibly sad delight, his pale friend in the provinces, and
how she had sat with him in the arbor in the evening, and talked about
sentiment, and he thought of his good comrade, the uhlan, and of how the
latter had grown angry and had lost the game when they had played cards
for kopek stakes in his study, and how the wife had laughed at them ... he
recalled the friendship of these two people for himself (perhaps it seemed to
him to lie chiefly on the side of his pale feminine friend); all these faces
with their surroundings flitted before his mind's eye, in a wonderfully
sweet, cheerfully rosy light, and, smiling at his reminiscences, he placed his
hand on the pocket which contained the letter so dear to him.
From reminiscences Captain Mikhaïloff involuntarily proceeded to
dreams and hopes. “And what will be the joy and amazement of Natasha,”
he thought, as he paced along the narrow lane, “... when she suddenly reads
in the Invalid a description of how I was the first to climb upon the cannon,
and that I have received the George! I shall certainly be promoted to a full
captaincy, by virtue of seniority. Then it is quite possible that I may get the
grade of major in the line, this very year, because many of our brothers have
already been killed, and many more will be in this campaign. And after that
there will be more affairs on hand, and a regiment will be entrusted to me,

since I am an experienced man ... lieutenant-colonel ... the Order of St.
Anna on my neck ... colonel!...” and he was already a general, granting an
interview to Natasha, the widow of his comrade, who, according to his
dreams, would have died by that time, when the sounds of the music on the
boulevard penetrated more distinctly to his ears, the crowds of people
caught his eye, and he found himself on the boulevard, a staff-captain of
infantry as before.

III.

He went, first of all, to the pavilion, near which were standing the
musicians, for whom other soldiers of the same regiment were holding the
notes, in the absence of stands, and about whom a ring of cadets, nurses,
and children had formed, intent rather on seeing than on hearing. Around
the pavilion stood, sat, or walked sailors, adjutants, and officers in white
gloves. Along the grand avenue of the boulevard paced officers of every
sort, and women of every description, rarely in bonnets, mostly with
kerchiefs on their heads (some had neither bonnets nor kerchiefs), but no
one was old, and it was worthy of note that all were gay young creatures.
Beyond, in the shady and fragrant alleys of white acacia, isolated groups
walked and sat.
No one was especially delighted to encounter Captain Mikhaïloff on
the boulevard, with the exception, possibly, of the captain of his regiment,
Obzhogoff, and Captain Suslikoff, who pressed his hand warmly; but the
former was dressed in camel's-hair trousers, no gloves, a threadbare coat,
and his face was very red and covered with perspiration, and the second
shouted so loudly and incoherently that it was mortifying to walk with
them, particularly in the presence of the officers in white gloves (with one
of whom, an adjutant, Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff exchanged bows; and he
might have bowed to another staff-officer, since he had met him twice at the
house of a mutual acquaintance). Besides, what pleasure was it to him to
promenade with these two gentlemen, Obzhogoff and Suslikoff, when he
had met them and shaken hands with them six times that day already? It
was not for this that he had come.
He wanted to approach the adjutant with whom he had exchanged
bows, and to enter into conversation with these officers, not for the sake of

letting Captains Obzhogoff and Suslikoff and Lieutenant Pashtetzky see
him talking with them, but simply because they were agreeable people, and,
what was more, they knew the news, and would have told it.
But why is Captain Mikhaïloff afraid, and why cannot he make up his
mind to approach them? “What if they should, all at once, refuse to
recognize me,” he thinks, “or, having bowed to me, what if they continue
their conversation among themselves, as though I did not exist, or walk
away from me entirely, and leave me standing there alone among the
aristocrats.” The word aristocrats (in the sense of a higher, select circle, in
any rank of life) has acquired for some time past with us, in Russia, a great
popularity, and has penetrated into every locality and into every class of
society whither vanity has penetrated—among merchants, among officials,
writers, and officers, to Saratoff, to Mamaduish, to Vinnitz, everywhere
where men exist.
To Captain Obzhogoff, Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff was an aristocrat. To
Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff, Adjutant Kalugin was an aristocrat, because he
was an adjutant, and was on such a footing with the other adjutants as to
call them “thou”! To Adjutant Kalugin, Count Nordoff was an aristocrat,
because he was an adjutant on the Emperor's staff.
Vanity! vanity! and vanity everywhere, even on the brink of the grave,
and among men ready to die for the highest convictions. Vanity! It must be
that it is a characteristic trait, and a peculiar malady of our century. Why
was nothing ever heard among the men of former days, of this passion, any
more than of the small-pox or the cholera? Why did Homer and
Shakespeare talk of love, of glory, of suffering, while the literature of our
age is nothing but an endless narrative of snobs and vanity?
The staff-captain walked twice in indecision past the group of his
aristocrats, and the third time he exerted an effort over himself and went up
to them. This group consisted of four officers: Adjutant Kalugin, an
acquaintance of Mikhaïloff's, Adjutant Prince Galtsin, who was something
of an aristocrat even for Kalugin himself, Colonel Neferdoff, one of the so-
called hundred and twenty-two men of the world (who had entered the
service for this campaign, from the retired list), and Captain of Cavalry
Praskukhin, also one of the hundred and twenty-two. Luckily for
Mikhaïloff, Kalugin was in a very fine humor (the general had just been

talking to him in a very confidential way, and Prince Galtsin, who had just
arrived from Petersburg, was stopping with him); he did not consider it
beneath his dignity to give his hand to Captain Mikhaïloff, which
Praskukhin, however, could not make up his mind to do, though he had met
Mikhaïloff very frequently on the bastion, had drunk the latter's wine and
vodka, and was even indebted to him twenty rubles and a half at preference.
As he did not yet know Prince Galtsin very well, he did not wish to convict
himself, in the latter's presence, of an acquaintance with a simple staff-
captain of infantry. He bowed slightly to the latter.
“Well, Captain,” said Kalugin, “when are we to go to the bastion
again? Do you remember how we met each other on the Schvartz redoubt—
it was hot there, hey?”
“Yes, it was hot,” said Mikhaïloff, recalling how he had, that night, as
he was making his way along the trenches to the bastion, encountered
Kalugin, who was walking along like a hero, valiantly clanking his sword.
“I ought to have gone there to-morrow, according to present arrangements;
but we have a sick man,” pursued Mikhaïloff, “one officer, as....”
He was about to relate how it was not his turn, but, as the commander
of the eighth company was ill, and the company had only a cornet left, he
had regarded it as his duty to offer himself in the place of Lieutenant
Nepshisetzky, and was, therefore, going to the bastion to-day. But Kalugin
did not hear him out.
“I have a feeling that something is going to happen within a few days,”
he said to Prince Galtsin.
“And won't there be something to-day?” asked Mikhaïloff, glancing
first at Kalugin, then at Galtsin.
No one made him any reply. Prince Galtsin merely frowned a little,
sent his eyes past the other's cap, and, after maintaining silence for a
moment, said:—
“That's a magnificent girl in the red kerchief. You don't know her, do
you, captain?”
“She lives near my quarters; she is the daughter of a sailor,” replied the
staff-captain.

“Come on; let's have a good look at her.”
And Prince Galtsin linked one arm in that of Kalugin, the other in that
of the staff-captain, being convinced in advance that he could afford the
latter no greater gratification, which was, in fact, quite true.
The staff-captain was superstitious, and considered it a great sin to
occupy himself with women before a battle; but on this occasion he feigned
to be a vicious man, which Prince Galtsin and Kalugin evidently did not
believe, and which greatly amazed the girl in the red kerchief, who had
more than once observed how the staff-captain blushed as he passed her
little window. Praskukhin walked behind, and kept touching Prince Galtsin
with his hand, and making various remarks in the French tongue; but as a
fourth person could not walk on the small path, he was obliged to walk
alone, and it was only on the second round that he took the arm of the brave
and well known naval officer Servyagin, who had stepped up and spoken to
him, and who was also desirous of joining the circle of aristocrats. And the
gallant and famous beau joyfully thrust his honest and muscular hand
through the elbow of a man who was known to all, and even well known to
Servyagin, as not too nice. When Praskukhin, explaining to the prince his
acquaintance with that sailor, whispered to him that the latter was well
known for his bravery, Prince Galtsin, having been on the fourth bastion on
the previous evening, having seen a bomb burst twenty paces from him,
considering himself no less a hero than this gentleman, and thinking that
many a reputation is acquired undeservedly, paid no particular attention to
Servyagin.
It was so agreeable to Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff to walk about in this
company that he forgot the dear letter from T——, and the gloomy
thoughts which had assailed him in connection with his impending
departure for the bastion. He remained with them until they began to talk
exclusively among themselves, avoiding his glances, thereby giving him to
understand that he might go, and finally deserted him entirely. But the staff-
captain was content, nevertheless, and as he passed Yunker[E] Baron Pesth,
who had been particularly haughty and self-conceited since the preceding
night, which was the first that he had spent in the bomb-proof of the fifth
bastion, and consequently considered himself a hero, he was not in the least
offended at the presumptuous expression with which the yunker
straightened himself up and doffed his hat before him.

IV.

When later the staff-captain crossed the threshold of his quarters, entirely
different thoughts entered his mind. He looked around his little chamber,
with its uneven earth floor, and saw the windows all awry, pasted over with
paper, his old bed, with a rug nailed over it, upon which was depicted a lady
on horseback, and over which hung two Tula pistols, the dirty couch of a
cadet who lived with him, and which was covered with a chintz coverlet; he
saw his Nikita, who, with untidy, tallowed hair, rose from the floor,
scratching his head; he saw his ancient cloak, his extra pair of boots, and a
little bundle, from which peeped a bit of cheese and the neck of a porter
bottle filled with vodka, which had been prepared for his use on the bastion,
and all at once he remembered that he was obliged to go with his company
that night to the fortifications.
“It is certainly foreordained that I am to be killed to-night,” thought the
captain.... “I feel it. And the principal point is that I need not have gone, but
that I offered myself. And the man who thrusts himself forward is always
killed. And what's the matter with that accursed Nepshisetsky? It is quite
possible that he is not sick at all; and they will kill another man for his sake,
they will infallibly kill him. However, if they don't kill me, I shall be
promoted probably. I saw how delighted the regimental commander was
when I asked him to allow me to go, if Lieutenant Nepshisetsky was ill. If I
don't turn out a major, then I shall certainly get the Vladímir cross. This is
the thirteenth time that I have been to the bastion. Ah, the thirteenth is an
unlucky number. They will surely kill me, I feel that I shall be killed; but
some one had to go, it was impossible for the lieutenant of the corps to go.
And, whatever happens, the honor of the regiment, the honor of the army,
depends on it. It was my duty to go ... yes, my sacred duty. But I have a
foreboding.”
The captain forgot that this was not the first time that a similar
foreboding had assailed him, in a greater or less degree, when it had been
necessary to go to the bastion, and he did not know that every one who sets
out on an affair experiences this foreboding with more or less force. Having
calmed himself with this conception of duty, which was especially and
strongly developed in the staff-captain, he seated himself at the table, and
began to write a farewell letter to his father. Ten minutes later, having

finished his letter, he rose from the table, his eyes wet with tears, and,
mentally reciting all the prayers he knew, he set about dressing. His coarse,
drunken servant indolently handed him his new coat (the old one, which the
captain generally wore when going to the bastion, was not mended).
“Why is not my coat mended? You never do anything but sleep, you
good-for-nothing!” said Mikhaïloff, angrily.
“Sleep!” grumbled Nikita. “You run like a dog all day long; perhaps
you stop—but you must not sleep, even then!”
“You are drunk again, I see.”
“I didn't get drunk on your money, so you needn't scold.”
“Hold your tongue, blockhead!” shouted the captain, who was ready to
strike the man. He had been absent-minded at first, but now he was, at last,
out of patience, and embittered by the rudeness of Nikita, whom he loved,
even spoiled, and who had lived with him for twelve years.
“Blockhead? Blockhead?” repeated the servant. “Why do you call me
a blockhead, sir? Is this a time for that sort of thing? It is not good to curse.”
Mikhaïloff recalled whither he was on the point of going, and felt
ashamed of himself.
“You are enough to put a saint out of patience, Nikita,” he said, in a
gentle voice. “Leave that letter to my father on the table, and don't touch it,”
he added, turning red.
“Yes, sir,” said Nikita, melting under the influence of the wine which
he had drunk, as he had said, “at his own expense,” and winking his eyes
with a visible desire to weep.
But when the captain said: “Good-by, Nikita,” on the porch, Nikita
suddenly broke down into repressed sobs, and ran to kiss his master's
hand.... “Farewell, master!” he exclaimed, sobbing. The old sailor's wife,
who was standing on the porch, could not, in her capacity of a woman,
refrain from joining in this touching scene, so she began to wipe her eyes
with her dirty sleeve, and to say something about even gentlemen having
their trials to bear, and that she, poor creature, had been left a widow. And
she related for the hundredth time to drunken Nikita the story of her woes;
how her husband had been killed in the first bombardment, and how her

little house had been utterly ruined (the one in which she was now living
did not belong to her), and so on. When his master had departed, Nikita
lighted his pipe, requested the daughter of their landlord to go for some
vodka, and very soon ceased to weep, but, on the contrary, got into a quarrel
with the old woman about some small bucket, which, he declared, she had
broken.
“But perhaps I shall only be wounded,” meditated the captain, as he
marched through the twilight to the bastion with his company. “But where?
How? Here or here?” he thought, indicating his belly and his breast.... “If it
should be here (he thought of the upper portion of his leg), it might run
round. Well, but if it were here, and by a splinter, that would finish me.”
The captain reached the fortifications safely through the trenches, set
his men to work, with the assistance of an officer of sappers, in the
darkness, which was complete, and seated himself in a pit behind the
breastworks. There was not much firing; only once in a while the lightning
flashed from our batteries, then from his, and the brilliant fuse of a bomb
traced an arc of flame against the dark, starry heavens. But all the bombs
fell far in the rear and to the right of the rifle-pits in which the captain sat.
He drank his vodka, ate his cheese, lit his cigarette, and, after saying his
prayers, he tried to get a little sleep.

V.

Prince Galtsin, Lieutenant-Colonel Neferdoff, and Praskukhin, whom no
one had invited, to whom no one spoke, but who never left them, all went to
drink tea with Adjutant Kalugin.
“Well, you did not finish telling me about Vaska Mendel,” said
Kalugin, as he took off his cloak, seated himself by the window in a soft
lounging-chair, and unbuttoned the collar of his fresh, stiffly starched
cambric shirt: “How did he come to marry?”
“That's a joke, my dear fellow! There was a time, I assure you, when
nothing else was talked of in Petersburg,” said Prince Galtsin, with a laugh,
as he sprang up from the piano, and seated himself on the window beside
Kalugin. “It is simply ludicrous, and I know all the details of the affair.”

And he began to relate—in a merry, and skilful manner—a love story,
which we will omit, because it possesses no interest for us. But it is worthy
of note that not only Prince Galtsin, but all the gentlemen who had placed
themselves here, one on the window-sill, another with his legs coiled up
under him, a third at the piano, seemed totally different persons from what
they were when on the boulevard; there was nothing of that absurd
arrogance and haughtiness which they and their kind exhibit in public to the
infantry officers; here they were among their own set and natural, especially
Kalugin and Prince Galtsin, and were like very good, amiable, and merry
children. The conversation turned on their companions in the service in
Petersburg, and on their acquaintances.
“What of Maslovsky?”
“Which? the uhlan of the body-guard or of the horse-guard?”
“I know both of them. The one in the horse-guards was with me when
he was a little boy, and had only just left school. What is the elder one? a
captain of cavalry?”
“Oh, yes! long ago.”
“And is he still going about with his gypsy maid?”
“No, he has deserted her ...” and so forth, and so forth, in the same
strain.
Then Prince Galtsin seated himself at the piano, and sang a gypsy song
in magnificent style. Praskukhin began to sing second, although no one had
asked him, and he did it so well that they requested him to accompany the
prince again, which he gladly consented to do.
The servant came in with the tea, cream, and cracknels on a silver
salver.
“Serve the prince,” said Kalugin.
“Really, it is strange to think,” said Galtsin, taking a glass, and walking
to the window, “that we are in a beleaguered city; tea with cream, and such
quarters as I should be only too happy to get in Petersburg.”
“Yes, if it were not for that,” said the old lieutenant-colonel, who was
dissatisfied with everything, “this constant waiting for something would be

simply unendurable ... and to see how men are killed, killed every day,—
and there is no end to it, and under such circumstances it would not be
comfortable to live in the mud.”
“And how about our infantry officers?” said Kalugin. “They live in the
bastions with the soldiers in the casemates and eat beet soup with the
soldiers—how about them?”
“How about them? They don't change their linen for ten days at a time,
and they are heroes—wonderful men.”
At this moment an officer of infantry entered the room.
“I ... I was ordered ... may I present myself to the gen ... to His
Excellency from General N.?” he inquired, bowing with an air of
embarrassment.
Kalugin rose, but, without returning the officer's salute, he asked him,
with insulting courtesy and strained official smile, whether they[F] would
not wait awhile; and, without inviting him to be seated or paying any
further attention to him, he turned to Prince Galtsin and began to speak to
him in French, so that the unhappy officer, who remained standing in the
middle of the room, absolutely did not know what to do with himself.
“It is on very important business, sir,” said the officer, after a
momentary pause.
“Ah! very well, then,” said Kalugin, putting on his cloak, and
accompanying him to the door.
“Eh bien, messieurs, I think there will be hot work to-night,” said
Kalugin in French, on his return from the general's.
“Hey? What? A sortie?” They all began to question him.
“I don't know yet—you will see for yourselves,” replied Kalugin, with
a mysterious smile.
“And my commander is on the bastion—of course, I shall have to go,”
said Praskukhin, buckling on his sword.
But no one answered him: he must know for himself whether he had to
go or not.

Praskukhin and Neferdoff went off, in order to betake themselves to
their posts. “Farewell, gentlemen!” “Au revoir, gentlemen! We shall meet
again to-night!” shouted Kalugin from the window when Praskukhin and
Neferdoff trotted down the street, bending over the bows of their Cossack
saddles. The trampling of their Cossack horses soon died away in the dusky
street.
“No, tell me, is something really going to take place to-night?” said
Galtsin, in French, as he leaned with Kalugin on the window-sill, and gazed
at the bombs which were flying over the bastions.
“I can tell you, you see ... you have been on the bastions, of course?”
(Galtsin made a sign of assent, although he had been only once to the fourth
bastion.) “Well, there was a trench opposite our lunette”, and Kalugin, who
was not a specialist, although he considered his judgment on military affairs
particularly accurate, began to explain the position of our troops and of the
enemy's works and the plan of the proposed affair, mixing up the technical
terms of fortifications a good deal in the process.
“But they are beginning to hammer away at our casemates. Oho! was
that ours or his? there, it has burst,” they said, as they leaned on the
window-sill, gazing at the fiery line of the bomb, which exploded in the air,
at the lightning of the discharges, at the dark blue sky, momentarily
illuminated, and at the white smoke of the powder, and listened to the
sounds of the firing, which grew louder and louder.
“What a charming sight? is it not?” said Kalugin, in French, directing
the attention of his guest to the really beautiful spectacle. “Do you know,
you cannot distinguish the stars from the bombs at times.”
“Yes, I was just thinking that that was a star; but it darted down ...
there, it has burst now. And that big star yonder, what is it called? It is just
exactly like a bomb.”
“Do you know, I have grown so used to these bombs that I am
convinced that a starlight night in Russia will always seem to me to be all
bombs; one gets so accustomed to them.”
“But am not I to go on this sortie?” inquired Galtsin, after a
momentary silence.

“Enough of that, brother! Don't think of such a thing! I won't let you
go!” replied Kalugin. “Your turn will come, brother!”
“Seriously? So you think that it is not necessary to go? Hey?...”
At that moment, a frightful crash of rifles was heard in the direction in
which these gentlemen were looking, above the roar of the cannon, and
thousands of small fires, flaring up incessantly, without intermission,
flashed along the entire line.
“That's it, when the real work has begun!” said Kalugin.—“That is the
sound of the rifles, and I cannot hear it in cold blood; it takes a sort of hold
on your soul, you know. And there is the hurrah!” he added, listening to the
prolonged and distant roar of hundreds of voices, “A-a-aa!” which reached
him from the bastion.
“What is this hurrah, theirs or ours?”
“I don't know; but it has come to a hand-to-hand fight, for the firing
has ceased.”
At that moment, an officer followed by his Cossack galloped up to the
porch, and slipped down from his horse.
“Where from?”
“From the bastion. The general is wanted.”
“Let us go. Well, now, what is it?”
“They have attacked the lodgements ... have taken them ... the French
have brought up their heavy reserves ... they have attacked our forces ...
there were only two battalions,” said the panting officer, who was the same
that had come in the evening, drawing his breath with difficulty, but
stepping to the door with perfect unconcern.
“Well, have they retreated?” inquired Galtsin.
“No,” answered the officer, angrily. “The battalion came up and beat
them back; but the commander of the regiment is killed, and many officers,
and I have been ordered to ask for re-enforcements....”
And with these words he and Kalugin went off to the general, whither
we will not follow them.

Five minutes later, Kalugin was mounted on the Cossack's horse (and
with that peculiar, quasi-Cossack seat, in which, as I have observed, all
adjutants find something especially captivating, for some reason or other),
and rode at a trot to the bastion, in order to give some orders, and to await
the news of the final result of the affair. And Prince Galtsin, under the
influence of that oppressive emotion which the signs of a battle near at hand
usually produce on a spectator who takes no part in it, went out into the
street, and began to pace up and down there without any object.

VI.

The soldiers were bearing the wounded on stretchers, and supporting them
by their arms. It was completely dark in the streets; now and then, a rare
light flashed in the hospital or from the spot where the officers were seated.
The same thunder of cannon and exchange of rifle-shots was borne from the
bastions, and the same fires flashed against the dark heavens. Now and
then, you could hear the trampling hoofs of an orderly's horse, the groan of
a wounded man, the footsteps and voices of the stretcher-bearers, or the
conversation of some of the frightened female inhabitants, who had come
out on their porches to view the cannonade.
Among the latter were our acquaintances Nikita, the old sailor's
widow, with whom he had already made his peace, and her ten-year-old
daughter. “Lord, Most Holy Mother of God!” whispered the old woman to
herself with a sigh, as she watched the bombs, which, like balls of fire,
sailed incessantly from one side to the other. “What a shame, what a shame!
I-i-hi-hi! It was not so in the first bombardment. See, there it has burst, the
cursed thing! right above our house in the suburbs.”
“No, it is farther off, in aunt Arinka's garden, that they all fall,” said
the little girl.
“And where, where is my master now!” said Nikita, with a drawl, for
he was still rather drunk. “Oh, how I love that master of mine!—I don't
know myself!—I love him so that if, which God forbid, they should kill him
in this sinful fight, then, if you will believe it, aunty, I don't know myself
what I might do to myself in that case—by Heavens, I don't! He is such a
master that words will not do him justice! Would I exchange him for one of
those who play cards? That is simply—whew! that's all there is to say!”

concluded Nikita, pointing at the lighted window of his master's room, in
which, as the staff-captain was absent, Yunker Zhvadchevsky had invited
his friends to a carouse, on the occasion of his receiving the cross: Sub-
Lieutenant Ugrovitch and Sub-Lieutenant Nepshisetsky, who was ill with a
cold in the head.
“Those little stars! They dart through the sky like stars, like stars!” said
the little girl, breaking the silence which succeeded Nikita's words. “There,
there! another has dropped! Why do they do it, mamma?”
“They will ruin our little cabin entirely,” said the old woman, sighing,
and not replying to her little daughter's question.
“And when uncle and I went there to-day, mamma,” continued the
little girl, in a shrill voice, “there was such a big cannon-ball lying in the
room, near the cupboard; it had broken through the wall and into the room
... and it is so big that you couldn't lift it.”
“Those who had husbands and money have gone away,” said the old
woman, “and now they have ruined my last little house. See, see how they
are firing, the wretches. Lord, Lord!”
“And as soon as we came out, a bomb flew at us, and burst and
scattered the earth about, and a piece of the shell came near striking uncle
and me.”

VII.

Prince Galtsin met more and more wounded men, in stretchers and on foot,
supporting each other, and talking loudly.
“When they rushed up, brothers,” said one tall soldier, who had two
guns on his shoulder, in a bass voice, “when they rushed up and shouted,
‘Allah, Allah!’[G] they pressed each other on. You kill one, and another
takes his place—you can do nothing. You never saw such numbers as there
were of them....”
But at this point in his story Galtsin interrupted him.
“You come from the bastion?”
“Just so, Your Honor!”

“Well, what has been going on there? Tell me.”
“Why, what has been going on? They attacked in force, Your Honor;
they climbed over the wall, and that's the end of it. They conquered
completely, Your Honor.”
“How conquered? You repulsed them, surely?”
“How could we repulse them, when he came up with his whole force?
They killed all our men, and there was no help given us.”
The soldier was mistaken, for the trenches were behind our forces; but
this is a peculiar thing, which any one may observe: a soldier who has been
wounded in an engagement always thinks that the day has been lost, and
that the encounter has been a frightfully bloody one.
“Then, what did they mean by telling me that you had repulsed them?”
said Galtsin, with irritation. “Perhaps the enemy was repulsed after you
left? Is it long since you came away?”
“I have this instant come from there, Your Honor,” replied the soldier.
“It is hardly possible. The trenches remained in his hands ... he won a
complete victory.”
“Well, and are you not ashamed to have surrendered the trenches? This
is horrible!” said Galtsin, angered by such indifference.
“What, when he was there in force?” growled the soldier.
“And, Your Honor,” said a soldier on a stretcher, who had just come up
with them, “how could we help surrendering, when nearly all of us had
been killed? If we had been in force, we would only have surrendered with
our lives. But what was there to do? I ran one man through, and then I was
struck.... O-oh! softly, brothers! steady, brothers! go more steadily!... O-
oh!” groaned the wounded man.
“There really seem to be a great many extra men coming this way,”
said Galtsin, again stopping the tall soldier with the two rifles. “Why are
you walking off? Hey there, halt!”
The soldier halted, and removed his cap with his left hand.
“Where are you going, and why?” he shouted at him sternly. “He ...”

But, approaching the soldier very closely at that moment, he perceived
that the latter's right arm was bandaged, and covered with blood far above
the elbow.
“I am wounded, Your Honor!”
“Wounded? how?”
“It must have been a bullet, here!” said the soldier, pointing at his arm,
“but I cannot tell yet. My head has been broken by something,” and,
bending over, he showed the hair upon the back of it all clotted together
with blood.
“And whose gun is that second one you have?”
“A choice French one, Your Honor! I captured it. And I should not
have come away if it had not been to accompany this soldier; he might fall
down,” he added, pointing at the soldier, who was walking a little in front,
leaning upon his gun, and dragging his left foot heavily after him.
Prince Galtsin all at once became frightfully ashamed of his unjust
suspicions. He felt that he was growing crimson, and turned away, without
questioning the wounded men further, and, without looking after them, he
went to the place where the injured men were being cared for.
Having forced his way with difficulty to the porch, through the
wounded men who had come on foot, and the stretcher-bearers, who were
entering with the wounded and emerging with the dead, Galtsin entered the
first room, glanced round, and involuntarily turned back, and immediately
ran into the street. It was too terrible.

VIII.

The vast, dark, lofty hall, lighted only by the four or five candles, which the
doctors were carrying about to inspect the wounded, was literally full. The
stretcher-bearers brought in the wounded, ranged them one beside another
on the floor, which was already so crowded that the unfortunate wretches
hustled each other and sprinkled each other with their blood, and then went
forth for more. The pools of blood which were visible on the unoccupied
places, the hot breaths of several hundred men, and the steam which rose
from those who were toiling with the stretchers produced a peculiar, thick,

heavy, offensive atmosphere, in which the candles burned dimly in the
different parts of the room. The dull murmur of diverse groans, sighs,
death-rattles, broken now and again by a shriek, was borne throughout the
apartment. Sisters of charity, with tranquil faces, and with an expression not
of empty, feminine, tearfully sickly compassion, but of active, practical
sympathy, flitted hither and thither among the blood-stained cloaks and
shirts, stepping over the wounded, with medicine, water, bandages, lint.
Doctors, with their sleeves rolled up, knelt beside the wounded, beside
whom the assistant surgeons held the candles, inspecting, feeling, and
probing the wounds, in spite of the terrible groans and entreaties of the
sufferers. One of the doctors was seated at a small table by the door, and, at
the moment when Galtsin entered the room, he was just writing down “No.
532.”
“Iván Bogaeff, common soldier, third company of the S—— regiment,
fractura femoris complicata!” called another from the extremity of the hall,
as he felt of the crushed leg.... “Turn him over.”
“O-oi, my fathers, good fathers!” shrieked the soldier, beseeching them
not to touch him.
“Perforatio capitis.”
“Semyon Neferdoff, lieutenant-colonel of the N—— regiment of
infantry. Have a little patience, colonel: you can only be attended to this
way; I will let you alone,” said a third, picking away at the head of the
unfortunate colonel, with some sort of a hook.
“Ai! stop! Oi! for God's sake, quick, quick, for the sake a-a-a-a!...”
“Perforatio pectoris ... Sevastyan Sereda, common soldier ... of what
regiment? however, you need not write that: moritur. Carry him away,” said
the doctor, abandoning the soldier, who was rolling his eyes, and already
emitting the death-rattle.
Forty stretcher-bearers stood at the door, awaiting the task of
transporting to the hospital the men who had been attended to, and the dead
to the chapel, and gazed at this picture in silence, only uttering a heavy sigh
from time to time....

IX.

On his way to the bastion, Kalugin met numerous wounded men; but,
knowing from experience that such a spectacle has a bad effect on the
spirits of a man on the verge of an action, he not only did not pause to
interrogate them, but, on the contrary, he tried not to pay any heed to them.
At the foot of the hill he encountered an orderly, who was galloping from
the bastion at full speed.
“Zobkin! Zobkin! Stop a minute!”
“Well, what is it?”
“Where are you from?”
“From the lodgements.”
“Well, how are things there! Hot?”
“Ah, frightfully!”
And the orderly galloped on.
In fact, although there was not much firing from the rifles, the
cannonade had begun with fresh vigor and greater heat than ever.
“Ah, that's bad!” thought Kalugin, experiencing a rather unpleasant
sensation, and there came to him also a presentiment, that is to say, a very
usual thought—the thought of death.
But Kalugin was an egotist and gifted with nerves of steel; in a word,
he was what is called brave. He did not yield to his first sensation, and
began to arouse his courage; he recalled to mind a certain adjutant of
Napoleon, who, after having given the command to advance, galloped up to
Napoleon, his head all covered with blood.
“You are wounded?” said Napoleon to him. “I beg your pardon, Sire, I
am dead,”—and the adjutant fell from his horse, and died on the spot.
This seemed very fine to him, and he fancied that he somewhat
resembled this adjutant; then he gave his horse a blow with the whip; and
assumed still more of that knowing Cossack bearing, glanced at his orderly,
who was galloping behind him, standing upright in his stirrups, and thus in
dashing style he reached the place where it was necessary to dismount. Here

he found four soldiers, who were smoking their pipes as they sat on the
stones.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted at them.
“We have been carrying a wounded man from the field, Your Honor,
and have sat down to rest,” one of them replied, concealing his pipe behind
his back, and pulling off his cap.
“Resting indeed! March off to your posts!”
And, in company with them, he walked up the hill through the
trenches, encountering wounded men at every step.
On attaining the crest of the hill, he turned to the left, and, after taking
a few steps, found himself quite alone. Splinters whizzed near him, and
struck in the trenches. Another bomb rose in front of him, and seemed to be
flying straight at him. All of a sudden he felt terrified; he ran off five paces
at full speed, and lay down on the ground. But when the bomb burst, and at
a distance from him, he grew dreadfully vexed at himself, and glanced
about as he rose, to see whether any one had perceived him fall, but there
was no one about.
When fear has once made its way into the mind, it does not speedily
give way to another feeling. He, who had boasted that he would never bend,
hastened along the trench with accelerated speed, and almost on his hands
and knees. “Ah! this is very bad!” he thought, as he stumbled. “I shall
certainly be killed!” And, conscious of how difficult it was for him to
breathe, and that the perspiration was breaking out all over his body, he was
amazed at himself, but he no longer strove to conquer his feelings.
All at once steps became audible in advance of him. He quickly
straightened himself up, raised his head, and, boldly clanking his sword,
began to proceed at a slower pace than before. He did not know himself.
When he joined the officer of sappers and the sailor who were coming to
meet him, and the former called to him, “Lie down,” pointing to the bright
speck of a bomb, which, growing ever brighter and brighter, swifter and
swifter, as it approached, crashed down in the vicinity of the trench, he only
bent his head a very little, involuntarily, under the influence of the terrified
shout, and went his way.

“Whew! what a brave man!” ejaculated the sailor, who had calmly
watched the exploding bomb, and, with practised glance, at once calculated
that its splinters could not strike inside the trench; “he did not even wish to
lie down.”
Only a few steps remained to be taken, across an open space, before
Kalugin would reach the casemate of the commander of the bastion, when
he was again attacked by dimness of vision and that stupid sensation of
fear; his heart began to beat more violently, the blood rushed to his head,
and he was obliged to exert an effort over himself in order to reach the
casemate.
“Why are you so out of breath?” inquired the general, when Kalugin
had communicated to him his orders.
“I have been walking very fast, Your Excellency!”
“Will you not take a glass of wine?”
Kalugin drank the wine, and lighted a cigarette. The engagement had
already come to an end; only the heavy cannonade continued, going on
from both sides.
In the casemate sat General N., the commander of the bastion, and six
other officers, among whom was Praskukhin, discussing various details of
the conflict. Seated in this comfortable apartment, with blue hangings, with
a sofa, a bed, a table, covered with papers, a wall clock, and the holy
pictures, before which burned a lamp, and gazing upon these signs of
habitation, and at the arshin-thick (twenty-eight inches) beams which
formed the ceiling, and listening to the shots, which were deadened by the
casemate, Kalugin positively could not understand how he had twice
permitted himself to be overcome with such unpardonable weakness. He
was angry with himself, and he longed for danger, in order that he might
subject himself to another trial.
“I am glad that you are here, captain,” he said to a naval officer, in the
cloak of staff-officer, with a large moustache and the cross of St. George,
who entered the casemate at that moment, and asked the general to give him
some men, that he might repair the two embrasures on his battery, which
had been demolished. “The general ordered me to inquire,” continued

Kalugin, when the commander of the battery ceased to address the general,
“whether your guns can fire grape-shot into the trenches.”
“Only one of my guns will do that,” replied the captain, gruffly.
“Let us go and see, all the same.”
The captain frowned, and grunted angrily:—
“I have already passed the whole night there, and I came here to try
and get a little rest,” said he. “Cannot you go alone? My assistant,
Lieutenant Kartz, is there, and he will show you everything.”
The captain had now been for six months in command of this, one of
the most dangerous of the batteries—and even when there were no
casemates he had lived, without relief, in the bastion and among the sailors,
from the beginning of the siege, and he bore a reputation among them for
bravery. Therefore his refusal particularly struck and amazed Kalugin.
“That's what reputation is worth!” he thought.
“Well, then, I will go alone, if you will permit it,” he said, in a
somewhat bantering tone to the captain, who, however, paid not the
slightest heed to his words.
But Kalugin did not reflect that he had passed, in all, at different times,
perhaps fifty hours on the bastion, while the captain had lived there for six
months. Kalugin was actuated, moreover, by vanity, by a desire to shine, by
the hope of reward, of reputation, and by the charm of risk; but the captain
had already gone through all that: he had been vain at first, he had displayed
valor, he had risked his life, he had hoped for fame and guerdon, and had
even obtained them, but these actuating motives had already lost their
power over him, and he regarded the matter in another light; he fulfilled his
duty with punctuality, but understanding quite well how small were the
chances for his life which were left him, after a six-months residence in the
bastion, he no longer risked these casualties, except in case of stern
necessity, so that the young lieutenant, who had entered the battery only a
week previous, and who was now showing it to Kalugin, in company with
whom he took turns in leaning out of the embrasure, or climbing out on the
ramparts, seemed ten times as brave as the captain.
After inspecting the battery, Kalugin returned to the casemate, and ran
against the general in the dark, as the latter was ascending to the watch-

tower with his staff-officers.
“Captain Praskukhin!” said the general, “please to go to the first
lodgement and say to the second battery of the M—— regiment, which is at
work there, that they are to abandon their work, to evacuate the place
without making any noise, and to join their regiment, which is standing at
the foot of the hill in reserve.... Do you understand? Lead them to their
regiment yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
And Praskukhin set out for the lodgement on a run.
The firing was growing more infrequent.

X.

“Is this the second battalion of the M—— regiment?” asked Praskukhin,
hastening up to the spot, and running against the soldiers who were carrying
earth in sacks.
“Exactly so.”
“Where is the commander?”
Mikhaïloff, supposing that the inquiry was for the commander of the
corps, crawled out of his pit, and, taking Praskukhin for the colonel, he
stepped up to him with his hand at his visor.
“The general has given orders ... that you ... are to be so good as to go
... as quickly as possible ... and, in particular, as quietly as possible, to the
rear ... not to the rear exactly, but to the reserve,” said Praskukhin, glancing
askance at the enemy's fires.
On recognizing Praskukhin and discovering the state of things,
Mikhaïloff dropped his hand, gave his orders, and the battalion started into
motion, gathered up their guns, put on their cloaks, and set out.
No one who has not experienced it can imagine the delight which a
man feels when he takes his departure, after a three-hours bombardment,
from such a dangerous post as the lodgements. Several times in the course
of those three hours, Mikhaïloff had, not without reason, considered his end
as inevitable, and had grown accustomed to the conviction that he should

infallibly be killed, and that he no longer belonged to this world. In spite of
this, however, he had great difficulty in keeping his feet from running away
with him when he issued from the lodgements at the head of his corps, in
company with Praskukhin.
“Au revoir,” said the major, the commander of another battalion, who
was to remain in the lodgements, and with whom he had shared his cheese,
as they sat in the pit behind the breastworks—“a pleasant journey to you.”
“Thanks, I hope you will have good luck after we have gone. The
firing seems to be holding up.”
But no sooner had he said this than the enemy, who must have
observed the movement in the lodgements, began to fire faster and faster.
Our guns began to reply to him, and again a heavy cannonade began. The
stars were gleaming high, but not brilliantly in the sky. The night was dark
—you could hardly see your hand before you; only the flashes of the
discharges and the explosions of the bombs illuminated objects for a
moment. The soldiers marched on rapidly, in silence, involuntarily treading
close on each other's heels; all that was audible through the incessant firing
was the measured sound of their footsteps on the dry road, the noise of their
bayonets as they came in contact, or the sigh and prayer of some young
soldier, “Lord, Lord! what is this!” Now and then the groan of a wounded
man arose, and the shout, “Stretcher!” (In the company commanded by
Mikhaïloff, twenty-six men were killed in one night, by the fire of the
artillery alone.) The lightning flashed against the distant horizon, the sentry
in the bastion shouted, “Can-non!” and the ball, shrieking over the heads of
the corps, tore up the earth, and sent the stones flying.
“Deuce take it! how slowly they march,” thought Praskukhin, glancing
back continually, as he walked beside Mikhaïloff. “Really, it will be better
for me to run on in front; I have already given the order.... But no, it might
be said later on that I was a coward. What will be will be; I will march with
them.”
“Now, why is he walking behind me?” thought Mikhaïloff, on his side.
“So far as I have observed, he always brings ill-luck. There it comes, flying
straight for us, apparently.”

After traversing several hundred paces, they encountered Kalugin, who
was going to the casemates, clanking his sword boldly as he walked, in
order to learn, by the general's command, how the work was progressing
there. But on meeting Mikhaïloff, it occurred to him that, instead of going
thither, under that terrible fire, which he was not ordered to do, he could
make minute inquiries of the officer who had been there. And, in fact,
Mikhaïloff furnished him with a detailed account of the work. After walking
a short distance with them, Kalugin turned into the trench, which led to the
casemate.
“Well, what news is there?” inquired the officer, who was seated alone
at the table, and eating his supper.
“Well, nothing, apparently, except that there will not be any further
conflict.”
“How so? On the contrary, the general has but just gone up to the top
of the works. A regiment has already arrived. Yes, there it is ... do you hear?
The firing has begun again. Don't go. Why should you?” added the officer,
perceiving the movement made by Kalugin.
“But I must be there without fail, in the present instance,” thought
Kalugin, “but I have already subjected myself to a good deal of danger to-
day; the firing is terrible.”
“Well, after all, I had better wait for him here,” he said.
In fact, the general returned, twenty minutes later, accompanied by the
officers, who had been with him; among their number was the yunker,
Baron Pesth, but Praskukhin was not with them. The lodgements had been
captured and occupied by our forces.
After receiving a full account of the engagement, Kalugin and Pesth
went out of the casemates.

XI.

“There is blood on your cloak; have you been having a hand-to-hand
fight?” Kalugin asked him.
“Oh, 'tis frightful! Just imagine....”

And Pesth began to relate how he had led his company, how the
commander of the company had been killed, how he had spitted a
Frenchman, and how, if it had not been for him, the battle would have been
lost.
The foundations for this tale, that the company commander had been
killed, and that Pesth had killed a Frenchman, were correct; but, in giving
the details, the yunker had invented facts and bragged.
He bragged involuntarily, because, during the whole engagement, he
had been in a kind of mist, and had forgotten himself to such a degree that
everything which happened seemed to him to have happened somewhere,
sometime, and with some one, and very naturally he had endeavored to
bring out these details in a light which should be favorable to himself. But
what had happened in reality was this:—
The battalion to which the yunker had been ordered for the sortie had
stood under fire for two hours, near a wall; then the commander of the
battalion said something, the company commanders made a move, the
battalion got under way, issued forth from behind the breastworks, marched
forward a hundred paces, and came to a halt in columns. Pesth had been
ordered to take his stand on the right flank of the second company.
The yunker stood his ground, absolutely without knowing where he
was, or why he was there, and, with restrained breath, and with a cold chill
running down his spine, he had stared stupidly straight ahead into the dark
beyond, in the expectation of something terrible. But, since there was no
firing in progress, he did not feel so much terrified as he did queer and
strange at finding himself outside the fortress, in the open plain. Again the
battalion commander ahead said something. Again the officers had
conversed in whispers, as they communicated the orders, and the black wall
of the first company suddenly disappeared. They had been 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 did not lie down was the
commander of the second company. His short form, with the naked sword
which he was flourishing, talking incessantly the while, moved about in
front of the troop.
“Children! my lads! ... look at me! Don't fire at them, but at them with
your bayonets, the dogs! When I shout, Hurrah! follow me close ... the chief

thing is to be as close together as possible ... let us show what 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. “His
name is Lisinkovsky.”
At that moment, a flame flashed up in front of the company. There was
a crash, which deafened them all, stones and splinters flew high in the air
(fifty seconds, at least, later a stone fell from above and crushed the foot of
a soldier). This was a bomb from an elevated platform, and the fact that it
fell in the midst of the company proved that the French had caught sight of
the column.
“So they are sending bombs!... Just let us get at you, and you shall feel
the bayonet of a three-sided Russian, curse you!” shouted the commander
of the company, in so loud a tone that the battalion commander was forced
to order him to be quiet and not to make so much noise.
After this the first company rose to their feet, and after it the second.
They were ordered to fix bayonets, and the battalion advanced. Pesth was
so terrified that he absolutely could not recollect whether they advanced far,
or whither, or who did what. He walked like a drunken man. But all at once
millions of fires flashed from all sides, there was a whistling and a crashing.
He shrieked and ran, because they were all shrieking and running. Then he
stumbled and fell upon something. It was the company commander (who
had been wounded at the head of his men and who, taking the yunker for a
Frenchman, seized him by 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 down again; 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 only did
Pesth discover that he had transfixed a Frenchman. The cold sweat started
out all over his body. He shook as though in a fever, and flung away the
gun. But this lasted only a moment; it immediately occurred to him that he

was a hero. He seized the gun again, and, shouting “Hurrah!” with the
crowd, he rushed away from the dead Frenchman. After having traversed
about twenty paces, he came to the trench. There he found 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
had luck 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 I shall
certainly get a golden sword. And I deserve it too.”
After reporting to the general all that was necessary, he went to his
room, in which sat Prince Galtsin, who had returned long before, and who
was reading a book, which he had found on Kalugin's table, while waiting
for him.
It was with a wonderful sense of enjoyment that Kalugin found himself
at home again, out of all danger, and, having donned his night-shirt and lain
down on the sofa, he began to relate to Galtsin the particulars of the affair,
communicating them, naturally, from a point of view which made it appear
that he, Kalugin, was a very active and valiant 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 doubt it, with the exception, perhaps, of the
deceased Captain Praskukhin, who, in spite of the fact that he had
considered it a piece of happiness to walk arm in arm with Kalugin, had
told a friend, only the evening 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 Mikhaïloff,
taken leave of Kalugin, and, betaking himself to a safer place, had begun to
recover his spirits somewhat, than he caught sight of a flash of lightning
behind him flaring up vividly, heard the shout of the sentinel, “Mortar!” and
the words of the soldiers who were marching behind, “It's flying straight at
the bastion!”
Mikhaïloff glanced round. The brilliant point of the bomb seemed to
be suspended directly over his head in such a position that it was absolutely
impossible to determine its course. But this lasted only for a second. The
bomb came faster and faster, nearer and nearer, the sparks of the fuse were
already visible, and the fateful whistle was audible, and it descended
straight in the middle of the battalion.
“Lie down!” shouted a voice.
Mikhaïloff and Praskukhin threw themselves on the ground.
Praskukhin shut his eyes, and only heard the bomb crash against the hard
earth somewhere in the vicinity. A second passed, which seemed an hour—
and the bomb had not burst. Praskukhin was alarmed; had he felt cowardly
for nothing? Perhaps the bomb had fallen at a distance, and it merely
seemed to him that the fuse was hissing near him. He opened his eyes, and
saw with satisfaction that Mikhaïloff was lying motionless on the earth, at
his very feet. But then his eyes encountered for a moment the glowing fuse
of the bomb, which was twisting about at a distance of an arshin from him.
A cold horror, which excluded every other thought and feeling, took
possession 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, Mikhaïloff or I? Or both together? And if it is I,
where will it strike? If in the head, then all is over with me; but if in the leg,
they will cut it off, and I shall ask them to be sure to give me chloroform,—
and I may still remain among the living. But perhaps no one but Mikhaïloff
will be killed; then I will relate how we were walking along together, and

how he was killed and his blood spurted over me. No, it is nearer to me ... it
will kill me!”
Then he remembered the twenty rubles which he owed Mikhaïloff, and
recalled another debt in Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long
ago; the gypsy air which he had sung the previous evening recurred to him.
The woman whom he loved appeared to his imagination in a cap with lilac
ribbons, a man who had insulted him five years before, and whom he had
not paid off for his insult, came to his mind, though inextricably interwoven
with these and with a thousand other memories the feeling of the moment—
the fear of death—never deserted him for an instant.
“But perhaps it will not burst,” he thought, and, with the decision of
despair, he tried to open his eyes. But at that instant, through the crevice of
his eyelids, his eyes were smitten with a red fire, and something struck him
in the centre of the breast, with a frightful crash; he ran off, he knew not
whither, stumbled over his sword, which had got between his legs, and fell
over on his side.
“Thank God! I am only bruised,” was his first thought, and he tried to
touch his breast with his hands; but his arms seemed fettered, and pincers
were pressing his head. The soldiers flitted before his eyes, and he
unconsciously counted them: “One, two, three soldiers; and there is an
officer, wrapped up in his cloak,” he thought. Then a flash passed before his
eyes, and he thought that something had been fired off; 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 afraid that they would crush him. He wanted to
shout to them that he was bruised; but his mouth was so dry that his tongue
clove to his palate and he was tortured by a frightful thirst.
He felt that he was wet about the breast: this sensation of dampness
reminded him of water, and he even wanted to drink this, whatever it was.
“I must have brought the blood when I fell,” he thought, and, beginning to
give way more and more to terror, lest the soldiers who passed should crush
him, he collected all his strength, and tried to cry: “Take me with you!” but,
instead of this, he groaned so terribly that it frightened him to hear himself.
Then more red fires flashed in his eyes—and it seemed to him as though the

soldiers were laying stones upon him; the fires danced more and more
rarely, the stones which they piled on him oppressed him more and more.
He exerted all his strength, in order to cast off the stones; he stretched
himself out, and no longer saw or heard or thought or felt anything. He had
been killed on the spot by a splinter of shell, in the middle of the breast.

XIII.

Mikhaïloff, on catching sight of the bomb, fell to the earth, and, like
Praskukhin, he went over in thought and feeling an incredible amount in
those two seconds while the bomb lay there unexploded. He prayed to God
mentally, and kept repeating: “Thy will be done!”
“And why did I enter the military service?” he thought at the same
time; “and why, again, did I exchange into the infantry, in order to take part
in this campaign? Would it not have been better for me to remain in the
regiment of Uhlans, in the town of T., and pass the time with my friend
Natasha? And now this is what has come of it.”
And he began to count, “One, two, three, four,” guessing that if it burst
on the even number, he would live, but if on the uneven number, then he
should be killed. “All is over; killed,” he thought, when the bomb burst (he
did not remember whether it was on the even or the uneven number), and he
felt a blow, and a sharp pain in his head. “Lord, forgive my sins,” he
murmured, folding his hands, then rose, and fell back senseless.
His first sensation, when he came to himself, was the blood which was
flowing from his nose, and a pain in his head, which had become much less
powerful. “It is my soul departing,” he thought.—“What will it be like
there? Lord, receive my soul in peace!—But one thing is strange,” he
thought,—“and that is that, though dying, I can still hear so plainly the
footsteps of the soldiers and the report of the shots.”
“Send some bearers ... hey there ... the captain is killed!” shouted a
voice over his head, which he recognized as the voice of his drummer
Ignatieff.
Some one grasped him by the shoulders. He made an effort to open his
eyes, and saw overhead the dark blue heavens, the clusters of stars, and two

bombs, which were flying over him, one after the other; he saw Ignatieff,
the soldiers with the stretcher, the walls of the trench, and all at once he
became convinced that he was not yet in the other world.
He had been slightly wounded in the head with a stone. His very first
impression was one resembling regret; he had so beautifully and so calmly
prepared himself for transit yonder that a return to reality, with its bombs,
its trenches, and its blood, produced a disagreeable effect on him; his
second impression was an involuntary joy that he was alive, and the third a
desire to leave the bastion as speedily as possible. The drummer bound up
his commander's head with his handkerchief, and, taking him under the
arm, he led him to the place where the bandaging was going on.
“But where am I going, and why?” thought the staff-captain, when he
recovered his senses a little.—“It is my duty to remain with my men,—the
more so as they will soon be out of range of the shots,” some voice
whispered to him.
“Never mind, brother,” he said, pulling his arm away from the obliging
drummer. “I will not go to the field-hospital; I will remain with my men.”
And he turned back.
“You had better have your wound properly attended to, Your Honor,”
said Ignatieff. “In the heat of the moment, it seems as if it were a trifle; but
it will be the worse if not attended to. There is some inflammation rising
there ... really, now, Your Honor.”
Mikhaïloff paused for a moment in indecision, and would have
followed Ignatieff's advice, in all probability, had he not called to mind how
many severely wounded men there must needs be at the field-hospital.
“Perhaps the doctor will smile at my scratch,” thought the staff-captain, and
he returned with decision to his men, wholly regardless of the drummer's
admonitions.
“And where is Officer Praskukhin, who was walking with me?” he
asked the lieutenant, who was leading the corps when they met.
“I don't know—killed, probably,” replied the lieutenant, reluctantly.
“How is it that you do not know whether he was killed or wounded?
He was walking with us. And why have you not carried him with you?”

“How could it be done, brother, when the place was so hot for us!”
“Ah, how could you do such a thing, Mikhaïl Ivánowitch!” said
Mikhaïloff, angrily.—“How could you abandon him if he was alive; and if
he was dead, you should still have brought away his body.”
“How could he be alive when, as I tell you, I went up to him and saw!”
returned the lieutenant.—“As you like, however! Only, his own men might
carry him off. Here, you dogs! the cannonade has abated,” he added....
Mikhaïloff sat down, and clasped his head, which the motion caused to
pain him terribly.
“Yes, I must go and get him, without fail; perhaps he is still alive,” said
Mikhaïloff. “It is our duty, Mikhaïl Ivánowitch!”
Mikhaïl Ivánowitch made no reply.
“He did not take him at the time, and now the soldiers must be sent
alone—and how can they be sent? their lives may be sacrificed in vain,
under that hot fire,” thought Mikhaïloff.
“Children! we must go back—and get the officer who was wounded
there in the ditch,” he said, in not too loud and commanding a tone, for he
felt how unpleasant it would be to the soldiers to obey his order,—and, in
fact, as he did not address any one in particular by name, no one set out to
fulfil it.
“It is quite possible that he is already dead, and it is not worth while to
subject the men to unnecessary danger; I alone am to blame for not having
seen to it. I will go myself and learn whether he is alive. It is my duty,” said
Mikhaïloff to himself.
“Mikhaïl Ivánowitch! Lead the men forward, and I will overtake you,”
he said, and, pulling up his cloak with one hand, and with the other
constantly touching the image of Saint Mitrofaniy, in which he cherished a
special faith, he set off on a run along the trench.
Having convinced himself that Praskukhin was dead, he dragged
himself back, panting, and supporting with his hand the loosened bandage
and his head, which began to pain him severely. The battalion had already
reached the foot of the hill, and a place almost out of range of shots, when

Mikhaïloff overtook it. I say, almost out of range, because some stray
bombs struck here and there.
“At all events, I must go to the hospital to-morrow, and put down my
name,” thought the staff-captain, as the medical student assisting the
doctors bound his wound.

XIV.

Hundreds of bodies, freshly smeared with blood, of men who two hours
previous had been filled with divers lofty or petty hopes and desires, now
lay, with stiffened limbs, in the dewy, flowery valley which separated the
bastion from the trench, and on the level floor of the chapel for the dead in
Sevastopol; hundreds of men crawled, twisted, and groaned, with curses
and prayers on their parched lips, some amid the corpses in the flower-
strewn vale, others on stretchers, on cots, and on the blood-stained floor of
the hospital.
And still, as on the days preceding, the dawn glowed, over Sapun
Mountain, the twinkling stars paled, the white mist spread abroad from the
dark sounding sea, the red glow illuminated the east, long crimson cloudlets
darted across the blue horizon; and still, as on days preceding, the powerful,
all-beautiful sun rose up, giving promise of joy, love, and happiness to all
who dwell in the world.

XV.

On the following day, the band of the chasseurs was playing again on the
boulevard, and again officers, cadets, soldiers, and young women were
promenading in festive guise about the pavilion and through the low-
hanging alleys of fragrant white acacias in bloom.
Kalugin, Prince Galtsin, and some colonel or other were walking arm-
in-arm near the pavilion, and discussing the engagement of the day before.
As always happens in such cases, the chief governing thread of the
conversation was not the engagement itself, but the part which those who
were narrating the story of the affair took in it.

Their faces and the sound of their voices had a serious, almost
melancholy expression, as though the loss of the preceding day had touched
and saddened them deeply; but, to tell the truth, as none of them had lost
any one very near to him, this expression of sorrow was an official
expression, which they merely felt it to be their duty to exhibit.
On the contrary, Kalugin and the colonel were ready to see an
engagement of the same sort every day, provided that they might receive a
gold sword or the rank of major-general—notwithstanding the fact that they
were very fine fellows.
I like it when any warrior who destroys millions to gratify his ambition
is called a monster. Only question any Lieutenant Petrushkoff, and Sub-
Lieutenant Antonoff, and so on, on their word of honor, and every one of
them is a petty Napoleon, a petty monster, and ready to bring on a battle on
the instant, to murder a hundred men, merely for the sake of receiving an
extra cross or an increase of a third in his pay.
“No, excuse me,” said the colonel; “it began first on the left flank. I
was there myself.”
“Possibly,” answered Kalugin. “I was farther on the right; I went there
twice. Once I was in search of the general, and the second time I went
merely to inspect the lodgements. It was a hot place.”
“Yes, of course, Kalugin knows,” said Prince Galtsin to the colonel.
“You know that V. told me to-day that you were a brave fellow....”
“But the losses, the losses were terrible,” said the colonel. “I lost four
hundred men from my regiment. It's a wonder that I escaped from there
alive.”
At this moment, the figure of Mikhaïloff, with his head bandaged,
appeared at the other extremity of the boulevard, coming to meet these
gentlemen.
“What, are you wounded, captain?” said Kalugin.
“Yes, slightly, with a stone,” replied Mikhaïloff.
“Has the flag been lowered yet?”[H] inquired Prince Galtsin, gazing
over the staff-captain's cap, and addressing himself to no one in particular.

“Non, pas encore,” answered Mikhaïloff, who wished to show that he
understood and spoke French.
“Is the truce still in force?” said Galtsin, addressing him courteously in
Russian, and thereby intimating—so it seemed to the captain—It must be
difficult for you to speak French, so why is it not better to talk in your own
tongue simply?... And with this the adjutants left him. The staff-captain
again felt lonely, as on the preceding evening, and, exchanging salutes with
various gentlemen,—some he did not care, and others he did not dare, to
join,—he seated himself near Kazarsky's monument, and lighted a cigarette.
Baron Pesth also had come to the boulevard. He had been telling how
he had gone over to arrange the truce, and had conversed with the French
officers, and he declared that one had said to him, “If daylight had held off
another half-hour, these ambushes would have been retaken;” and that he
had replied, “Sir, I refrain from saying no, in order not to give you the lie,”
and how well he had said it, and so on.
But, in reality, although he had had a hand in the truce, he had not
dared to say anything very particular there, although he had been very
desirous of talking with the French (for it is awfully jolly to talk with
Frenchmen). Yunker Baron Pesth had marched up and down the line for a
long time, incessantly inquiring of the Frenchmen who were near him: “To
what regiment do you belong?” They answered him; and that was the end of
it.
When he walked too far along the line, the French sentry, not
suspecting that this soldier understood French, cursed him. “He has come to
spy out our works, the cursed ...” said he; and, in consequence, Yunker
Baron Pesth, taking no further interest in the truce, went home, and thought
out on the way thither those French phrases, which he had now repeated.
Captain Zoboff was also on the boulevard, talking loudly, and Captain
Obzhogoff, in a very dishevelled condition, and an artillery captain, who
courted no one, and was happy in the love of the yunkers, and all the faces
which had been there on the day before, and all still actuated by the same
motives. No one was missing except Praskukhin, Neferdoff, and some
others, whom hardly any one remembered or thought of now, though their
bodies were not yet washed, laid out, and interred in the earth.

XVI.

White flags had been hung out from our bastion, and from the trenches of
the French, and in the blooming valley between them lay disfigured
corpses, shoeless, in garments of gray or blue, which laborers were engaged
in carrying off and heaping upon carts. The odor of the dead bodies filled
the air. Throngs of people had poured out of Sevastopol, and from the
French camp, to gaze upon this spectacle, and they pressed one after the
other with eager and benevolent curiosity.
Listen to what these people are saying.
Here, in a group of Russians and French who have come together, is a
young officer, who speaks French badly, but well enough to make himself
understood, examining a cartridge-box of the guards.
“And what is this bird here for?” says he.
“Because it is a cartridge-box belonging to a regiment of the guards,
Monsieur, and bears the Imperial eagle.”
“And do you belong to the guard?”
“Pardon, Monsieur, I belong to the sixth regiment of the line.”
“And this—bought where?” asks the officer, pointing to a cigar-holder
of yellow wood, in which the Frenchman was smoking his cigarette.
“At Balaklava, Monsieur. It is very plain, of palm-wood.”
“Pretty!” says the officer, guided in his conversation not so much by
his own wishes as by the words which he knows.
“If you will have the kindness to keep it as a souvenir of this meeting,
you will confer an obligation on me.”
And the polite Frenchman blows out the cigarette, and hands the
holder over to the officer with a little bow. The officer gives him his, and all
the members of the group, Frenchmen as well as Russians, appear very
much pleased and smile.
Then a bold infantryman, in a pink shirt, with his cloak thrown over
his shoulders, accompanied by two other soldiers, who, with their hands
behind their backs, were standing behind him, with merry, curious

countenances, stepped up to a Frenchman, and requested a light for his pipe.
The Frenchman brightened his fire, stirred up his short pipe, and shook out
a light for the Russian.
“Tobacco good!” said the soldier in the pink shirt; and the spectators
smile.
“Yes, good tobacco, Turkish tobacco,” says the Frenchman. “And your
tobacco—Russian?—good?”
“Russian, good,” says the soldier in the pink shirt: whereupon those
present shake with laughter. “The French not good—bon jour, Monsieur,”
says the soldier in the pink shirt, letting fly his entire charge of knowledge
in the language at once, as he laughs and taps the Frenchman on the
stomach. The French join in the laugh.
“They are not handsome, these beasts of Russians,” says a zouave,
amid the crowd of Frenchmen.
“What are they laughing about?” says another black-complexioned
one, with an Italian accent, approaching our men.
“Caftan good,” says the audacious soldier, staring at the zouave's
embroidered coat-skirts, and then there is another laugh.
“Don't leave your lines; back to your places, sacré nom!” shouts a
French corporal, and the soldiers disperse with evident reluctance.
In the meantime, our young cavalry officer is making the tour of the
French officers. The conversation turns on some Count Sazonoff, “with
whom I was very well acquainted, Monsieur,” says a French officer, with
one epaulet—“he is one of those real Russian counts, of whom we are so
fond.”
“There is a Sazonoff with whom I am acquainted,” said the cavalry
officer, “but he is not a count, so far as I know, at least; a little dark-
complexioned man, of about your age.”
“Exactly, Monsieur, that is the man. Oh, how I should like to see that
dear count! If you see him, pray, present my compliments to him—Captain
Latour,” says he, bowing.

“Isn't this a terrible business that we are conducting here? It was hot
work last night, wasn't it?” says the cavalry officer, wishing to continue the
conversation, and pointing to the dead bodies.
“Oh, frightful, Monsieur! But what brave fellows your soldiers are—
what brave fellows! It is a pleasure to fight with such valiant fellows.”
“It must be admitted that your men do not hang back, either,” says the
cavalry-man, with a bow, and the conviction that he is very amiable.
But enough of this.
Let us rather observe this lad of ten, clad in an ancient cap, his father's
probably, shoes worn on bare feet, and nankeen breeches, held up by a
single suspender, who had climbed over the wall at the very beginning of
the truce, and has been roaming about the ravine, staring with dull curiosity
at the French, and at the bodies which are lying on the earth, and plucking
the blue wild-flowers with which the valley is studded. On his way home
with a large bouquet, he held his nose because of the odor which the wind
wafted to him, and paused beside a pile of corpses, which had been carried
off the field, and stared long at one terrible headless body, which chanced to
be the nearest to him. After standing there for a long while, he stepped up
closer, and touched with his foot the stiffened arm of the corpse which
protruded. The arm swayed a little. He touched it again, and with more
vigor. The arm swung back, and then fell into place again. And at once the
boy uttered a shriek, hid his face in the flowers, and ran off to the
fortifications as fast as he could go.
Yes, white flags are hung out from the bastion and the trenches, the
flowery vale is filled with dead bodies, the splendid sun sinks into the blue
sea, and the blue sea undulates and glitters in the golden rays of the sun.
Thousands of people congregate, gaze, talk, and smile at each other. And
why do not Christian people, who profess the one great law of love and
self-sacrifice, when they behold what they have wrought, fall in repentance
upon their knees before Him who, when he gave them life, implanted in the
soul of each of them, together with a fear of death, a love of the good and
the beautiful, and, with tears of joy and happiness, embrace each other like
brothers? No! But it is a comfort to think that it was not we who began this
war, that we are only defending our own country, our father-land. The white

flags have been hauled in, and again the weapons of death and suffering are
shrieking; again innocent blood is shed, and groans and curses are audible.

I have now said all that I wish to say at this time. But a heavy thought
overmasters me. Perhaps it should not have been said; perhaps what I have
said belongs to one of those evil truths which, unconsciously concealed in
the soul of each man, should not be uttered, lest they become pernicious, as
a cask of wine should not be shaken, lest it be thereby spoiled.
Where is the expression of evil which should be avoided? Where is the
expression of good which should be imitated in this sketch? Who is the
villain, who the hero? All are good, and all are evil.
Neither Kalugin, with his brilliant bravery—bravoure de gentilhomme
—and his vanity, the instigator of all his deeds; nor Praskukhin, the empty-
headed, harmless man, though he fell in battle for the faith, the throne, and
his native land; nor Mikhaïloff, with his shyness; nor Pesth, a child with no
firm convictions or principles, can be either the heroes or the villains of the
tale.
The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul,
whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has always been, is,
and always will be most beautiful, is—the truth.

FOOTNOTES:
[C] Sea.
[D] Military Gazette.
[E] A civilian, without military training, attached to a regiment as a non-
commissioned officer, who may eventually become a regular officer.
[F] A polite way of referring to the general in the plural.
[G] A The Russian soldiers, who had been fighting the Turks, were so
accustomed to this cry of the enemy that they always declared that the French
also cried “Allah.”—Author's Note.
[H] This sentence is in French.

SEVASTOPOL IN AUGUST, 1855.

I.

At the end of August, along the rocky highway to Sevastopol, between
Duvanka and Bakhtchisaraï, through the thick, hot dust, at a foot-pace,
drove an officer's light cart, that peculiar telyezhka, not now to be met with,
which stands about half-way between a Jewish britchka, a Russian
travelling-carriage, and a basket-wagon. In the front of the wagon, holding
the reins, squatted the servant, clad in a nankeen coat and an officer's cap,
which had become quite limp; seated behind, on bundles and packages
covered with a military coat, was an infantry officer, in a summer cloak.
As well as could be judged from his sitting position, the officer was
not tall in stature, but extremely thick, and that not so much from shoulder
to shoulder as from chest to back; he was broad and thick, and his neck and
the base of the head were excessively developed and swollen. His waist, so
called, a receding strip in the centre of the body, did not exist in his case;
but neither had he any belly; on the contrary, he was rather thin than
otherwise, particularly in the face, which was overspread with an unhealthy
yellowish sunburn. His face would have been handsome had it not been for
a certain bloated appearance, and the soft, yet not elderly, heavy wrinkles
that flowed together and enlarged his features, imparting to the whole
countenance a general expression of coarseness and of lack of freshness.
His eyes were small, brown, extremely searching, even bold; his moustache
was very thick, but the ends were kept constantly short by his habit of
gnawing them; and his chin, and his cheek-bones in particular were covered
with a remarkably strong, thick, and black beard, of two days' growth.
The officer had been wounded on the 10th of May, by a splinter, in the
head, on which he still wore a bandage, and, having now felt perfectly well
for the last week, he had come out of the Simferopol Hospital, to rejoin his

regiment, which was stationed somewhere in the direction from which shots
could be heard; but whether that was in Sevastopol itself, on the northern
defences, or at Inkermann, he had not so far succeeded in ascertaining with
much accuracy from any one.
Shots were still audible near at hand, especially at intervals, when the
hills did not interfere, or when borne on the wind with great distinctness
and frequency, and apparently near at hand. Then it seemed as though some
explosion shook the air, and caused an involuntary shudder. Then, one after
the other, followed less resounding reports in quick succession, like a drum-
beat, interrupted at times by a startling roar. Then, everything mingled in a
sort of reverberating crash, resembling peals of thunder, when a thunder-
storm is in full force, and the rain has just begun to pour down in floods,
every one said; and it could be heard that the bombardment was progressing
frightfully.
The officer kept urging on his servant, and seemed desirous of arriving
as speedily as possible. They were met by a long train of the Russian-
peasant type, which had carried provisions into Sevastopol, and was now
returning with sick and wounded soldiers in gray coats, sailors in black
paletots, volunteers in red fezes, and bearded militia-men. The officer's light
cart had to halt in the thick, immovable cloud of dust raised by the carts,
and the officer, blinking and frowning with the dust that stuffed his eyes and
ears, gazed at the faces of the sick and wounded as they passed.
“Ah, there's a sick soldier from our company,” said the servant, turning
to his master, and pointing to the wagon which was just on a line with them,
full of wounded, at the moment.
On the cart, towards the front, a bearded Russian, in a lamb's-wool
cap, was seated sidewise, and, holding the stock of his whip under his
elbow, was tying on the lash. Behind him in the cart, about five soldiers, in
different positions, were shaking about. One, though pale and thin, with his
arm in a bandage, and his cloak thrown on over his shirt, was sitting up
bravely in the middle of the cart, and tried to touch his cap on seeing the
officer, but immediately afterwards (recollecting, probably, that he was
wounded) he pretended that he only wanted to scratch his head. Another,
beside him, was lying flat on the bottom of the wagon; all that was visible
was two hands, as they clung to the rails of the wagon, and his knees

uplifted limp as mops, as they swayed about in various directions. A third,
with a swollen face and a bandaged head, on which was placed his soldier's
cap, sat on one side, with his legs dangling over the wheel, and, with his
elbows resting on his knees, seemed immersed in thought. It was to him that
the passing officer addressed himself.
“Dolzhnikoff!” he exclaimed.
“Here,” replied the soldier, opening his eyes, and pulling off his cap, in
such a thick and halting bass voice that it seemed as though twenty soldiers
had uttered an exclamation at one and the same time.
“When were you wounded, brother?”
The leaden and swimming eyes of the soldier grew animated; he
evidently recognized his officer.
“I wish Your Honor health!” he began again, in the same abrupt bass as
before.
“Where is the regiment stationed now?”
“It was stationed in Sevastopol, but they were to move on Wednesday,
Your Honor.”
“Where to?”
“I don't know; it must have been to the Sivernaya, Your Honor! To-
day, Your Honor,” he added, in a drawling voice, as he put on his cap, “they
have begun to fire clear across, mostly with bombs, that even go as far as
the bay; they are fighting horribly to-day, so that—”
It was impossible to hear what the soldier said further; but it was
evident, from the expression of his countenance and from his attitude, that
he was uttering discouraging remarks, with the touch of malice of a man
who is suffering.
The travelling officer, Lieutenant Kozeltzoff, was no common officer.
He was not one of those that live so and so and do thus and so because
others live and do thus; he did whatever he pleased, and others did the
same, and were convinced that it was well. He was rather richly endowed
by nature with small gifts: he sang well, played on the guitar, talked very
cleverly, and wrote very easily, particularly official documents, in which he

had practised his hand in his capacity of adjutant of the battalion; but the
most noticeable trait in his character was his egotistical energy, which,
although chiefly founded on this array of petty talents, constituted in itself a
sharp and striking trait. His egotism was of the sort that is most frequently
found developed in masculine and especially in military circles, and which
had become a part of his life to such a degree that he understood no other
choice than to domineer or to humiliate himself; and his egotism was the
mainspring even of his private impulses; he liked to usurp the first place
over people with whom he put himself on a level.
“Well! it's absurd of me to listen to what a Moskva[I] chatters!”
muttered the lieutenant, experiencing a certain weight of apathy in his heart,
and a dimness of thought, which the sight of the transport full of wounded
and the words of the soldier, whose significance was emphasized and
confirmed by the sounds of the bombardment, had left with him. “That
Moskva is ridiculous! Drive on, Nikolaeff! go ahead! Are you asleep?” he
added, rather fretfully, to the servant, as he re-arranged the skirts of his coat.
The reins were tightened, Nikolaeff clacked his lips, and the wagon
moved on at a trot.
“We will only halt a minute for food, and will proceed at once, this
very day,” said the officer.

II.

As he entered the street of the ruined remains of the stone wall, forming the
Tatar houses of Duvanka, Lieutenant Kozeltzoff was stopped by a transport
of bombs and grape-shot, which were on their way to Sevastopol, and had
accumulated on the road. Two infantry soldiers were seated in the dust, on
the stones of a ruined garden-wall by the roadside, devouring a watermelon
and bread.
“Have you come far, fellow-countryman?” said one of them, as he
chewed his bread, to the soldier, with a small knapsack on his back, who
had halted near them.
“I have come from my government to join my regiment,” replied the
soldier, turning his eyes away from the watermelon, and readjusting the
sack on his back. “There we were, two weeks ago, at work on the hay, a

whole troop of us; but now they have drafted all of us, and we don't know
where our regiment is at the present time. They say that our men went on
the Korabelnaya last week. Have you heard anything, gentlemen?”
“It's stationed in the town, brother,” said the second, an old soldier of
the reserves, digging away with his clasp-knife at the white, unripe melon.
“We have just come from there, this afternoon. It's terrible, my brother!”
“How so, gentlemen?”
“Don't you hear how they are firing all around to-day, so that there is
not a whole spot anywhere? It is impossible to say how many of our
brethren have been killed.” And the speaker waved his hand and adjusted
his cap.
The passing soldier shook his head thoughtfully, gave a clack with his
tongue, then pulled his pipe from his boot-leg, and, without filling it, stirred
up the half-burned tobacco, lit a bit of tinder from the soldier who was
smoking, and raised his cap.
“There is no one like God, gentlemen! Good-bye,” said he, and, with a
shake of the sack on his back, he went his way.
“Hey, there! you'd better wait,” said the man who was digging out the
watermelon, with an air of conviction.
“It makes no difference!” muttered the traveller, threading his way
among the wheels of the assembled transports.

III.

The posting-station was full of people when Kozeltzoff drove up to it. The
first person whom he encountered, on the porch itself, was a thin and very
young man, the superintendent, who continued his altercation with two
officers, who had followed him out.
“It's not three days only, but ten that you will have to wait. Even
generals wait, my good sirs!” said the superintendent, with a desire to
administer a prick to the travellers; “and I am not going to harness up for
you.”

“Then don't give anybody horses, if there are none! But why furnish
them to some lackey or other with baggage?” shouted the elder of the two
officers, with a glass of tea in his hand, and plainly avoiding the use of
pronouns,[J] but giving it to be understood that he might very easily address
the superintendent as “thou.”
“Judge for yourself, now, Mr. Superintendent,” said the younger
officer, with some hesitation. “We don't want to go for our own pleasure.
We must certainly be needed, since we have been called for. And I certainly
shall report to the general. But this, of course,—you know that you are not
paying proper respect to the military profession.”
“You are always spoiling things,” the elder man interrupted, with
vexation. “You only hinder me; you must know how to talk to them. Here,
now, he has lost his respect. Horses this very instant, I say!”
“I should be glad to give them to you, bátiushka,[K] but where am I to
get them?”
After a brief silence, the superintendent began to grow irritated, and to
talk, flourishing his hands the while.
“I understand, bátiushka. And I know all about it myself. But what are
you going to do? Only give me”—here a ray of hope gleamed across the
faces of the officers—“only give me a chance to live until the end of the
month, and you won't see me here any longer. I'd rather go on the
Malakhoff tower, by Heavens! than stay here. Let them do what they please
about it! There's not a single sound team in the station this day, and the
horses haven't seen a wisp of hay these three days.” And the superintendent
disappeared behind the gate.
Kozeltzoff entered the room in company with the officers.
“Well,” said the elder officer, quite calmly, to the younger one,
although but a second before he had appeared to be greatly irritated, “we
have been travelling these three weeks, and we will wait a little longer.
There's no harm done. We shall get there at last.”
The dirty, smoky apartment was so filled with officers and trunks that
it was with difficulty that Kozeltzoff found a place near the window, where

he seated himself; he began to roll himself a cigarette, as he glanced at the
faces and lent an ear to the conversations.
To the right of the door, near a crippled and greasy table, upon which
stood two samovárs, whose copper had turned green in spots, here and
there, and where sugar was portioned out in various papers, sat the principal
group. A young officer, without moustache, in a new, short, wadded
summer coat, was pouring water into the teapot.
Four such young officers were there, in different corners of the room.
One of them had placed a cloak under his head, and was fast asleep on the
sofa. Another, standing by the table, was cutting up some roast mutton for
an officer without an arm, who was seated at the table.
Two officers, one in an adjutant's cloak, the other in an infantry cloak,
a thin one however, and with a satchel strapped over his shoulder, were
sitting near the oven bench, and it was evident, from the very way in which
they stared at the rest, and from the manner in which the one with the
satchel smoked his cigar, that they were not line officers on duty at the
front, and that they were delighted at it.
Not that there was any scorn apparent in their manner, but there was a
certain self-satisfied tranquillity, founded partly on money and partly on
their close intimacy with generals, a certain consciousness of superiority
which even extended to a desire to hide it.
A thick-lipped young doctor and an officer of artillery, with a German
cast of countenance, were seated almost on the feet of the young officer
who was sleeping on the sofa, and counting over their money.
There were four officers' servants, some dozing and others busy with
the trunks and packages near the door.
Among all these faces, Kozeltzoff did not find a single familiar one;
but he began to listen with curiosity to the conversation. The young officers,
who, as he decided from their looks alone, had but just come out of the
military academy, pleased him, and, what was the principal point, they
reminded him that his brother had also come from the academy, and should
have joined recently one of the batteries of Sevastopol.
But the officer with the satchel, whose face he had seen before
somewhere, seemed bold and repulsive to him. He even left the window,

and, going to the stove-bench, seated himself on it, with the thought that he
would put the fellow down if he took it into his head to say anything. In
general, purely as a brave “line” officer, he did not like “the staff,” such as
he had recognized these two officers to be at the first glance.

IV.

“But this is dreadfully annoying,” said one of the young officers, “to be so
near, and yet not be able to get there. Perhaps there will be an action this
very day, and we shall not be there.”
In the sharp voice and the mottled freshness of the color that swept
across the youthful face of this officer as he spoke there was apparent the
sweet young timidity of the man who is constantly afraid lest his every
word shall not turn out exactly right.
The one-armed officer glanced at him with a smile.
“You will get there soon enough, I assure you,” he said.
The young officer looked with respect at the haggard face of the
armless officer, so unexpectedly illuminated by a smile, held his peace for a
while, and busied himself once more with his tea. In fact, the one-armed
officer's face, his attitude, and, most of all, the empty sleeve of his coat,
expressed much of that tranquil indifference that may be explained in this
way—that he looked upon every conversation and every occurrence as
though saying, “That is all very fine; I know all about that, and I can do a
little of that myself, if I only choose.”
“What is our decision to be?” said the young officer again to his
companion in the short coat. “Shall we pass the night here, or shall we
proceed with our own horses?”
His comrade declined to proceed.
“Just imagine, captain,” said the one who was pouring the tea, turning
to the one-armed man, and picking up the knife that the latter had dropped,
“they told us that horses were frightfully dear in Sevastopol, so we bought a
horse in partnership at Simferopol.”
“They made you pay pretty high for it, I fancy.”

“Really, I do not know, captain; we paid ninety rubles for it and the
team. Is that very dear?” he added, turning to all the company, and to
Kozeltzoff, who was staring at him.
“It was not dear, if the horse is young,” said Kozeltzoff.
“Really! but they told us that it was dear. Only, she limps a little, but
that will pass off. They told us that she was very strong.”
“What academy are you from?” asked Kozeltzoff, who wished to
inquire for his brother.
“We are just from the academy of the nobility; there are six of us, and
we are on our way to Sevastopol at our own desire,” said the talkative
young officer. “But we do not know where our battery is; some say that it is
in Sevastopol, others that it is at Odessa.”
“Was it not possible to find out at Simferopol?” asked Kozeltzoff.
“They do not know there. Just imagine, one of our comrades went to
the headquarters there, and they were impertinent to him. You can imagine
how disagreeable that was! Would you like to have me make you a
cigarette,” he said at that moment to the one-armed officer, who was just
pulling out his cigarette-machine.
He waited on the latter with a sort of servile enthusiasm.
“And are you from Sevastopol also?” he went on. “Oh, good Heavens,
how wonderful that is! How much we did think of you, and of all our
heroes, in Petersburg,” he said, turning to Kozeltzoff with respect and good-
natured flattery.
“And now, perhaps, you may have to go back?” inquired the
lieutenant.
“That is just what we are afraid of. You can imagine that, after having
bought the horse, and provided ourselves with all the necessaries,—a
coffee-pot with a spirit-lamp, and other indispensable trifles,—we have no
money left,” he said, in a low voice, as he glanced at his companions; “so
that, if we do have to go back, we don't know what is to be done.”
“Have you received no money for travelling expenses?” inquired
Kozeltzoff.

“No,” replied he, in a whisper; “they only promised to give it to us
here.”
“Have you the certificate?”
“I know that—the principal thing—is the certificate; but a senator in
Moscow,—he's my uncle,—when I was at his house, said that they would
give it to us here; otherwise, he would have given me some himself. So they
will give it to us here?”
“Most certainly they will.”
“I too think that they will,” he said, in a tone which showed that, after
having made the same identical inquiry in thirty posting-stations, and
having everywhere received different answers, he no longer believed any
one implicitly.

V.

“Who ordered beet-soup?” called out the slatternly mistress of the house, a
fat woman of forty, as she entered the room with a bowl of soup.
The conversation ceased at once, and all who were in the room fixed
their eyes on the woman.
“Ah, it was Kozeltzoff who ordered it,” said the young officer. “He
must be waked. Get up for your dinner,” he said, approaching the sleeper on
the sofa, and jogging his elbow.
A young lad of seventeen, with merry black eyes and red cheeks,
sprang energetically from the sofa, and stood in the middle of the room,
rubbing his eyes.
“Ah, excuse me, please,” he said to the doctor, whom he had touched
in rising.
Lieutenant Kozeltzoff recognized his brother immediately, and stepped
up to him.
“Don't you know me?” he said with a smile.
“A-a-a-!” exclaimed the younger brother; “this is astonishing!” And he
began to kiss his brother.

They kissed twice, but stopped at the third repetition as though the
thought had occurred to both of them:—
“Why is it necessary to do it exactly three times?”
“Well, how delighted I am!” said the elder, looking at his brother. “Let
us go out on the porch; we can have a talk.”
“Come, come, I don't want any soup. You eat it, Federsohn!” he said to
his comrade.
“But you wanted something to eat.”
“I don't want anything.”
When they emerged on the porch, the younger kept asking his brother:
“Well, how are you; tell me all about it.” And still he kept on saying how
glad he was to see him, but he told nothing himself.
When five minutes had elapsed, during which time they had succeeded
in becoming somewhat silent, the elder brother inquired why the younger
had not gone into the guards, as they had all expected him to do.
He wanted to get to Sevastopol as speedily as possible, he said; for if
things turned out favorably there, he could get advancement more rapidly
there than in the guards. There it takes ten years to reach the grade of
colonel, while here Todleben had risen in two years from lieutenant-colonel
to general. Well, and if one did get killed, there was nothing to be done.
“What a fellow you are!” said his brother, smiling.
“But the principal thing, do you know, brother,” said the younger,
smiling and blushing as though he were preparing to say something very
disgraceful, “all this is nonsense, and the principal reason why I asked it
was that I was ashamed to live in Petersburg when men are dying for their
country here. Yes, and I wanted to be with you,” he added, with still greater
shamefacedness.
“How absurd you are!” said the elder brother, pulling out his cigarette-
machine, and not even glancing at him. “It's a pity, though, that we can't be
together.”
“Now, honestly, is it so terrible in the bastions?” inquired the younger
man, abruptly.

“It is terrible at first, but you get used to it afterwards. It's nothing. You
will see for yourself.”
“And tell me still another thing. What do you think?—will Sevastopol
be taken? I think that it will not.”
“God knows!”
“But one thing is annoying. Just imagine what bad luck! A whole
bundle was stolen from us on the road, and it had my shako in it, so that
now I am in a dreadful predicament; and I don't know how I am to show
myself.”
The younger Kozeltzoff, Vladímir, greatly resembled his brother
Mikháïl, but he resembled him as a budding rose-bush resembles one that is
out of flower. His hair was chestnut also, but it was thick and lay in curls on
his temples. On the soft white back of his neck there was a blond lock; a
sign of good luck, so the nurses say. The full-blooded crimson of youth did
not stand fixed on the soft, white hue of his face, but flashed up and
betrayed all the movements of his mind. He had the same eyes as his
brother, but they were more widely opened, and clearer, which appeared the
more peculiar because they were veiled frequently by a slight moisture. A
golden down was sprouting on his cheeks, and over his ruddy lips, which
were often folded into a shy smile, displaying teeth of dazzling whiteness.
He was a well formed and broad-shouldered fellow, in unbuttoned coat,
from beneath which was visible a red shirt with collar turned back. As he
stood before his brother, leaning his elbows on the railing of the porch, with
cigarette in hand and innocent joy in his face and gesture, he was so
agreeable and comely a youth that any one would have gazed at him with
delight. He was extremely pleased with his brother, he looked at him with
respect and pride, fancying him his hero; but in some ways, so far as
judgments on worldly culture, ability to talk French, behavior in the society
of distinguished people, dancing, and so on, he was somewhat ashamed of
him, looked down on him, and even cherished a hope of improving him if
such a thing were possible.
All his impressions, so far, were from Petersburg, at the house of a
lady who was fond of good-looking young fellows, and who had had him
spend his holidays with her, and from Moscow, at the house of a senator,
where he had once danced at a great ball.

VI.

Having nearly talked their fill and having arrived at the feeling that you
frequently experience, that there is little in common between you, though
you love one another, the brothers were silent for a few moments.
“Pick up your things and we will set out at once,” said the elder.
The younger suddenly blushed, stammered, and became confused.
“Are we to go straight to Sevastopol?” he inquired, after a momentary
pause.
“Why, yes. You can't have many things, and we can manage to carry
them, I think.”
“Very good! we will start at once,” said the younger, with a sigh, and
he went inside.
But he paused in the vestibule without opening the door, dropped his
head gloomily, and began to reflect.
“Straight to Sevastopol, on the instant, within range of the bombs—
frightful! It's no matter, however; it must have come sometime. Now, at all
events, with my brother—”
The fact was that it was only now, at the thought that, once seated in
the cart, he should enter Sevastopol without dismounting from it, and that
no chance occurrence could any longer detain him, that the danger which he
was seeking clearly presented itself to him, and he was troubled at the very
thought of its nearness. He managed to control himself in some way, and
entered the room; but a quarter of an hour elapsed, and still he had not
rejoined his brother, so that the latter opened the door at last, in order to call
him. The younger Kozeltzoff, in the attitude of a naughty school-boy, was
saying something to an officer named P. When his brother opened the door,
he became utterly confused.
“Immediately. I'll come out in a minute!” he cried, waving his hand at
his brother. “Wait for me there, please.”
A moment later he emerged, in fact, and approached his brother, with a
deep sigh.

“Just imagine! I cannot go with you, brother,” he said.
“What? What nonsense is this?”
“I will tell you the whole truth, Misha! Not one of us has any money,
and we are all in debt to that staff-captain whom you saw there. It is
horribly mortifying!”
The elder brother frowned, and did not break the silence for a long
while.
“Do you owe much?” he asked, glancing askance at his brother.
“A great deal—no, not a great deal; but I am dreadfully ashamed of it.
He has paid for me for three stages, and all his sugar is gone, so that I do
not know—yes, and we played at preference. I am a little in his debt there,
too.”
“This is bad, Volodya! Now, what would you have done if you had not
met me?” said the elder, sternly, without looking at his brother.
“Why, I was thinking, brother, that I should get that travelling-money
at Sevastopol, and that I would give him that. Surely, that can be done; and
it will be better for me to go with him to-morrow.”
The elder brother pulled out his purse, and, with fingers that shook a
little, he took out two ten-ruble notes and one for three rubles.
“This is all the money I have,” said he. “How much do you owe?”
Kozeltzoff did not speak the exact truth when he said that this was all
the money he had. He had, besides, four gold pieces sewn into his cuff, in
case of an emergency; but he had taken a vow not to touch them.
It appeared that Kozeltzoff, what with preference and sugar, was in
debt to the amount of eight rubles only. The elder brother gave him this
sum, merely remarking that one should not play preference when one had
no money.
“What did you play for?”
The younger brother answered not a word. His brother's question
seemed to him to cast a reflection on his honor. Vexation at himself, a
shame at his conduct, which could give rise to such a suspicion, and the

insult from his brother, of whom he was so fond, produced upon his
sensitive nature so deeply painful an impression that he made no reply.
Sensible that he was not in a condition to restrain the sobs which rose in his
throat, he took the money without glancing at it, and went back to his
comrades.

VII.

Nikolaeff, who had fortified himself at Duvanka, with two jugs of vodka,
purchased from a soldier who was peddling it on the bridge, gave the reins a
jerk, and the team jolted away over the stony road, shaded here and there,
which led along the Belbek to Sevastopol; but the brothers, whose legs
jostled each other, maintained a stubborn silence, although they were
thinking of each other every instant.
“Why did he insult me?” thought the younger. “Could he not have held
his tongue about that? It is exactly as though he thought that I was a thief;
yes, and now he is angry, apparently, so that we have quarrelled for good.
And how splendid it would have been for us to be together in Sevastopol.
Two brothers, on friendly terms, both fighting the foe! one of them, the
elder, though not very cultivated, yet a valiant warrior, and the other
younger, but a brave fellow too. In a week's time I would have showed them
that I am not such a youngster after all! I shall cease to blush, there will be
manliness in my countenance, and, though my moustache is not very large
now, it would grow to a good size by that time;” and he felt of the down
which was making its appearance round the edges of his mouth. “Perhaps
we shall arrive to-day, and get directly into the conflict, my brother and I.
He must be obstinate and very brave, one of those who do not say much,
but act better than others. I should like to know,” he continued, “whether he
is squeezing me against the side of the wagon on purpose or not. He
probably is conscious that I feel awkward, and he is pretending not to notice
me. We shall arrive to-day,” he went on with his argument, pressing close to
the side of the wagon, and fearing to move lest his brother should observe
that he was uncomfortable, “and, all at once, we shall go straight to the
bastion. We shall both go together, I with my equipments, and my brother
with his company. All of a sudden, the French throw themselves on us. I
begin to fire, and fire on them. I kill a terrible number; but they still

continue to run straight at me. Now, it is impossible to fire any longer, and
there is no hope for me; all at once my brother rushes out in front with his
sword, and I grasp my gun, and we rush on with the soldiers. The French
throw themselves on my brother. I hasten up; I kill one Frenchman, then
another, and I save my brother. I am wounded in one arm; I seize my gun
with the other, and continue my flight; but my brother is slain by my side by
the bullets. I halt for a moment, and gaze at him so sorrowfully; then I
straighten myself up and shout: ‘Follow me! We will avenge him! I loved
my brother more than any one in the world,’ I shall say, ‘and I have lost
him. Let us avenge him! Let us annihilate the foe, or let us all die together
there!’ All shout, and fling themselves after me. Then the whole French
army makes a sortie, including even Pelissier himself. We all fight; but, at
last, I am wounded a second, a third time, and I fall, nearly dead. Then, all
rush up to me. Gortchakoff comes up and asks what I would like. I say that
I want nothing—except that I may be laid beside my brother; that I wish to
die with him. They carry me, and lay me down by the side of my brother's
bloody corpse. Then I shall raise myself, and merely say: ‘Yes, you did not
understand how to value two men who really loved their father-land; now
they have both fallen,—and may God forgive you!’ and I shall die.
Who knows in what measure these dreams will be realized?
“Have you ever been in a hand to hand fight?” he suddenly inquired of
his brother, quite forgetting that he had not meant to speak to him.
“No, not once,” answered the elder. “Our regiment has lost two
thousand men, all on the works; and I, also, was wounded there. War is not
carried on in the least as you fancy, Volodya.”
The word “Volodya” touched the younger brother. He wanted to come
to an explanation with his brother, who had not the least idea that he had
offended Volodya.
“You are not angry with me, Misha?” he said, after a momentary
silence.
“What about?”
“No, because—because we had such a—nothing.”
“Not in the least,” replied the elder, turning to him, and slapping him
on the leg.

“Then forgive me, Misha, if I have wounded you.”
And the younger brother turned aside, in order to hide the tears that
suddenly started to his eyes.

VIII.

“Is this Sevastopol already?” asked the younger brother, as they ascended
the hill.
And before them appeared the bay, with its masts of ships, its shipping,
and the sea, with the hostile fleet, in the distance; the white batteries on the
shore, the barracks, the aqueducts, the docks and the buildings of the town,
and the white and lilac clouds of smoke rising incessantly over the yellow
hills, which surrounded the town and stood out against the blue sky, in the
rosy rays of the sun, which was reflected by the waves, and sinking towards
the horizon of the shadowy sea.
Volodya, without a shudder, gazed upon this terrible place of which he
had thought so much; on the contrary, he did so with an æsthetic enjoyment,
and a heroic sense of self-satisfaction at the idea that here he was—he
would be there in another half-hour, that he would behold that really
charmingly original spectacle—and he stared with concentrated attention
from that moment until they arrived at the north fortification, at the
baggage-train of his brother's regiment, where they were to ascertain with
certainty the situations of the regiment and the battery.
The officer in charge of the train lived near the so-called new town
(huts built of boards by the sailors' families), in a tent, connecting with a
tolerably large shed, constructed out of green oak-boughs, that were not yet
entirely withered.
The brothers found the officer seated before a greasy table, upon which
stood a glass of cold tea, a tray with vodka, crumbs of dry sturgeon roe, and
bread, clad only in a shirt of a dirty yellow hue, and engaged in counting a
huge pile of bank-bills on a large abacus.
But before describing the personality of the officer, and his
conversation, it is indispensable that we should inspect with more attention
the interior of his shed, and become a little acquainted, at least, with his

mode of life and his occupations. The new shed, like those built for generals
and regimental commanders, was large, closely wattled, and comfortably
arranged, with little tables and benches, made of turf. The sides and roof
were hung with three rugs, to keep the leaves from showering down, and,
though extremely ugly, they were new, and certainly costly.
Upon the iron bed, which stood beneath the principal rug, with a
young amazon depicted on it, lay a plush coverlet, of a brilliant crimson, a
torn and dirty pillow, and a raccoon cloak. On the table stood a mirror, in a
silver frame, a silver brush, frightfully dirty, a broken horn comb, full of
greasy hair, a silver candlestick, a bottle of liqueur, with a huge gold and
red label, a gold watch, with a portrait of Peter I., two gold pens, a small
box, containing pills of some sort, a crust of bread, and some old, castaway
cards, and there were bottles, both full and empty, under the bed.
This officer had charge of the commissariat of the regiment and the
fodder of the horses. With him lived his great friend, the commissioner who
had charge of the operations.
At the moment when the brothers entered, the latter was asleep in the
booth, and the commissary officer was making up his accounts of the
government money, in anticipation of the end of the month. The
commissary officer had a very comely and warlike exterior. His stature was
tall, his moustache huge, and he possessed a respectable amount of
plumpness. The only disagreeable points about him were a certain
perspiration and puffiness of the whole face, which almost concealed his
small gray eyes (as though he was filled up with porter), and an excessive
lack of cleanliness, from his thin, greasy hair to his big, bare feet, thrust into
some sort of ermine slippers.
“Money, money!” said Kozeltzoff number one, entering the shed, and
fixing his eyes, with involuntary greed, upon the pile of bank-notes. “You
might lend me half of that, Vasíly Mikhaïlitch!”
The commissary officer cringed at the sight of his visitors, and,
sweeping up his money, he bowed to them without rising.
“Oh, if it only belonged to me! It's government money, my dear fellow.
And who is this you have with you?” said he, thrusting the money into a
coffer which stood beside him, and staring at Volodya.

“This is my brother, who has just come from the military academy. We
have both come to learn from you where our regiment is stationed.”
“Sit down, gentlemen,” said the officer, rising, and going into the shed,
without paying any heed to his guests. “Won't you have something to drink?
Some porter, for instance?” said he.
“Don't put yourself out, Vasíly Mikhaïlitch.”
Volodya was impressed by the size of the commissary officer, by his
carelessness of manner, and by the respect with which his brother addressed
him.
“It must be that this is one of their very fine officers, whom every one
respects. Really, he is simple, but hospitable and brave,” he thought, seating
himself in a timid and modest manner on the sofa.
“Where is our regiment stationed, then?” called out his elder brother
into the board hut.
“What?”
He repeated his query.
“Zeifer has been here to-day. He told me that they had removed to the
fifth bastion.”
“Is that true?”
“If I say so, it must be true; but the deuce only knows anyway! He
would think nothing of telling a lie. Won't you have some porter?” said the
commissary officer, still from the tent.
“I will if you please,” said Kozeltzoff.
“And will you have a drink, Osip Ignatievitch?” went on the voice in
the tent, apparently addressing the sleeping commissioner. “You have slept
enough; it's five o'clock.”
“Why do you worry me? I am not asleep,” answered a shrill, languid
little voice.
“Come, get up! we find it stupid without you.”
And the commissary officer came out to his guests.

“Fetch some Simferopol porter!” he shouted.
A servant entered the booth, with a haughty expression of
countenance, as it seemed to Volodya, and, having jostled Volodya, he drew
forth the porter from beneath the bench.
The bottle of porter was soon emptied, and the conversation had
proceeded in the same style for rather a long time when the flap of the tent
flew open and out stepped a short, fresh-colored man, in a blue dressing-
gown with tassels, in a cap with a red rim and a cockade. At the moment of
his appearance, he was smoothing his small black moustache, and, with his
gaze fixed on the rugs, he replied to the greetings of the officer with a
barely perceptible movement of the shoulders.
“I will drink a small glassful too!” said he, seating himself by the table.
“What is this, have you come from Petersburg, young man?” he said,
turning courteously to Volodya.
“Yes, sir, I am on my way to Sevastopol.”
“Did you make the application yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What queer tastes you have, gentlemen! I do not understand it!”
continued the commissioner. “It strikes me that I should be ready just now
to travel on foot to Petersburg, if I could get away. By Heavens, I am tired
of this cursed life!”
“What is there about it that does not suit you?” said the elder
Kozeltzoff, turning to him. “You're the very last person to complain of life
here!”
The commissioner cast a look upon him, and then turned away.
“This danger, these privations, it is impossible to get anything here,”
he continued, addressing Volodya. “And why you should take such a freak,
gentlemen, I really cannot understand. If there were any advantages to be
derived from it, but there is nothing of the sort. It would be a nice thing,
now, wouldn't it, if you, at your age, were to be left a cripple for life!”
“Some need the money, and some serve for honor's sake!” said the
elder Kozeltzoff, in a tone of vexation, joining the discussion once more.

“What's the good of honor, when there's nothing to eat!” said the
commissioner with a scornful laugh, turning to the commissary, who also
laughed at this. “Give us something from ‘Lucia’; we will listen,” he said,
pointing to the music-box. “I love it.”
“Well, is that Vasíly Mikhaïlitch a fine man?” Volodya asked his
brother when they emerged, at dusk, from the booth, and pursued their way
to Sevastopol.
“Not at all; but such a niggard that it is a perfect terror! And I can't
bear the sight of that commissioner, and I shall give him a thrashing one of
these days.”

IX.

Volodya was not precisely out of sorts when, nearly at nightfall, they
reached the great bridge over the bay, but he felt a certain heaviness at his
heart. All that he had heard and seen was so little in consonance with the
impressions which had recently passed away; the huge, light examination
hall, with its polished floor, the kind and merry voices and laughter of his
comrades, the new uniform, his beloved tsar, whom he had been
accustomed to see for the last seven years, and who, when he took leave of
them, had called them his children, with tears in his eyes,—and everything
that he had seen so little resembled his very beautiful, rainbow-hued,
magnificent dreams.
“Well, here we are at last!” said the elder brother, when they arrived at
the Mikhaïlovsky battery, and dismounted from their cart. “If they let us
pass the bridge, we will go directly to the Nikolaevsky barracks. You stay
there until morning, and I will go to the regiment and find out where your
battery is stationed, and to-morrow I will come for you.”
“But why? It would be better if we both went together,” said Volodya;
“I will go to the bastion with you. It won't make any difference; I shall have
to get used to it. If you go, then I can too.”
“Better not go.”
“No, if you please; I do know, at least, that....”
“My advice is, not to go; but if you choose....”

The sky was clear and dark; the stars, and the fires of the bombs in
incessant movement and discharges, were gleaming brilliantly through the
gloom. The large white building of the battery, and the beginning of the
bridge stood out in the darkness. Literally, every second several discharges
of artillery and explosions, following each other in quick succession or
occurring simultaneously, shook the air with increasing thunder and
distinctness. Through this roar, and as though repeating it, the melancholy
dash of the waves was audible. A faint breeze was drawing in from the sea,
and the air was heavy with moisture. The brothers stepped upon the bridge.
A soldier struck his gun awkwardly against his arm, and shouted:—
“Who goes there?”
“A soldier.”
“The orders are not to let any one pass!”
“What of that! We have business! We must pass!”
“Ask the officer.”
The officer, who was drowsing as he sat on an anchor, rose up and
gave the order to let them pass.
“You can go that way, but not this. Where are you driving to, all in a
heap!” he cried to the transport wagons piled high with gabions, which had
clustered about the entrance.
As they descended to the first pontoon, the brothers encountered
soldiers who were coming thence, and talking loudly.
“If he has received his ammunition money, then he has squared his
accounts in full—that's what it is!”
“Eh, brothers!” said another voice, “when you get over on the
Severnaya you will see the world, by heavens! The air is entirely different.”
“You may say more!” said the first speaker. “A cursed shell flew in
there the other day, and it tore the legs off of two sailors, so that....”
The brothers traversed the first pontoon, while waiting for the wagon,
and halted on the second, which was already flooded with water in parts.
The breeze, which had seemed weak inland, was very powerful here, and
came in gusts; the bridge swayed to and fro, and the waves, beating noisily

against the beams, and tearing at the cables and anchors, flooded the planks.
At the right the gloomily hostile sea roared and darkled, as it lay separated
by an interminable level black line from the starry horizon, which was light
gray in its gleam; lights flashed afar on the enemy's fleet; on the left
towered the black masts of one of our vessels, and the waves could be heard
as they beat against her hull; a steamer was visible, as it moved noisily and
swiftly from the Severnaya.
The flash of a bomb, as it burst near it, illuminated for a moment the
lofty heaps of gabions on the deck, two men who were standing on it, and
the white foam and the spurts of greenish waves, as the steamer ploughed
through them. On the edge of the bridge, with his legs dangling in the
water, sat a man in his shirt-sleeves, who was repairing something
connected with the bridge. In front, over Sevastopol, floated the same fires,
and the terrible sounds grew louder and louder. A wave rolled in from the
sea, flowed over the right side of the bridge, and wet Volodya's feet; two
soldiers passed them, dragging their feet through the water. Something
suddenly burst with a crash and lighted up the bridge ahead of them, the
wagon driving over it, and a man on horseback. The splinters fell into the
waves with a hiss, and sent up the water in splashes.
“Ah, Mikhaïlo Semyónitch!” said the rider, stopping, reining in his
horse in front of the elder Kozeltzoff, “have you fully recovered already?”
“As you see. Whither is God taking you?”
“To the Severnaya, for cartridges; I am on my way to the adjutant of
the regiment ... we expect an assault to-morrow, at any hour.”
“And where is Martzoff?”
“He lost a leg yesterday; he was in the town, asleep in his room....
Perhaps you know it?”
“The regiment is in the fifth bastion, isn't it?”
“Yes; it has taken the place of the M—— regiment. Go to the field-
hospital; some of our men are there, and they will show you the way.”
“Well, and are my quarters on the Morskaya still intact?”
“Why, my good fellow, they were smashed to bits long ago by the
bombs. You will not recognize Sevastopol now; there's not a single woman

there now, nor any inns nor music; the last establishment took its departure
yesterday. It has become horribly dismal there now.... Farewell!”
And the officer rode on his way at a trot.
All at once, Volodya became terribly frightened; it seemed to him as
though a cannon-ball or a splinter of bomb would fly in their direction, and
strike him directly on the head. This damp darkness, all these sounds,
especially the angry splashing of the waves, seemed to be saying to him that
he ought not to go any farther, that nothing good awaited him yonder, that
he would never again set foot on the ground upon this side of the bay, that
he must turn about at once, and flee somewhere or other, as far as possible
from this terrible haunt of death. “But perhaps it is too late now, everything
is settled,” thought he, trembling partly at this thought and partly because
the water had soaked through his boots and wet his feet.
Volodya heaved a deep sigh, and went a little apart from his brother.
“Lord, will they kill me—me in particular? Lord, have mercy on me!”
said he, in a whisper, and he crossed himself.
“Come, Volodya, let us go on!” said the elder brother, when their little
cart had driven upon the bridge. “Did you see that bomb?”
On the bridge, the brothers met wagons filled with the wounded, with
gabions, and one loaded with furniture, which was driven by a woman. On
the further side no one detained them.
Clinging instinctively to the walls of the Nikolaevsky battery, the
brothers listened in silence to the noise of the bombs, exploding overhead,
and to the roar of the fragments, showering down from above, and came to
that spot in the battery where the image was. There they learned that the
fifth light battery, to which Volodya had been assigned, was stationed on the
Korabelnaya, and they decided that he should go, in spite of the danger, and
pass the night with the elder in the fifth bastion, and that he should from
there join his battery the next day. They turned into the corridor, stepping
over the legs of the sleeping soldiers, who were lying all along the walls of
the battery, and at last they arrived at the place where the wounded were
attended to.

X.

As they entered the first room, surrounded with cots on which lay the
wounded, and permeated with that frightful and disgusting hospital odor,
they met two Sisters of Mercy, who were coming to meet them.
One woman, of fifty, with black eyes, and a stern expression of
countenance, was carrying bandages and lint, and was giving strict orders to
a young fellow, an assistant surgeon, who was following her; the other, a
very pretty girl of twenty, with a pale and delicate little fair face, gazed in
an amiably helpless way from beneath her white cap, held her hands in the
pockets of her apron, as she walked beside the elder woman, and seemed to
be afraid to quit her side.
Kozeltzoff addressed to them the question whether they knew where
Martzoff was—the man whose leg had been torn off on the day before.
“He belonged to the P—— regiment, did he not?” inquired the elder.
“Is he a relative of yours?”
“No, a comrade.”
“Show them the way,” said she, in French, to the young sister. “Here,
this way,” and she approached a wounded man, in company with the
assistant.
“Come along; what are you staring at?” said Kozeltzoff to Volodya,
who, with uplifted eyebrows and somewhat suffering expression of
countenance, could not tear himself away, but continued to stare at the
wounded. “Come, let us go.”
Volodya went off with his brother, still continuing to gaze about him,
however, and repeating unconsciously:—
“Ah, my God! Ah, my God!”
“He has probably not been here long?” inquired the sister of
Kozeltzoff, pointing at Volodya, who, groaning and sighing, followed them
through the corridor.
“He has but just arrived.”
The pretty little sister glanced at Volodya, and suddenly burst out
crying. “My God! my God! when will there be an end to all this?” she said,
with the accents of despair. They entered the officer's hut. Martzoff was

lying on his back, with his muscular arms, bare to the elbow, thrown over
his head, and with the expression on his yellow face of a man who is
clenching his teeth in order to keep from shrieking with pain. His whole leg,
in its stocking, was thrust outside the coverlet, and it could be seen how he
was twitching his toes convulsively inside it.
“Well, how goes it, how do you feel?” asked the sister, raising his bald
head with her slender, delicate fingers, on one of which Volodya noticed a
gold ring, and arranging his pillow. “Here are some of your comrades come
to inquire after you.”
“Badly, of course,” he answered, angrily. “Let me alone! it's all
right,”—the toes in his stocking moved more rapidly than ever. “How do
you do? What is your name? Excuse me,” he said, turning to Kozeltzoff....
“Ah, yes, I beg your pardon! one forgets everything here,” he said, when
the latter had mentioned his name. “You and I lived together,” he added,
without the slightest expression of pleasure, glancing interrogatively at
Volodya.
“This is my brother, who has just arrived from Petersburg to-day.”
“Hm! Here I have finished my service,” he said, with a frown. “Ah,
how painful it is!... The best thing would be a speedy end.”
He drew up his leg, and covered his face with his hands, continuing to
move his toes with redoubled swiftness.
“You must leave him,” said the sister, in a whisper, while the tears
stood in her eyes; “he is in a very bad state.”
The brothers had already decided on the north side to go to the fifth
bastion; but, on emerging from the Nikolaevsky battery, they seemed to
have come to a tacit understanding not to subject themselves to unnecessary
danger, and, without discussing the subject, they determined to go their
ways separately.
“Only, how are you to find your way, Volodya?” said the elder.
“However, Nikolaeff will conduct you to the Korabelnaya, and I will go my
way alone, and will be with you to-morrow.”
Nothing more was said at this last leave-taking between the brothers.

XI.

The thunder of the cannon continued with the same power as before, but
Yekaterinskaya street, along which Volodya walked, followed by the
taciturn Nikolaeff, was quiet and deserted. All that he could see, through the
thick darkness, was the wide street with the white walls of large houses,
battered in many places, and the stone sidewalk beneath his feet; now and
then, he met soldiers and officers. As he passed along the left side of the
street, near the Admiralty building, he perceived, by the light of a bright fire
burning behind the wall, the acacias planted along the sidewalk, with green
guards beneath, and the wretchedly dusty leaves of these acacias.
He could plainly hear his own steps and those of Nikolaeff, who
followed him, breathing heavily. He thought of nothing; the pretty little
Sister of Mercy, Martzoff's leg with the toes twitching in its stocking, the
bombs, the darkness, and divers pictures of death floated hazily through his
mind. All his young and sensitive soul shrank together, and was borne down
by his consciousness of loneliness, and the indifference of every one to his
fate in the midst of danger.
“They will kill me, I shall be tortured, I shall suffer, and no one will
weep.” And all this, instead of the hero's life, filled with energy and
sympathy, of which he had cherished such glorious dreams. The bombs
burst and shrieked nearer and ever nearer. Nikolaeff sighed more frequently,
without breaking the silence. On crossing the bridge leading to the
Korabelnaya, he saw something fly screaming into the bay, not far from
him, which lighted up the lilac waves for an instant with a crimson glow,
then disappeared, and threw on high a cloud of foam.
“See there, it was not put out!” said Nikolaeff, hoarsely.
“Yes,” answered Volodya, involuntarily, and quite unexpectedly to
himself, in a thin, piping voice.
They encountered litters with wounded men, then more regimental
transports with gabions; they met a regiment on Korabelnaya street; men on
horseback passed them. One of them was an officer, with his Cossack. He
was riding at a trot, but, on catching sight of Volodya, he reined in his horse
near him, looked into his face, turned and rode on, giving the horse a blow
of his whip.

“Alone, alone; it is nothing to any one whether I am in existence or
not,” thought the lad, and he felt seriously inclined to cry.
After ascending the hill, past a high white wall, he entered a street of
small ruined houses, incessantly illuminated by bombs. A drunken and
dishevelled woman, who was coming out of a small door in company with a
sailor, ran against him.
“If he were only a fine man,” she grumbled,—“Pardon, Your Honor
the officer.”
The poor boy's heart sank lower and lower, and more and more
frequently flashed the lightnings against the dark horizon, and the bombs
screamed and burst about him with ever increasing frequency. Nikolaeff
sighed, and all at once he began to speak, in what seemed to Volodya a
frightened and constrained tone.
“What haste we made to get here from home. It was nothing but
travelling. A pretty place to be in a hurry to get to!”
“What was to be done, if my brother was well again,” replied Volodya,
in hope that he might banish by conversation the frightful feeling that was
taking possession of him.
“Well, what sort of health is it when he is thoroughly ill! Those who
are really well had better stay in the hospital at such a time. A vast deal of
joy there is about it, isn't there? You will have a leg or an arm torn off, and
that's all you will get! It's not far removed from a downright sin! And here
in the town it's not at all like the bastion, and that is a perfect terror. You go
and you say your prayers the whole way. Eh, you beast, there you go
whizzing past!” he added, directing his attention to the sound of a splinter
of shell whizzing by near them. “Now, here,” Nikolaeff went on, “I was
ordered to show Your Honor the way. My business, of course, is to do as I
am bid; but the cart has been abandoned to some wretch of a soldier, and
the bundle is undone.... Go on and on; but if any of the property disappears,
Nikolaeff will have to answer for it.”
After proceeding a few steps further, they came out on a square.
Nikolaeff held his peace, but sighed.
“Yonder is your artillery, Your Honor!” he suddenly said. “Ask the
sentinel; he will show you.”

And Volodya, after he had taken a few steps more, ceased to hear the
sound of Nikolaeff's sighs behind him.
All at once, he felt himself entirely and finally alone. This
consciousness of solitude in danger, before death, as it seemed to him, lay
upon his heart like a terribly cold and heavy stone.
He halted in the middle of the square, glanced about him, to see
whether he could catch sight of any one, grasped his head, and uttered his
thought aloud in his terror:—“Lord! Can it be that I am a coward, a vile,
disgusting, worthless coward ... can it be that I so lately dreamed of dying
with joy for my father-land, my tsar? No, I am a wretched, an unfortunate, a
wretched being!” And Volodya, with a genuine sentiment of despair and
disenchantment with himself, inquired of the sentinel for the house of the
commander of the battery, and set out in the direction indicated.

XII.

The residence of the commander of the battery, which the sentinel had
pointed out to him, was a small, two-story house, with an entrance on the
court-yard. In one of the windows, which was pasted over with paper,
burned the feeble flame of a candle. A servant was seated on the porch,
smoking his pipe; he went in and announced Volodya to the commander,
and then led him in. In the room, between the two windows, and beneath a
shattered mirror, stood a table, heaped with official documents, several
chairs, and an iron bedstead, with a clean pallet, and a small bed-rug by its
side.
Near the door stood a handsome man, with a large moustache,—a
sergeant, in sabre and cloak, on the latter of which hung a cross and a
Hungarian medal. Back and forth in the middle of the room paced a short
staff-officer of forty, with swollen cheeks bound up, and dressed in a thin
old coat.
“I have the honor to report myself, Cornet Kozeltzoff, 2d, ordered to
the fifth light battery,” said Volodya, uttering the phrase which he had
learned by heart, as he entered the room.
The commander of the battery responded dryly to his greeting, and,
without offering his hand, invited him to be seated.

Volodya dropped timidly into a chair, beside the writing-table, and
began to twist in his fingers the scissors, which his hand happened to light
upon. The commander of the battery put his hands behind his back, and,
dropping his head, pursued his walk up and down the room, in silence, only
bestowing an occasional glance at the hands which were twirling the
scissors, with the aspect of a man who is trying to recall something.
The battery commander was a rather stout man, with a large bald spot
on the crown of his head, a thick moustache, which drooped straight down
and concealed his mouth, and pleasant brown eyes. His hands were
handsome, clean, and plump; his feet small and well turned, and they
stepped out in a confident and rather dandified manner, proving that the
commander was not a timid man.
“Yes,” he said, coming to a halt in front of the sergeant; “a measure
must be added to the grain to-morrow, or our horses will be getting thin.
What do you think?”
“Of course, it is possible to do so, Your Excellency! Oats are very
cheap just now,” replied the sergeant, twitching his fingers, which he held
on the seams of his trousers, but which evidently liked to assist in the
conversation. “Our forage-master, Franchuk, sent me a note yesterday, from
the transports, Your Excellency, saying that we should certainly be obliged
to purchase oats; they say they are cheap. Therefore, what are your orders?”
“To buy, of course. He has money, surely.” And the commander
resumed his tramp through the room. “And where are your things?” he
suddenly inquired of Volodya, as he paused in front of him.
Poor Volodya was so overwhelmed by the thought that he was a
coward, that he espied scorn for himself in every glance, in every word, as
though they had been addressed to a pitiable poltroon. It seemed to him that
the commander of the battery had already divined his secret, and was
making sport of him. He answered, with embarrassment, that his effects
were on the Grafskaya, and that his brother had promised to send them to
him on the morrow.
But the lieutenant-colonel was not listening to him, and, turning to the
sergeant, he inquired:—
“Where are we to put the ensign?”

“The ensign, sir?” said the sergeant, throwing Volodya into still greater
confusion by the fleeting glance which he cast upon him, and which seemed
to say, “What sort of an ensign is this?”—“He can be quartered downstairs,
with the staff-captain, Your Excellency,” he continued, after a little
reflection. “The captain is at the bastion just now, and his cot is empty.”
“Will that not suit you, temporarily?” said the commander.—“I think
you must be tired, but we will lodge you better to-morrow.”
Volodya rose and bowed.
“Will you not have some tea?” said the commander, when he had
already reached the door. “The samovár can be brought in.”
Volodya saluted and left the room. The lieutenant-colonel's servant
conducted him downstairs, and led him into a bare, dirty chamber, in which
various sorts of rubbish were lying about, and where there was an iron
bedstead without either sheets or coverlet. A man in a red shirt was fast
asleep on the bed, covered over with a thick cloak.
Volodya took him for a soldier.
“Piotr Nikolaïtch!” said the servant, touching the sleeper on the
shoulder. “The ensign is to sleep here.... This is our yunker,” he added,
turning to the ensign.
“Ah, don't trouble him, please,” said Volodya; but the yunker, a tall,
stout, young man, with a handsome but very stupid face, rose from the bed,
threw on his cloak, and, evidently not having had a good sleep, left the
room.
“No matter; I'll lie down in the yard,” he growled out.

XIII.

Left alone with his own thoughts, Volodya's first sensation was a fear of the
incoherent, forlorn state of his own soul. He wanted to go to sleep, and
forget all his surroundings, and himself most of all. He extinguished the
candle, lay down on the bed, and, taking off his coat, he wrapped his head
up in it, in order to relieve his terror of the darkness, with which he had
been afflicted since his childhood. But all at once the thought occurred to

him that a bomb might come and crush in the roof and kill him. He began to
listen attentively; directly overhead, he heard the footsteps of the battery
commander.
“Anyway, if it does come,” he thought, “it will kill any one who is
upstairs first, and then me; at all events, I shall not be the only one.”
This thought calmed him somewhat.
“Well, and what if Sevastopol should be taken unexpectedly, in the
night, and the French make their way hither? What am I to defend myself
with?”
He rose once more, and began to pace the room. His terror of the
actual danger outweighed his secret fear of the darkness. There was nothing
heavy in the room except the samovár and a saddle. “I am a scoundrel, a
coward, a miserable coward!” the thought suddenly occurred to him, and
again he experienced that oppressive sensation of scorn and disgust, even
for himself. Again he threw himself on the bed, and tried not to think.
Then the impressions of the day involuntarily penetrated his
imagination, in consequence of the unceasing sounds, which made the glass
in the solitary window rattle, and again the thought of danger recurred to
him: now he saw visions of wounded men and blood, now of bombs and
splinters, flying into the room, then of the pretty little Sister of Mercy, who
was applying a bandage to him, a dying man, and weeping over him, then
of his mother, accompanying him to the provincial town, and praying, amid
burning tears, before the wonder-working images, and once more sleep
appeared an impossibility to him.
But suddenly the thought of Almighty God, who can do all things, and
who hears every supplication, came clearly into his mind. He knelt down,
crossed himself, and folded his hands as he had been taught to do in his
childhood, when he prayed. This gesture, all at once, brought back to him a
consoling feeling, which he had long since forgotten.
“If I must die, if I must cease to exist, ‘thy will be done, Lord,’” he
thought; “let it be quickly; but if bravery is needed, and the firmness which
I do not possess, give them to me; deliver me from shame and disgrace,
which I cannot bear, but teach me what to do in order to fulfil thy will.”

His childish, frightened, narrow soul was suddenly encouraged; it
cleared up, and caught sight of broad, brilliant, and new horizons. During
the brief period while this feeling lasted, he felt and thought many other
things, and soon fell asleep quietly and unconcernedly, to the continuous
sounds of the roar of the bombardment and the rattling of the window-
panes.
Great Lord! thou alone hast heard, and thou alone knowest those
ardent, despairing prayers of ignorance, of troubled repentance, those
petitions for the healing of the body and the enlightenment of the mind,
which have ascended to thee from that terrible precinct of death, from the
general who, a moment before, was thinking of his cross of the George on
his neck, and conscious in his terror of thy near presence, to the simple
soldier writhing on the bare earth of the Nikolaevsky battery, and
beseeching thee to bestow upon him there the reward, unconsciously
presaged, for all his sufferings.

XIV.

The elder Kozeltzoff, meeting on the street a soldier belonging to his
regiment, betook himself at once, in company with the man, to the fifth
bastion.
“Keep under the wall, Your Honor,” said the soldier.
“What for?”
“It's dangerous, Your Honor; there's one passing over,” said the soldier,
listening to the sound of a screaming cannon-ball, which struck the dry
road, on the other side of the street.
Kozeltzoff, paying no heed to the soldier, walked bravely along the
middle of the street.
These were the same streets, the same fires, even more frequent now,
the sounds, the groans, the encounters with the wounded, and the same
batteries, breastworks, and trenches, which had been there in the spring,
when he was last in Sevastopol; but, for some reason, all this was now more
melancholy, and, at the same time, more energetic, the apertures in the
houses were larger, there were no longer any lights in the windows, with the

exception of the Kushtchin house (the hospital), not a woman was to be met
with, the earlier tone of custom and freedom from care no longer rested
over all, but, instead, a certain impress of heavy expectation, of weariness
and earnestness.
But here is the last trench already, and here is the voice of a soldier of
the P—— regiment, who has recognized the former commander of his
company, and here stands the third battalion in the gloom, clinging close to
the wall, and lighted up now and then, for a moment, by the discharges, and
a sound of subdued conversation, and the rattling of guns.
“Where is the commander of the regiment?” inquired Kozeltzoff.
“In the bomb-proofs with the sailors, Your Honor,” replied the soldier,
ready to be of service. “I will show you the way, if you like.”
From trench to trench the soldier led Kozeltzoff, to the small ditch in
the trench. In the ditch sat a sailor, smoking his pipe; behind him a door was
visible, through whose cracks shone a light.
“Can I enter?”
“I will announce you at once,” and the sailor went in through the door.
Two voices became audible on the other side of the door.
“If Prussia continues to observe neutrality,” said one voice, “then
Austria also....”
“What difference does Austria make,” said the second, “when the
Slavic lands ... well, ask him to come in.”
Kozeltzoff had never been in this casemate. He was struck by its
elegance. The floor was of polished wood, screens shielded the door. Two
bedsteads stood against the wall, in one corner stood a large ikon of the
mother of God, in a gilt frame, and before her burned a rose-colored lamp.
On one of the beds, a naval officer, fully dressed, was sleeping. On the
other, by a table upon which stood two bottles of wine, partly empty, sat the
men who were talking—the new regimental commander and his adjutant.
Although Kozeltzoff was far from being a coward, and was certainly
not guilty of any wrongdoing so far as his superior officers were concerned,
nor towards the regimental commander, yet he felt timid before the colonel,

who had been his comrade not long before, so proudly did this colonel rise
and listen to him.
“It is strange,” thought Kozeltzoff, as he surveyed his commander, “it
is only seven weeks since he took the regiment, and how visible already is
his power as regimental commander, in everything about him—in his dress,
his bearing, his look. Is it so very long,” thought he, “since this
Batrishtcheff used to carouse with us, and he wore a cheap cotton shirt, and
ate by himself, never inviting any one to his quarters, his eternal meat-balls
and curd-patties? But now! and that expression of cold pride in his eyes,
which says to you, ‘Though I am your comrade, because I am a regimental
commander of the new school, yet, believe me, I am well aware that you
would give half your life merely for the sake of being in my place!’”
“You have been a long time in recovering,” said the colonel to
Kozeltzoff, coldly, with a stare.
“I was ill, colonel! The wound has not closed well even now.”
“Then there was no use in your coming,” said the colonel, casting an
incredulous glance at the captain's stout figure. “You are, nevertheless, in a
condition to fulfil your duty?”
“Certainly I am, sir.”
“Well I'm very glad of that, sir. You will take the ninth company from
Ensign Zaitzoff—the one you had before; you will receive your orders
immediately.”
“I obey, sir.”
“Take care to send me the regimental adjutant when you arrive,” said
the regimental commander, giving him to understand, by a slight nod, that
his audience was at an end.
On emerging from the casemate, Kozeltzoff muttered something
several times, and shrugged his shoulders, as though pained, embarrassed,
or vexed at something, and vexed, not at the regimental commander (there
was no cause for that), but at himself, and he appeared to be dissatisfied
with himself and with everything about him.

XV.

Before going to his officers, Kozeltzoff went to greet his company, and to
see where it was stationed.
The breastwork of gabions, the shapes of the trenches, the cannons
which he passed, even the fragments of shot, bombs, over which he
stumbled in his path—all this, incessantly illuminated by the light of the
firing, was well known to him, all this had engraved itself in vivid colors on
his memory, three months before, during the two weeks which he had spent
in this very bastion, without once leaving it. Although there was much that
was terrible in these reminiscences, a certain charm of past things was
mingled with it, and he recognized the familiar places and objects with
pleasure, as though the two weeks spent there had been agreeable ones. The
company was stationed along the defensive wall toward the sixth bastion.
Kozeltzoff entered the long casemate, utterly unprotected at the
entrance side, in which they had told him that the ninth company was
stationed. There was, literally, no room to set his foot in the casemate, so
filled was it, from the very entrance, with soldiers. On one side burned a
crooked tallow candle, which a recumbent soldier was holding to illuminate
the book which another one was spelling out slowly. Around the candle, in
the reeking half-light, heads were visible, eagerly raised in strained
attention to the reader. The little book in question was a primer. As
Kozeltzoff entered the casemate, he heard the following:
“Pray-er af-ter lear-ning. I thank Thee, Crea-tor ...”
“Snuff that candle!” said a voice. “That's a splendid book.” “My ...
God ...” went on the reader.
When Kozeltzoff asked for the sergeant, the reader stopped, the
soldiers began to move about, coughed, and blew their noses, as they
always do after enforced silence. The sergeant rose near the group about the
reader, buttoning up his coat as he did so, and stepping over and on the feet
of those who had no room to withdraw them, and came forward to his
officer.
“How are you, brother? Do all these belong to our company?”
“I wish you health! Welcome on your return, Your Honor!” replied the
sergeant, with a cheerful and friendly look at Kozeltzoff. “Has Your Honor

recovered your health? Well, God be praised. It has been very dull for us
without you.”
It was immediately apparent that Kozeltzoff was beloved in the
company.
In the depths of the casemate, voices could be heard. Their old
commander, who had been wounded, Mikhaïl Semyónitch Kozeltzoff, had
arrived, and so forth; some even approached, and the drummer
congratulated him.
“How are you, Obantchuk?” said Kozeltzoff. “Are you all right?
Good-day, children!” he said, raising his voice.
“We wish you health!” sounded through the casemate.
“How are you getting on, children?”
“Badly, Your Honor. The French are getting the better of us.—Fighting
from behind the fortifications is bad work, and that's all there is about it!
and they won't come out into the open field.”
“Perhaps luck is with me, and God will grant that they shall come out
into the field, children!” said Kozeltzoff. “It won't be the first time that you
and I have taken a hand together: we'll beat them again.”
“We'll be glad to try it, Your Honor!” exclaimed several voices.
“And how about them—are they really bold?”
“Frightfully bold!” said the drummer, not loudly, but so that his words
were audible, turning to another soldier, as though justifying before him the
words of the commander, and persuading him that there was nothing
boastful or improbable in these words.
From the soldiers, Kozeltzoff proceeded to the defensive barracks and
his brother officers.

XVI.

In the large room of the barracks there was a great number of men; naval,
artillery, and infantry officers. Some were sleeping, others were conversing,
seated on the shot-chests and gun-carriages of the cannons of the

fortifications; others still, who formed a very numerous and noisy group
behind the arch, were seated upon two felt rugs, which had been spread on
the floor, and were drinking porter and playing cards.
“Ah! Kozeltzoff, Kozeltzoff! Capital! it's a good thing that he has
come! He's a brave fellow!... How's your wound?” rang out from various
quarters. Here also it was evident that they loved him and were rejoiced at
his coming.
After shaking hands with his friends, Kozeltzoff joined the noisy group
of officers engaged in playing cards. There were some of his acquaintances
among them. A slender, handsome, dark-complexioned man, with a long,
sharp nose and a huge moustache, which began on his cheeks, was dealing
the cards with his thin, white, taper fingers, on one of which there was a
heavy gold seal ring. He was dealing straight on, and carelessly, being
evidently excited by something,—and merely desirous of making a show of
heedlessness. On his right, and beside him, lay a gray-haired major,
supporting himself on his elbow, and playing for half a ruble with affected
coolness, and settling up immediately. On his left squatted an officer with a
red, perspiring face, who was laughing and jesting in a constrained way.
When his cards won, he moved one hand about incessantly in his empty
trousers pocket. He was playing high, and evidently no longer for ready
money, which displeased the handsome, dark-complexioned man. A thin
and pallid officer with a bald head, and a huge nose and mouth, was
walking about the room, holding a large package of bank-notes in his hand,
staking ready money on the bank, and winning.
Kozeltzoff took a drink of vodka, and sat down by the players.
“Take a hand, Mikhaïl Semyónitch!” said the dealer to him; “you have
brought lots of money, I suppose.”
“Where should I get any money! On the contrary, I got rid of the last I
had in town.”
“The idea! Some one certainly must have fleeced you in Simpferopol.”
“I really have but very little,” said Kozeltzoff, but he was evidently
desirous that they should not believe him; then he unbuttoned his coat, and
took the old cards in his hand.

“I don't care if I do try; there's no knowing what the Evil One will do!
queer things do come about at times. But I must have a drink, to get up my
courage.”
And within a very short space of time he had drunk another glass of
vodka and several of porter, and had lost his last three rubles.
A hundred and fifty rubles were written down against the little,
perspiring officer.
“No, he will not bring them,” said he, carelessly, drawing a fresh card.
“Try to send it,” said the dealer to him, pausing a moment in his
occupation of laying out the cards, and glancing at him.
“Permit me to send it to-morrow,” repeated the perspiring officer,
rising, and moving his hand about vigorously in his empty pocket.
“Hm!” growled the dealer, and, throwing the cards angrily to the right
and left, he completed the deal. “But this won't do,” said he, when he had
dealt the cards. “I'm going to stop. It won't do, Zakhár Ivánitch,” he added,
“we have been playing for ready money and not on credit.”
“What, do you doubt me? That's strange, truly!”
“From whom is one to get anything?” muttered the major, who had
won about eight rubles. “I have lost over twenty rubles, but when I have
won—I get nothing.”
“How am I to pay,” said the dealer, “when there is no money on the
table?”
“I won't listen to you!” shouted the major, jumping up, “I am playing
with you, but not with him.”
All at once the perspiring officer flew into a rage.
“I tell you that I will pay to-morrow; how dare you say such
impertinent things to me?”
“I shall say what I please! This is not the way to do—that's the truth!”
shouted the major.
“That will do, Feódor Feodoritch!” all chimed in, holding back the
major.

But let us draw a veil over this scene. To-morrow, to-day, it may be,
each one of these men will go cheerfully and proudly to meet his death, and
he will die with firmness and composure; but the one consolation of life in
these conditions, which terrify even the coldest imagination in the absence
of all that is human, and the hopelessness of any escape from them, the one
consolation is forgetfulness, the annihilation of consciousness. At the
bottom of the soul of each lies that noble spark, which makes of him a hero;
but this spark wearies of burning clearly—when the fateful moment comes
it flashes up into a flame, and illuminates great deeds.

XVII.

On the following day, the bombardment proceeded with the same vigor. At
eleven o'clock in the morning, Volodya Kozeltzoff was seated in a circle of
battery officers, and, having already succeeded to some extent in
habituating himself to them, he was surveying the new faces, taking
observations, making inquiries, and telling stories.
The discreet conversation of the artillery officers, which made some
pretensions to learning, pleased him and inspired him with respect.
Volodya's shy, innocent, and handsome appearance disposed the officers in
his favor.
The eldest officer in the battery, the captain, a short, sandy-
complexioned man, with his hair arranged in a topknot, and smooth on the
temples, educated in the old traditions of the artillery, a squire of dames,
and a would-be learned man, questioned Volodya as to his acquirements in
artillery and new inventions, jested caressingly over his youth and his pretty
little face, and treated him, in general, as a father treats a son, which was
extremely agreeable to Volodya.
Sub-Lieutenant Dyadenko, a young officer, who talked with a Little
Russian accent, had a tattered cloak and dishevelled hair, although he talked
very loudly, and constantly seized opportunities to dispute acrimoniously
over some topic, and was very abrupt in his movements, pleased Volodya,
who, beneath this rough exterior, could not help detecting in him a very fine
and extremely good man. Dyadenko was incessantly offering his services to
Volodya, and pointing out to him that not one of the guns in Sevastopol was
properly placed, according to rule.

Lieutenant Tchernovitzky, with his brows elevated on high, though he
was more courteous than any of the rest, and dressed in a coat that was
tolerably clean, but not new, and carefully patched, and though he displayed
a gold watch-chain on a satin waistcoat, did not please Volodya. He kept
inquiring what the Emperor and the minister of war were doing, and related
to him, with unnatural triumph, the deeds of valor which had been
performed in Sevastopol, complained of the small number of true patriots,
and displayed a great deal of learning, and sense, and noble feeling in
general; but, for some reason, all this seemed unpleasant and unnatural to
Volodya. The principal thing which he noticed was that the other officers
hardly spoke to Tchernovitzky.
Yunker Vlang, whom he had waked up on the preceding evening, was
also there. He said nothing, but, seated modestly in a corner, laughed when
anything amusing occurred, refreshed their memories when they forgot
anything, handed the vodka, and made cigarettes for all the officers.
Whether it was the modest, courteous manners of Volodya, who treated him
exactly as he did the officers, and did not torment him as though he were a
little boy, or his agreeable personal appearance which captivated Vlanga, as
the soldiers called him, declining his name, for some reason or other, in the
feminine gender, at all events, he never took his big, kind eyes from the face
of the new officer. He divined and anticipated all his wishes, and remained
uninterruptedly in a sort of lover-like ecstasy, which, of course, the officers
perceived, and made fun of.
Before dinner, the staff-captain was relieved from the battery, and
joined their company. Staff-Captain Kraut was a light-complexioned,
handsome, dashing officer, with a heavy, reddish moustache, and side-
whiskers; he spoke Russian capitally, but too elegantly and correctly for a
Russian. In the service and in his life, he had been the same as in his
language; he served very well, was a capital comrade, and the most faithful
of men in money matters; but simply as a man something was lacking in
him, precisely because everything about him was so excellent. Like all
Russian-Germans, by a strange contradiction with the ideal German, he was
“praktisch” to the highest degree.
“Here he is, our hero makes his appearance!” said the captain, as
Kraut, flourishing his arms and jingling his spurs, entered the room. “Which
will you have, Friedrich Krestyanitch, tea or vodka?”

“I have already ordered my tea to be served,” he answered, “but I may
take a little drop of vodka also, for the refreshing of the soul. Very glad to
make your acquaintance; I beg that you will love us, and lend us your
favor,” he said to Volodya, who rose and bowed to him. “Staff-Captain
Kraut.... The gun-sergeant on the bastion informed me that you arrived last
night.”
“Much obliged for your bed; I passed the night in it.”
“I hope you found it comfortable? One of the legs is broken; but no
one can stand on ceremony—in time of siege—you must prop it up.”
“Well, now, did you have a fortunate time on your watch?” asked
Dyadenko.
“Yes, all right; only Skvortzoff was hit, and we mended one of the
gun-carriages last night. The cheek was smashed to atoms.”
He rose from his seat, and began to walk up and down; it was plain
that he was wholly under the influence of that agreeable sensation which a
man experiences who has just escaped a danger.
“Well, Dmitri Gavrilitch,” he said, tapping the captain on the knee,
“how are you getting on, my dear fellow? How about your promotion?—no
word yet?”
“Nothing yet.”
“No, and there will be nothing,” interpolated Dyadenko: “I proved that
to you before.”
“Why won't there?”
“Because the story was not properly written down.”
“Oh, you quarrelsome fellow, you quarrelsome fellow!” said Kraut,
smiling gayly; “a regular obstinate Little Russian! Now, just to provoke
you, he'll turn out your lieutenant.”
“No, he won't.”
“Vlang! fetch me my pipe, and fill it,” said he, turning to the yunker,
who at once hastened up obligingly with the pipe.

Kraut made them all lively; he told about the bombardment, he
inquired what had been going on in his absence, and entered into
conversation with every one.

XVIII.

“Well, how are things? Have you already got settled among us?” Kraut
asked Volodya.... “Excuse me, what is your name and patronymic? that's the
custom with us in the artillery, you know. Have you got hold of a saddle-
horse?”
“No,” said Volodya; “I do not know what to do. I told the captain that I
had no horse, and no money, either, until I get some for forage and
travelling expenses. I want to ask the battery commander for a horse in the
meantime, but I am afraid that he will refuse me.”
“Apollon Sergiéitch, do you mean?” he produced with his lips a sound
indicative of the strongest doubt, and glanced at the captain; “not likely.”
“What's that? If he does refuse, there'll be no harm done,” said the
captain. “There are horses, to tell the truth, which are not needed, but still
one might try; I will inquire to-day.”
“What! Don't you know him?” Dyadenko interpolated. “He might
refuse anything, but there is no reason for refusing this. Do you want to bet
on it?...”
“Well, of course, everybody knows already that you always
contradict.”
“I contradict because I know. He is niggardly about other things, but
he will give the horse because it is no advantage to him to refuse.”
“No advantage, indeed, when it costs him eight rubles here for oats!”
said Kraut. “Is there no advantage in not keeping an extra horse?”
“Ask Skvoretz yourself, Vladímir Semyónitch!” said Vlang, returning
with Kraut's pipe. “It's a capital horse.”
“The one you tumbled into the ditch with, on the festival of the forty
martyrs, in March? Hey! Vlang?” remarked the staff-captain.

“No, and why should you say that it costs eight rubles for oats,”
pursued Dyadenko, “when his own inquiries show him that it is ten and a
half; of course, he has no object in it.”
“Just as though he would have nothing left! So when you get to be
battery commander, you won't let any horses go into the town?”
“When I get to be battery commander, my dear fellow, my horses will
get four measures of oats to eat, and I shall not accumulate an income,
never fear!”
“If we live, we shall see,” said the staff-captain; “and you will act just
so, and so will he when he commands a battery,” he added, pointing at
Volodya.
“Why do you think, Friedrich Krestyanitch, that he would turn it to his
profit?” broke in Tchernovitzky. “Perhaps he has property of his own; then
why should he turn it to profit?”
“No, sir, I ... excuse me, captain,” said Volodya, reddening up to his
ears, “that strikes me as insulting.”
“Oh ho, ho! What a madcap he is!” said Kraut.
“That has nothing to do with it; I only think that if the money were not
mine, I should not take it.”
“Now, I'll tell you something right here, young man,” began the staff-
captain in a more serious tone, “you are to understand that when you
command a battery, if you manage things well, that's sufficient; the
commander of a battery does not meddle with provisioning the soldiers; that
is the way it has been from time immemorial in the artillery. If you are a
bad manager, you will have nothing left. Now, these are the expenditures in
conformity with your position: for shoeing your horse,—one (he closed one
finger); for the apothecary,—two (he closed another finger); for office
work,—three (he shut a third); for extra horses, which cost five hundred
rubles, my dear fellow,—that's four; you must change the soldiers' collars,
you will use a great deal of coal, you must keep open table for your officers.
If you are a battery-commander, you must live decently; you need a
carriage, and a fur coat, and this thing and that thing, and a dozen more ...
but what's the use of enumerating them all!”

“But this is the principal thing, Vladímir Semyónitch,” interpolated the
captain, who had held his peace all this time; “imagine yourself to be a man
who, like myself, for instance, has served twenty years, first for two
hundred, then for three hundred rubles pay; why should he not be given at
least a bit of bread, against his old age?”
“Eh! yes, there you have it!” spoke up the staff-captain again, “don't be
in a hurry to pronounce judgment, but live on and serve your time.”
Volodya was horribly ashamed and sorry for having spoken so
thoughtlessly, and he muttered something and continued to listen in silence,
when Dyadenko undertook, with the greatest zeal, to dispute it and to prove
the contrary.
The dispute was interrupted by the arrival of the colonel's servant, who
summoned them to dinner.
“Tell Apollon Sergiéitch that he must give us some wine to-day,” said
Tchernovitzky, to the captain, as he buttoned up his uniform.—“Why is he
so stingy with it? He will be killed, and no one will get the good of it.”
“Tell him yourself.”
“Not a bit of it. You are my superior officer. Rank must be regarded in
all things.”

XIX.

The table had been moved out from the wall, and spread with a soiled table-
cloth, in the same room in which Volodya had presented himself to the
colonel on the preceding evening. The battery commander now offered him
his hand, and questioned him about Petersburg and his journey.
“Well, gentlemen, I beg the favor of a glass with any of you who drink
vodka. The ensigns do not drink,” he added, with a smile.
On the whole, the battery commander did not appear nearly so stern to-
day as he had on the preceding evening; on the contrary, he had the
appearance of a kindly, hospitable host, and an elder comrade among the
officers. But, in spite of this, all the officers, from the old captain down to
Ensign Dyadenko, by their very manner of speaking and looking the

commander straight in the eye, as they approached, one after the other, to
drink their vodka, exhibited great respect for him.
The dinner consisted of a large wooden bowl of cabbage-soup, in
which floated fat chunks of beef, and a huge quantity of pepper and laurel-
leaves, mustard, and Polish meat-balls in a cabbage leaf, turnover patties of
chopped meat and dough, and with butter, which was not perfectly fresh.
There were no napkins, the spoons were of pewter and wood, there were
only two glasses, and on the table stood a decanter of water with a broken
neck; but the dinner was not dull; conversation never halted.
At first, their talk turned on the battle of Inkerman, in which the
battery had taken part, as to the causes of failure, of which each one gave
his own impressions and ideas, and held his tongue as soon as the battery
commander himself began to speak; then the conversation naturally
changed to the insufficiency of calibre of the light guns, and upon the new
lightened cannons, in which connection Volodya had an opportunity to
display his knowledge of artillery.
But their talk did not dwell upon the present terrible position of
Sevastopol, as though each of them had meditated too much on that subject
to allude to it again. In the same way, to Volodya's great amazement and
disappointment, not a word was said about the duties of the service which
he was to fulfil, just as though he had come to Sevastopol merely for the
purpose of telling about the new cannon and dining with the commander of
the battery.
While they were at dinner, a bomb fell not far from the house in which
they were seated. The walls and the floor trembled, as though in an
earthquake, and the window was obscured with the smoke of the powder.
“You did not see anything of this sort in Petersburg, I fancy; but these
surprises often take place here,” said the battery commander.
“Look out, Vlang, and see where it burst.”
Vlang looked, and reported that it had burst on the square, and then
there was nothing more said about the bomb.
Just before the end of the dinner, an old man, the clerk of the battery,
entered the room, with three sealed envelopes, and handed them to the
commander.

“This is very important; a messenger has this moment brought these
from the chief of the artillery.”
All the officers gazed, with impatient curiosity, at the commander's
practised fingers as they broke the seal of the envelope and drew forth the
very important paper. “What can it be?” each one asked himself.
It might be that they were to march out of Sevastopol for a rest, it
might be an order for the whole battery to betake themselves to the
bastions.
“Again!” said the commander, flinging the paper angrily on the table.
“What's it about, Apollon Sergiéitch?” inquired the eldest officer.
“An officer and crew are required for a mortar battery over yonder, and
I have only four officers, and there is not a full gun-crew in the line,”
growled the commander: “and here more are demanded of me. But some
one must go, gentlemen,” he said, after a brief pause: “the order requires
him to be at the barrier at seven o'clock.... Send the sergeant! Who is to go,
gentlemen? decide,” he repeated.
“Well, here's one who has never been yet,” said Tchernovitzky,
pointing to Volodya. The commander of the battery made no reply.
“Yes, I should like to go,” said Volodya, as he felt the cold sweat start
out on his back and neck.
“No; why should you? There's no occasion!” broke in the captain. “Of
course, no one will refuse, but neither is it proper to ask any one; but if
Apollon Sergiéitch will permit us, we will draw lots, as we did once
before.”
All agreed to this. Kraut cut some paper into bits, folded them up, and
dropped them into a cap. The captain jested, and even plucked up the
audacity, on this occasion, to ask the colonel for wine, to keep up their
courage, he said. Dyadenko sat in gloomy silence, Volodya smiled at
something or other, Tchernovitzky declared that it would infallibly fall to
him, Kraut was perfectly composed.
Volodya was allowed to draw first; he took one slip, which was rather
long, but it immediately occurred to him to change it; he took another,
which was smaller and thinner, unfolded it, and read on it, “I go.”

“It has fallen to me,” he said, with a sigh.
“Well, God be with you. You will get your baptism of fire at once,”
said the commander of the battery, gazing at the perturbed countenance of
the ensign with a kindly smile; “but you must get there as speedily as
possible. And, to make it more cheerful for you, Vlang shall go with you as
gun-sergeant.”

XX.

Vlang was exceedingly well pleased with the duty assigned to him, and ran
hastily to make his preparations, and, when he was dressed, he went to the
assistance of Volodya, and tried to persuade the latter to take his cot and fur
coat with him, and some old “Annals of the Country,” and a spirit-lamp
coffee-pot, and other useless things. The captain advised Volodya to read up
his “Manual,”[L] first, about mortar-firing, and immediately to copy the
tables out of it.
Volodya set about this at once, and, to his amazement and delight, he
perceived that, though he was still somewhat troubled with a sensation of
fear of danger, and still more lest he should turn out a coward, yet it was far
from being to that degree to which it had affected him on the preceding
evening. The reason for this lay partly in the daylight and in active
occupation, and partly, principally, also, in the fact that fear and all
powerful emotions cannot long continue with the same intensity. In a word,
he had already succeeded in recovering from his terror.
At seven o'clock, just as the sun had begun to hide itself behind the
Nikolaevsky barracks, the sergeant came to him, and announced that the
men were ready and waiting for him.
“I have given the list to Vlanga. You will please to ask him for it, Your
Honor!” said he.
Twenty artillery-men, with side-arms, but without loading-tools, were
standing at the corner of the house. Volodya and the yunker stepped up to
them.
“Shall I make them a little speech, or shall I simply say, ‘Good day,
children!’ or shall I say nothing at all?” thought he. “And why should I not

say, ‘Good day, children!’ Why, I ought to say that much!” And he shouted
boldly, in his ringing voice:—
“Good day, children!”
The soldiers responded cheerfully. The fresh, young voice sounded
pleasant in the ears of all. Volodya marched vigorously at their head, in
front of the soldiers, and, although his heart beat as if he had run several
versts at the top of his speed, his step was light and his countenance
cheerful.
On arriving at the Malakoff mound, and climbing the slope, he
perceived that Vlang, who had not lagged a single pace behind him, and
who had appeared such a valiant fellow at home in the house, kept
constantly swerving to one side, and ducking his head, as though all the
cannon-balls and bombs, which whizzed by very frequently in that locality,
were flying straight at him. Some of the soldiers did the same, and the faces
of the majority of them betrayed, if not fear, at least anxiety. This
circumstance put the finishing touch to Volodya's composure and
encouraged him finally.
“So here I am also on the Malakoff mound, which I imagined to be a
thousand times more terrible! And I can walk along without ducking my
head before the bombs, and am far less terrified than the rest! So I am not a
coward, after all?” he thought with delight, and even with a somewhat
enthusiastic self-sufficiency.
But this feeling was soon shaken by a spectacle upon which he
stumbled in the twilight, on the Kornilovsky battery, in his search for the
commander of the bastion. Four sailors standing near the breastworks were
holding the bloody body of a man, without shoes or coat, by its arms and
legs, and staggering as they tried to fling it over the ramparts.
(On the second day of the bombardment, it had been found impossible,
in some localities, to carry off the corpses from the bastions, and so they
were flung into the trench, in order that they might not impede action in the
batteries.)
Volodya stood petrified for a moment, as he saw the corpse waver on
the summit of the breastworks, and then roll down into the ditch; but,
luckily for him, the commander of the bastion met him there,

communicated his orders, and furnished him with a guide to the battery and
to the bomb-proofs designated for his service. We will not enumerate the
remaining dangers and disenchantments which our hero underwent that
evening: how, instead of the firing, such as he had seen on the Volkoff field,
according to the rules of accuracy and precision, which he had expected to
find here, he found two cracked mortars, one of which had been crushed by
a cannon-ball in the muzzle, while the other stood upon the splinters of a
ruined platform; how he could not obtain any workmen until the following
morning in order to repair the platform; how not a single charge was of the
weight prescribed in the “Manual;” how two soldiers of his command were
wounded, and how he was twenty times within a hair's-breadth of death.
Fortunately, there had been assigned for his assistant a gun-captain of
gigantic size, a sailor, who had served on the mortars since the beginning of
the siege, and who convinced him of the practicability of using them,
conducted him all over the bastion, with a lantern, during the night, exactly
as though it had been his own kitchen-garden, and who promised to put
everything in proper shape on the morrow.
The bomb-proof to which his guide conducted him was excavated in
the rocky soil, and consisted of a long hole, two cubic fathoms in extent,
covered with oaken planks an arshin in thickness. Here he took up his post,
with all his soldiers. Vlang was the first, when he caught sight of the little
door, twenty-eight inches high, of the bomb-proof, to rush headlong into it,
in front of them all, and, after nearly cracking his skull on the stone floor,
he huddled down in a corner, from which he did not again emerge.
And Volodya, when all the soldiers had placed themselves along the
wall on the floor, and some had lighted their pipes, set up his bed in one
corner, lighted a candle, and lay upon his cot, smoking a cigarette.
Shots were incessantly heard, over the bomb-proof, but they were not
very loud, with the exception of those from one cannon, which stood close
by and shook the bomb-proof with its thunder. In the bomb-proof itself all
was still; the soldiers, who were a little shy, as yet, of the new officer, only
exchanged a few words, now and then, as they requested each other to
move out of the way or to furnish a light for a pipe. A rat scratched
somewhere among the stones, or Vlang, who had not yet recovered himself,
and who still gazed wildly about him, uttered a sudden vigorous sigh.

Volodya, as he lay on his bed, in his quiet corner, surrounded by the
men, and illuminated only by a single candle, experienced that sensation of
well-being which he had known as a child, when, in the course of a game of
hide-and-seek, he used to crawl into a cupboard or under his mother's skirts,
and listen, not daring to draw his breath, and afraid of the dark, and yet
conscious of enjoying himself. He felt a little oppressed, but cheerful.

XXI.

After the lapse of about ten minutes, the soldiers began to change about and
to converse together. The most important personages among them—the two
gun-sergeants—placed themselves nearest the officer's light and bed;—one
was old and gray-haired, with every possible medal and cross except the
George;—the other was young, a militia-man, who smoked cigarettes,
which he was rolling. The drummer, as usual, assumed the duty of waiting
on the officer. The bombardiers and cavalrymen sat next, and then farther
away, in the shadow of the entrance, the underlings took up their post. They
too began to talk among themselves. It was caused by the hasty entrance of
a man into the casemate.
“How now, brother! couldn't you stay in the street? Didn't the girls
sing merrily?” said a voice.
“They sing such marvellous songs as were never heard in the village,”
said the man who had fled into the casemate, with a laugh.
“But Vasin does not love bombs—ah, no, he does not love them!” said
one from the aristocratic corner.
“The idea! It's quite another matter when it's necessary,” drawled the
voice of Vasin, who made all the others keep silent when he spoke: “since
the 24th, the firing has been going on desperately; and what is there wrong
about it? You'll get killed for nothing, and your superiors won't so much as
say ‘Thank you!’ for it.”
At these words of Vasin, all burst into a laugh.
“There's Melnikoff, that fellow who will sit outside the door,” said
some one.

“Well, send him here, that Melnikoff,” added the old gunner; “they
will kill him, for a fact, and that to no purpose.”
“Who is this Melnikoff?” asked Volodya.
“Why, Your Honor, he's a stupid soldier of ours. He doesn't seem to be
afraid of anything, and now he keeps walking about outside. Please to take
a look at him; he looks like a bear.”
“He knows a spell,” said the slow voice of Vasin, from the corner.
Melnikoff entered the bomb-proof. He was fat (which is extremely rare
among soldiers), and a sandy-complexioned, handsome man, with a huge,
bulging forehead and prominent, light blue eyes.
“Are you afraid of the bombs?” Volodya asked him.
“What is there about the bombs to be afraid of!” replied Melnikoff,
shrugging his shoulders and scratching his head, “I know that I shall not be
killed by a bomb.”
“So you would like to go on living here?”
“Why, of course, I would. It's jolly here!” he said, with a sudden
outburst of laughter.
“Oh, then you must be detailed for the sortie! I'll tell the general so, if
you like?” said Volodya, although he was not acquainted with a single
general there.
“Why shouldn't I like! I do!”
And Melnikoff disappeared behind the others.
“Let's have a game of noski,[M] children! Who has cards?” rang out his
brisk voice.
And, in fact, it was not long before a game was started in the back
corner, and blows on the nose, laughter, and calling of trumps were heard.
Volodya drank some tea from the samovár, which the drummer served
for him, treated the gunners, jested, chatted with them, being desirous of
winning popularity, and felt very well content with the respect which was
shown him. The soldiers, too, perceiving that the gentleman put on no airs,
began to talk together.

One declared that the siege of Sevastopol would soon come to an end,
because a trustworthy man from the fleet had said that the emperor's brother
Constantine was coming to our relief with the 'Merican fleet, and there
would soon be an agreement that there should be no firing for two weeks,
and that a rest should be allowed, and if any one did fire a shot, every
discharge would have to be paid for at the rate of seventy-five kopeks each.
Vasin, who, as Volodya had already noticed, was a little fellow, with
large, kindly eyes, and side-whiskers, related, amid a general silence at first,
and afterwards amid general laughter, how, when he had gone home on
leave, they had been glad at first to see him, but afterwards his father had
begun to send him off to work, and the lieutenant of the foresters' corps sent
his drozhki for his wife.
All this amused Volodya greatly. He not only did not experience the
least fear or inconvenience from the closeness and heavy air in the bomb-
proof, but he felt in a remarkably cheerful and agreeable frame of mind.
Many of the soldiers were already snoring. Vlang had also stretched
himself out on the floor, and the old gun-sergeant, having spread out his
cloak, was crossing himself and muttering his prayers, preparatory to sleep,
when Volodya took a fancy to step out of the bomb-proof, and see what was
going on outside.
“Take your legs out of the way!” cried one soldier to another, as soon
as he rose, and the legs were pressed aside to make way for him.
Vlang, who appeared to be asleep, suddenly raised his head, and seized
Volodya by the skirt of his coat.
“Come, don't go! how can you!” he began, in a tearfully imploring
tone. “You don't know about things yet; they are firing at us out there all the
time; it is better here.”
But, in spite of Vlang's entreaties, Volodya made his way out of the
bomb-proof, and seated himself on the threshold, where Melnikoff was
already sitting.
The air was pure and fresh, particularly after the bomb-proof—the
night was clear and still. Through the roar of the discharges could be heard
the sounds of cart-wheels, bringing gabions, and the voices of the men who
were at work on the magazine. Above their heads was the lofty, starry sky,

across which flashed the fiery streaks caused by the bombs; an arshin away,
on the left, a tiny opening led to another bomb-proof, through which the
feet and backs of the soldiers who lived there were visible, and through
which their voices were audible; in front, the elevation produced by the
powder-vault could be seen, and athwart it flitted the bent figures of men,
and upon it, at the very summit, amid the bullets and the bombs which
whistled past the spot incessantly, stood a tall form in a black paletot, with
his hands in his pockets, and feet treading down the earth, which other men
were fetching in sacks. Often a bomb would fly over, and burst close to the
cave. The soldiers engaged in bringing the earth bent over and ran aside; but
the black figure never moved; went on quietly stamping down the dirt with
his feet, and remained on the spot in the same attitude as before.
“Who is that black man?” inquired Volodya of Melnikoff.
“I don't know; I will go and see.”
“Don't go! it is not necessary.”
But Melnikoff, without heeding him, walked up to the black figure,
and stood beside him for a tolerably long time, as calm and immovable as
the man himself.
“That is the man who has charge of the magazine, Your Honor!” he
said, on his return. “It has been pierced by a bomb, so the infantry-men are
fetching more earth.”
Now and then, a bomb seemed to fly straight at the door of the bomb-
proof. On such occasions, Volodya shrank into the corner, and then peered
forth again, gazing upwards, to see whether another was not coming from
some direction. Although Vlang, from the interior of the bomb-proof,
repeatedly besought Volodya to come back, the latter sat on the threshold
for three hours, and experienced a sort of satisfaction in thus tempting fate
and in watching the flight of the bombs. Towards the end of the evening, he
had learned from what point most of the firing proceeded, and where the
shots struck.

XXII.

On the following day, the 27th, after a ten-hours sleep, Volodya, fresh and
active, stepped out on the threshold of the casement; Vlang also started to
crawl out with him, but, at the first sound of a bullet, he flung himself
backwards through the opening of the bomb-proof, bumping his head as he
did so, amid the general merriment of the soldiers, the majority of whom
had also come out into the open air. Vlang, the old gun-sergeant, and a few
others were the only ones who rarely went out into the trenches; it was
impossible to restrain the rest; they all scattered about in the fresh morning
air, escaping from the fetid air of the bomb-proof, and, in spite of the fact
that the bombardment was as vigorous as on the preceding evening, they
disposed themselves around the door, and some even on the breastworks.
Melnikoff had been strolling about among the batteries since daybreak, and
staring up with perfect coolness.
Near the entrance sat two old soldiers and one young, curly-haired
fellow, a Jew, who had been detailed from the infantry. This soldier picked
up one of the bullets which were lying about, and, having smoothed it
against a stone with a potsherd, with his knife he carved from it a cross,
after the style of the order of St. George; the others looked on at his work as
they talked. The cross really turned out to be quite handsome.
“Now, if we stay here much longer,” said one of them, “then, when
peace is made, the time of service will be up for all of us.”
“Nothing of the sort; I have at least four years service yet before my
time is up, and I have been in Sevastopol these five months.”
“It is not counted towards the discharge, do you understand,” said
another.
At that moment, a cannon-ball shrieked over the heads of the speakers,
and struck only an arshin away from Melnikoff, who was approaching them
from the trenches.
“That came near killing Melnikoff,” said one man.
“I shall not be killed,” said Melnikoff.
“Here's the cross for you, for your bravery,” said the young soldier,
who had made the cross, handing it to Melnikoff.

“No, brother, a month here counts for a year, of course—that was the
order,” the conversation continued.
“Think what you please, but when peace is declared, there will be an
imperial review at Orshava, and if we don't get our discharge, we shall be
allowed to go on indefinite leave.”
At that moment, a shrieking little bullet flew past the speakers' heads,
and struck a stone.
“You'll get a full discharge before evening—see if you don't,” said one
of the soldiers.
They all laughed.
Not only before evening, but before the expiration of two hours, two of
them received their full discharge, and five were wounded; but the rest
jested on as before.
By morning, the two mortars had actually been brought into such a
condition that it was possible to fire them. At ten o'clock, in accordance
with the orders which he had received from the commander of the bastion,
Volodya called out his command, and marched to the battery with it.
In the men, as soon as they proceeded to action, there was not a drop
of that sentiment of fear perceptible which had been expressed on the
preceding evening. Vlang alone could not control himself; he dodged and
ducked just as before, and Vasin lost some of his composure, and fussed and
fidgeted and changed his place incessantly.
But Volodya was in an extraordinary state of enthusiasm; the thought
of danger did not even occur to him. Delight that he was fulfilling his duty,
that he was not only not a coward, but even a valiant fellow, the feeling that
he was in command, and the presence of twenty men, who, as he was
aware, were surveying him with curiosity, made a thoroughly brave man of
him. He was even vain of his valor, put on airs before his soldiers, climbed
up on the banquette, and unbuttoned his coat expressly that he might render
himself the more distinctly visible.
The commander of the bastion, who was going the rounds of his
establishment as he expressed it, at the moment, accustomed as he had
become during his eight-months experience to all sorts of bravery, could not

refrain from admiring this handsome lad, in the unbuttoned coat, beneath
which a red shirt was visible, encircling his soft white neck, with his
animated face and eyes, as he clapped his hands and shouted: “First!
Second!” and ran gayly along the ramparts, in order to see where his bomb
would fall.
At half-past eleven the firing ceased on both sides, and at precisely
twelve o'clock the storming of the Malakoff mound, of the second, third,
and fifth bastions began.

XXIII.

On this side of the bay, between Inkerman and the northern fortifications,
on the telegraph hill, about midday, stood two naval men; one was an
officer, who was engaged in observing Sevastopol through a telescope, and
the other had just arrived at the signal-station with his orderly.
The sun stood high and brilliant above the bay, and played with the
ships which floated upon it, and with the moving sails and boats, with a
warm and cheerful glow. The light breeze hardly moved the leaves of the
dry oak-shrubs which stood about the signal-pole, puffed out the sails of the
boats, and ruffled the waves.
Sevastopol, with her unfinished church, her columns, her line of shore,
her boulevard showing green against the hill, and her elegant library
building, with her tiny azure inlets, filled with masts, with the picturesque
arches of her aqueducts, and the clouds of blue smoke, lighted up now and
then by red flashes of flame from the firing; the same beautiful, proud,
festive Sevastopol, hemmed in on one side by yellow, smoke-crowned hills,
on the other by the bright blue sea, which glittered in the sun, was visible
the same as ever, on the other side of the bay.
Over the horizon-line of the sea, along which floated a long wreath of
black smoke from some steamer, crept long white clouds, portending a gale.
Along the entire line of the fortifications, especially over the hills on the
left, rose columns of thick, dense, white smoke; suddenly, abruptly, and
incessantly illuminated by flashes, lightnings, which shone even amid the
light of high noon, and which constantly increased in volume, assuming
divers forms, as they swept upwards, and tinged the heavens. These puffs of

smoke flashing now here, now there, took their birth on the hills, in the
batteries of the enemy, in the city, and high against the sky. The sound of
the discharges never ceased, but shook the air with their mingled roar.
At twelve o'clock, the puffs of smoke began to occur less and less
frequently, and the atmosphere quivered less with the roar.
“But the second bastion is no longer replying at all,” said the officer of
hussars, who sat there on horseback; “it is utterly destroyed! Horrible!”
“Yes, and the Malakoff only sends one shot to their three,” replied the
officer who was looking through his glass. “It enrages me to have them
silent. They are firing straight on the Kornilovsky battery, and it is not
answering at all.”
“But you see that they always cease the bombardment at twelve
o'clock, just as I said. It is the same to-day. Let us go and get some breakfast
... they are already waiting for us ... there's nothing to see.”
“Stop, don't interfere,” said the officer with the glass, gazing at
Sevastopol with peculiar eagerness.
“What's going on there? What is it?”
“There is a movement in the trenches, and heavy columns are
marching.”
“Yes, that is evident,” said the other. “The columns are under way. We
must give the signal.”
“See, see! They have emerged from the trenches.”
In truth, it was visible to the naked eye that dark masses were moving
down the hill, across the narrow valley, from the French batteries to the
bastions. In front of these specks, dark streaks were visible, which were
already close to our lines. White puffs of smoke of discharges burst out at
various points on the bastions, as though the firing were running along the
line.
The breeze bore to them the sounds of musketry-shots, exchanged
briskly, like rain upon the window-pane. The black streaks moved on,
nearer and nearer, into the very smoke. The sounds of firing grew louder
and louder, and mingled in a lengthened, resounding roar.

The smoke, rising more and more frequently, spread rapidly along the
line, flowed together in one lilac-hued cloud, which dispersed and joined
again, and through which, here and there, flitted flames and black points—
and all sounds were commingled in one reverberating crash.
“An assault,” said the officer, with a pale face, as he handed the glass
to the naval officer.
Orderlies galloped along the road, officers on horseback, the
commander-in-chief in a calash, and his suite passed by. Profound emotion
and expectation were visible on all countenances.
“It cannot be that they have taken it!” said the mounted officer.
“By Heavens, there's the standard! Look, look!” said the other, sighing
and abandoning the glass. “The French standard on the Malakoff!”
“It cannot be!”

XXIV.

The elder Kozeltzoff, who had succeeded in winning back his money and
losing it all again that night, including even the gold pieces which were
sewed into his cuffs, had fallen, just before daybreak, into a heavy,
unhealthy, but profound slumber, in the fortified barracks of the fifth
battalion, when the fateful cry, repeated by various voices, rang out:—
“The alarm!”
“Why are you sleeping, Mikhaïl Semyónitch! There's an assault!” a
voice shouted to him.
“That is probably some school-boy,” he said, opening his eyes, but
putting no faith in it.
But all at once he caught sight of an officer running aimlessly from
one corner to the other, with such a pale face that he understood it all. The
thought that he might be taken for a coward, who did not wish to go out to
his company at a critical moment, struck him with terrible force. He ran to
his corps at the top of his speed. Firing had ceased from the heavy guns; but
the crash of musketry was at its height. The bullets whistled, not singly like
rifle-balls, but in swarms, like a flock of birds in autumn, flying past

overhead. The entire spot on which his battalion had stood the night before
was veiled in smoke, and the shouts and cries of the enemy were audible.
Soldiers, both wounded and 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, and
he 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 open square. The bullets
fell literally like hail. Two struck him,—but where, and what they did,
whether they bruised or wounded him, he had not the time to decide.
In front, he could already see blue uniforms and red trousers, and
could hear shouts which were not Russian; one Frenchman was standing on
the breastworks, waving his cap, and shouting something. Kozeltzoff was
convinced that he was about to be killed; this gave him courage.
He ran on and on. Some soldiers overtook him; other soldiers appeared
at one side, also running. The blue uniforms remained at the same distance
from him, fleeing back from him to their own trenches; but beneath his feet
were the dead and wounded. When he had run to the outermost 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 Nikolaevsky
barracks, 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 lie still in
peace.
A plump little doctor, with black side-whiskers, approached him, and
unbuttoned his coat. Kozeltzoff stared over his chin at what the doctor was
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 the skirts 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 before
him, and, recalling the fact that he had been in the fifth bastion, he thought,
with an extraordinary feeling of self-satisfaction, that he had fulfilled his
duty well, and that, for the first time in all his service, he had behaved as
handsomely as it was possible for any one, and had nothing with which to
reproach himself. The doctor, after bandaging the other officer's wound,
pointed to Kozeltzoff, and said something to a priest, with a huge reddish
beard, and a cross, who was standing near by.
“What! am I dying?” Kozeltzoff asked the priest, when the latter
approached him.
The priest, without making any reply, recited a prayer and handed the
cross to the wounded man.
Death had no terrors for Kozeltzoff. He grasped the cross with his
weak hands, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.
“Well, were the French repulsed?” he inquired of the priest, in firm
tones.
“The victory has remained with us at every point,” replied the priest, in
order to comfort the wounded man, concealing from him the fact that the
French standard had already been unfurled on the Malakoff mound.
“Thank God!” said the wounded man, without feeling the tears which
were trickling 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 tale which
Vasin was in the act of relating to him, when there was a cry,—“The French
are coming!” The blood fled for a moment to Volodya's heart, and he felt his
cheeks turn cold and pale. For one second he remained motionless, but, on
glancing about him, he perceived that the 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
much as a step, crawled out of the bomb-proof, and ran to the battery.
There was no artillery firing whatever in progress on either side. It was
not so much the sight of the soldiers' composure which aroused his courage
as the pitiful and undisguised cowardice of Vlang. “Is it possible for me to
be like him?” he said to himself, and he ran on gayly up to the breastworks,
near which his mortars stood. It was clearly apparent to him that the French
were making straight for him through an open space, and that masses of
them, with their bayonets glittering in the sun, were moving in the nearest
trenches.
One, a short, broad-shouldered fellow, in zouave uniform, and armed
with 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 waiting for his
orders, and the metallic sound of the grape-shot which they discharged
shrieked over his head, first from one and then from the other mortar.
“First! second!” commanded Volodya, running from one mortar to the
other, and utterly oblivious of danger.
On one side, and near at hand, the crash of musketry from our men
under shelter, and anxious cries, were heard.
All at once a startling cry of despair, repeated by several voices, was
heard on the left: “They are surrounding us! They are surrounding us!”
Volodya looked round at this shout. Twenty Frenchmen made their
appearance 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 the battery,
he halted, and fired straight at Volodya, and then ran towards him once
more.
For a second, Volodya stood as though turned to stone, and did not
believe his eyes. When he recovered himself and glanced about him, there
were blue uniforms in front of him on the ramparts; two Frenchmen were
even spiking a cannon not ten paces distant from him.

There was no one near him, with the exception of Melnikoff, who had
been killed by a bullet beside him, and Vlang, who, with a handspike
clutched in his hand, had rushed forwards, with an expression of wrath on
his face, and with eyes lowered.
“Follow me, Vladímir Semyónitch! Follow me!” shouted the desperate
voice of Vlang, as he brandished his handspike over the French, who were
pouring in from the rear. The yunker's ferocious countenance startled them.
He struck the one who was in advance, on the head; the others involuntarily
paused, and Vlang continued to glare about him, and to shout in despairing
accents: “Follow me, Vladímir Semyónitch! Why do you stand there?
Run!” and ran towards the trenches in which lay our infantry, firing at the
French. After leaping into the trench, he came out again to see what his
adored ensign was doing. Something in a coat was lying prostrate where
Volodya had been standing, and the whole place was filled with Frenchmen,
who were firing at our men.

XXVI.

Vlang found his battery on the second line of defence. Out of the twenty
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 a
steamer loaded down with soldiers, cannon, horses, and wounded men, for
Severnaya.
There was no firing anywhere. The stars shone brilliantly in the sky, as
on the preceding night; but a strong wind tossed the sea. On the first and
second bastions, lightnings flashed along the earth; explosions rent the
atmosphere, and illuminated strange black objects in their vicinity, and the
stones which flew through the air.
Something was burning near the docks, and the red glare was reflected
in the water. The bridge, covered with people, was lighted up by the fire
from the Nikolaevsky battery. A vast flame seemed to hang over the water,
from the distant promontory of the Alexandrovsky battery, and illuminated
the clouds of smoke beneath, as it rose above them; and the same tranquil,
insolent, distant lights as on the preceding evening gleamed over the sea,
from the hostile fleet.

The fresh breeze raised billows in the bay. By the red light of the
conflagrations, the masts of our sunken ships, which were settling deeper
and deeper into the water, were visible. Not a sound of conversation was
heard on deck; there was nothing but the regular swish of the parted waves,
and the steam, the neighing and pawing of the horses, the words of
command from the captain, and the groans of the wounded. Vlang, who had
had nothing to eat all day, drew a bit of bread from his pocket, and began to
chew it; but all at once he recalled Volodya, and burst into such loud
weeping that the soldiers who were near him heard it.
“See how our Vlanga[N] is eating his bread and crying too,” said Vasin.
“Wonderful!” said another.
“And see, they have fired our barracks,” he continued, with a sigh.
“And how many of our brothers perished there; and the French got it for
nothing!”
“At all events, we have got out of it alive—thank God for that!” said
Vasin.
“But it's provoking, all the same!”
“What is there provoking about it? Do you suppose they are enjoying
themselves there? Not exactly! You wait, our men will take it away from
them again. And however many of our brethren perish, as God is holy, if the
emperor commands, they will win it back. Can ours leave it to them thus?
Never! There you have the bare walls; but they have destroyed all the
breastworks. Even if they have planted their standard on the hill, they won't
be able to make their way into the town.”
“Just wait, we'll have a hearty reckoning with you yet, only give us
time,” he concluded, addressing himself to the French.
“Of course we will!” said another, with conviction.
Along the whole line of bastions of Sevastopol, which had for so many
months seethed with remarkably vigorous life, which had for so many
months seen dying heroes relieved one after another by death, and which
had for so many months awakened the terror, the hatred, and finally the
admiration of the enemy,—on the bastions of Sevastopol, there was no
longer a single man. All was dead, wild, horrible,—but not silent.

Destruction was still in progress. On the earth, furrowed and strewn
with the recent explosions, lay bent gun-carriages, crushing down the
bodies of Russians and of the foe; heavy iron cannons silenced forever,
bombs and cannon-balls hurled with horrible force into pits, and half-buried
in the soil, then more corpses, pits, splinters of beams, bomb-proofs, and
still more silent bodies in gray and blue coats. All these were still frequently
shaken and lighted up by the crimson glow of the explosions, which
continued to shock the air.
The foe perceived that something incomprehensible was going on in
that menacing Sevastopol. Those explosions and the death-like silence on
the bastions made them shudder; but they dared not yet believe, being still
under the influence of the calm and forcible resistance of the day, that their
invincible enemy had disappeared, and they awaited motionless and in
silence the end of that gloomy night.
The army of Sevastopol, like the gloomy, surging sea, quivering
throughout its entire mass, wavering, ploughing across the bay, on the
bridge, and at the north fortifications, moved slowly through the
impenetrable darkness of the night; away from the place where it had left so
many of its brave brethren, from the place all steeped in its blood, from the
place which it had defended for eleven months against a foe twice as
powerful as itself, and which it was now ordered to abandon without a
battle.
The first impression produced on every Russian by this command was
inconceivably sad. The second feeling was a fear of pursuit. The men felt
that they were defenceless as soon as they abandoned the places on which
they were accustomed to fight, and they huddled together uneasily in the
dark, at the entrance to the bridge, which was swaying about in the heavy
breeze.
The infantry pressed forward, with a clash of bayonets, and a
thronging of regiments, equipages, and arms; cavalry officers made their
way about with orders, the inhabitants and the military servants
accompanying the baggage wept and besought to be permitted to cross,
while the artillery, in haste to get off, forced their way to the bay with a
thunder of wheels.

In spite of the diversions created by the varied and anxious demands
on their attention, the instinct of self-preservation and the desire to escape
as speedily as possible from that dread place of death were present in every
soul. This instinct existed also in a soldier mortally wounded, who lay
among the five hundred other wounded, upon the stone pavement of the
Pavlovsky quay, and prayed God to send death; and in the militia-man, who
with his last remaining strength pressed into the compact throng, in order to
make way for a general who rode by, and in the general in charge of the
transportation, who was engaged in restraining the haste of the soldiers, and
in the sailor, who had become entangled in the moving battalion, and who,
crushed by the surging throng, had lost his breath, and in the wounded
officer, who was being borne along in a litter by four soldiers, who, stopped
by the crowd, had placed him on the ground by the Nikolaevsky battery,
and in the artillery-man, who had served his gun for sixteen years, and who,
at his superior's command, to him incomprehensible, to throw overboard the
guns, had, with the aid of his comrades, sent them over the steep bank into
the bay; and in the men of the fleet, who had just closed the port-holes of
the ships, and had rowed lustily away in their boats. On stepping upon the
further end of the bridge, nearly every soldier pulled off his cap and crossed
himself.
But behind this instinct there was another, oppressive and far deeper,
existing along with it; this was a feeling which resembled repentance,
shame, and hatred. Almost every soldier, as he gazed on abandoned
Sevastopol, from the northern shore, sighed with inexpressible bitterness of
heart, and menaced the foe.

FOOTNOTES:
[I] In many regiments the officers call a soldier, half in scorn, half caressingly,
Moskva (Moscovite), or prisyaga (an oath).
[J] This effect cannot be reproduced in English.
[K] “My good sir,” a familiarly respectful mode of address.
[L] “Manual for Artillery Officers,” by Bezak.
[M] A game in which the loser is rapped on the nose with the cards.
[N] The feminine form, as previously referred to.

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Transcriber's Note

What appeared to be clear typographical errors were corrected; any other mistakes or
inconsistencies were retained.
All quotation marks have been retained as they appear in the original publication.
The formatting on the publisher's publications' list was very inconsistent, it was made
consistent whenever possible.

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