But at this point in the story Galtsin interrupted him.
‘You are from the bastion?’
‘Yes, your Honour.’
‘Well, what happened? Tell me.’
‘What happened? Well, your Honour, such a force of’em poured down on us over the ramPart, it was all up. They quite overpowered us, your Honour!’
‘Overpowered? . . . But you repulsed them?’
‘How could we repulse them when his whole force came on, killed all our men, and no re’forcements were given us?’
1 Our soldiers fighting the Turks have become so accustomed to this cry of the enemy that they now always say that the French also shout ‘Allah!’ The soldier was mistaken, the trench had remained ours; but it is a curious fact which anyone may notice, that a soldier wounded in action always thinks the affair lost and imagines it to have been a very bloody fight.
‘How is that? I was told they had been repulsed,’ said Galtsin irritably. ‘Perhaps they were driven back after you left? Is it long since you came away?’
‘I am straight from there, your Honour,’ answered the soldier, ‘it is hardly possible. They must have kept the trench, he quite overpowered us.’
‘And aren’t you ashamed to have lost the trench? It’s terrible!’ said Galtsin, provoked by such indifference.
‘Why, if the strength is on their side . . .’ muttered the soldier.
‘Ah, your Honour,’ began a soldier from a stretcher which had just come up to them, ‘how could we help giving it up when he had killed almost all our men? If we’d had the strength we wouldn’t have given it up, not on any account. But as it was, what could we do? I stuck one, and then something hits me. Oh, oh-h! Steady, lads, steady! Oh, oh!’ groaned the wounded man.
‘Really, there seem to be too many men returning,’ said Galtsin, again stopping the tall soldier with the two guns. ‘Why are you retiring? You there, stop!’
The soldier stopped and took off his cap with his left hand.
‘Where are you going, and why?’ shouted Galtsin severely, ‘you scoun— ‘
But having come close up to the soldier, Galtsin noticed that no hand was visible beneath the soldier’s right cuff and that the sleeve was soaked in blood to the elbow.
‘I am wounded, your Honour.’
‘Wounded? How?’
‘Here. Must have been with a bullet,’ said the man, pointing to his arm, ‘but I don’t know what struck my head here,’ and bending his head he showed the matted hair at the back stuck together with blood.
‘And whose is this other gun?’
‘It’s a French rifle I took, your Honour. But I wouldn’t have come away if it weren’t to lead this fellow — he may fall,’ he added, pointing to a soldier who was walking a little in front leaning on his gun and painfully dragging his left leg.
Prince Galtsin suddenly felt horribly ashamed of his unjust suspicions. He felt himself blushing, turned away, and went to the hospital without either questioning or watching the wounded men any more.
Having with difficulty pushed his way through the porch among the wounded who had come on foot and the bearers who were carrying in the wounded and bringing out the dead, Galtsin entered the first room, gave a look round, and involuntarily turned back and ran out into the street: it was too terrible.
VIII
The large, lofty, dark hall, lit up only by the four or five candles with which the doctors examined the wounded, was quite full. Yet the bearers kept bringing in more wounded — laying them side by side on the floor which was already so packed that the unfortunate patients were jostled together, staining one another with their blood — and going to fetch more wounded. The pools of blood visible in the unoccupied spaces, the feverish breathing of several hundred men, and the perspiration of the bearers with the stretchers, filled the air with a peculiar, heavy, thick, fetid mist, in which the candles burnt dimly in different Parts of the hall. All sorts of groans, sighs, death-rattles, now and then interrupted by shrill screams, filled the whole room. Sisters with quiet faces, expressing no empty feminine tearful pity, but active practical sympathy, stepped here and there across the wounded with medicines, water, bandages, and lint, flitting among the blood-stained coats and shirts. The doctors, kneeling with rolled-up sleeves beside the wounded, by the light of the candles their assistants held, examined, felt, and probed their wounds, heedless of the terrible groans and entreaties of the sufferers. One doctor sat at a table near the door and at the moment Galtsin came in was already entering No. 532.
‘Ivan Bogdev, Private, Company Three, S — Regiment, fractura femuris complicata!’ shouted another doctor from the end of the room, examining a shattered leg. ‘Turn him over.’
‘Oh, oh, fathers! Oh, you’re our fathers!’ screamed the soldier, beseeching them not to touch him.
‘Perforatio capitis!’
‘Simon Neferdov, Lieutenant-Colonel of the N — Infantry Regiment. Have a little patience, Colonel, or it is quite impossible: I shall give it up!’ said a third doctor, poking about with some kind of hook in the unfortunate colonel’s skull.
‘Oh, don’t! Oh, for God’s sake be quick! Be quick! Ah-!’
Perforatio pectoris . . . Sebastian Sereda, Private . . . what regiment? But you need not write that: moritur. Carry him away,’ said the doctor, leaving the soldier, whose eyes turned up and in whose throat the death-rattle already sounded.
About forty soldier stretcher-bearers stood at the door waiting to carry the bandaged to the wards and the dead to the chapel. They looked on at the scene before them in silence, only broken now and then by a heavy sigh.
IX
On his way to the bastion Kalugin met many wounded, but knowing by experience that in action such sights have a bad effect on one’s spirits, he did not stop to question them but tried on the contrary not to notice them. At the foot of the hill he met an orderly-officer galloping fast from the bastion.
‘Zobkin! Zobkin! Wait a bit!’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Where are you from?’
‘The lodgements.’
‘How are things there — hot?’
‘Oh, awful!’
And the orderly galloped on.
In fact, though there was now but little small-arm firing, the cannonade had recommenced with fresh heat and persistence.
‘Ah, that’s bad!’ thought Kalugin with an unpleasant sensation, and he too had a presentiment — a very usual thought, the thought of death. But Kalugin was ambitious and blessed with nerves of oak — in a word, he was what is called brave. He did not yield to the first feeling but began to nerve himself. He recalled how an adjutant, Napoleon’s he thought, having delivered an order, galloped with bleeding head full speed to Napoleon. ‘Vous etes blesse?’1 said Napoleon. ‘Je vous demande pardon, sire, je suis mort,’2 and the adjutant fell from his horse, dead.
That seemed to him very fine, and he pictured himself for a moment in the role of that adjutant. Then he whipped his horse, assuming a still more dashing Cossack seat, looked back at the Cossack who, standing up in his stirrups, was trotting behind, and rode quite gallantly up to the spot where he had to dismount. Here he found four soldiers sitting on some stones smoking their pipes.
‘What are you doing there?’ he shouted at them.
‘Been carrying off a wounded man and sat down to rest a bit, your Honour,’ said one of them, hiding his pipe behind his back and taking off his cap.
1 ‘You are wounded?’
2 ‘Excuse me, sire, I am dead.’ ‘Resting, indeed! … To your places, march!’
And he went up the hill with them through the trench, meeting wounded men at every step.
After ascending the hill he turned to the left, and a few steps farther on found himself quite alone. A splinter of a bomb whizzed near him and fell into the trench. Another bomb rose in front of him and seemed flying straight at him. He suddenly felt frightened, ran a few steps at full speed, and lay down flat. When the bomb burst a considerable distance off he felt exceedingly vexed with himself and rose, looking round to see if anyone had noticed his downfall, but no one was near.
But when fear has once entered the soul it does not easily yield to any other feeling. He, who always boasted that he never even stooped, now hurried along the trench almost on all fours. He stumbled, and thought, ‘Oh, it’s awful! They’ll kill me for certain!’ His breath came with difficulty, and perspiration broke out over his whole body. He was surprised at himself but no longer strove to master his feelings.
Suddenly he heard footsteps in front. Quickly straightening himself he raised his head, and boldly clanking his sabre went on more deliberately. He felt himself quite a different man. When he met an officer of the Engineers and a sailor, and the officer shouted to him to lie down, pointing to a bright spot which growing brighter and brighter approached more and more swiftly and came crashing down close to the trench, he only bent a little, involuntarily influenced by the frightened cry, and went on.
‘That’s a brave one,’ said the sailor, looking quite calmly at the bomb and with experienced eye deciding at once that the splinters could not fly into the trench, ‘he won’t even lie down.’
It was only a few steps across open ground to the bomb-proof shelter of the Commander of the bastion, when Kalugin’s mind again became clouded and the same stupid terror seized him: his heart
