Sevastopol

“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!’[7 - 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.] 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 …”