He bragged unintentionally, becausc during the whole of the affair he had been as it were in a fog and so bewildered that all he remembered of what had happened seemed to have happened somewhere, at some time, and to somebody. And very naturally he tried to recall the details in a light advantageous to himself. What really occurred was this:
The battalion the cadet had been ordered to join for the sortie stood under fire for two hours close to some low wall. Then the battalion-commander in front said something, the company-commanders became active, the battalion advanced from behind the breastwork, and after going about a hundred paces stopped to form into company columns. Pesth was told to take his place on the right flank of the second company.
Quite unable to realize where he was and why he was there, the cadet took his place, and involuntarily holding his breath while cold shivers ran down his back he gazed into the dark distance expecting something dreadful. He was however not so much frightened (for there was no firing) as disturbed and agitated at being in the field beyond the fortifications.
Again the battalion-commander in front said some-thing. Again the officers spoke in whispers passing on the order, and the black wall, formed by the first company, suddenly sank out of sight. The order was to lie down. The second company also lay down and in lying down Pesth hurt his hand on a sharp prickle. Only the commander of the second company remained standing. His short figure brandishing a sword moved in front of the company and he spoke incessantly.
‘Mind lads! Show them what you’re made of! Don’t fire, but give it them with the bayonet — the dogs! — when I cry “Hurrah!” Altogether,mind, that’s the thing! We’ll let them see who we are. We won’t disgrace ourselves, eh lads? For our father the Tsar!’
‘What’s your company-commander’s name?’ asked Pesth of a cadet lying near him. ‘How brave he is!’
‘Yes he always is, in action,’ answered the cadet. ‘His name is Lisinkovski.’
Just then a flame suddenly flashed up right in front of the company, who were deafened by a resounding crash. High up in the air stones and splinters clattered. (Some fifty seconds later a stone fell from above and severed a soldier’s leg.) It was a bomb fired from an elevated stand, and the fact that it reached the company showed that the French had noticed the column.
‘You’re sending bombs, are you? Wait a bit till we get at you, then you’ll taste a three-edged Russian bayonet, damn you!’ said the company-commander so loud that the battalion-commander had to order him to hold his tongue and not make so much noise.
After that the first company got up, then the second. They were ordered to fix bayonets and the battalion advanced. Pesth was in such a fright that he could not in the least make out how long it lasted, where he went, or who was who. He went on as if he were drunk. But suddenly a million fires flashed from all sides, and something whistled and clattered. He shouted and ran somewhere, because everyone shouted and ran. Then he stumbled and fell over something. It was the company-commander, who had been wounded at the head of his company, and who taking the cadet for a Frenchman had seized him by the leg.
Then when Pesth had freed his leg and got up, someone else ran against him from behind in the dark and nearly knocked him down again. ‘Run him through!’ someone else shouted. ‘Why are you stopping?’ Then someone seized a bayonet and stuck it into something soft. ‘Ah Dieu!’ came a dreadful, piercing voice and Pesth only then understood that he had bayoneted a Frenchman. A cold sweat Covered his whole body, he trembled as in a fever and threw down his musket. But this lasted only a moment; the thought immediately entered his head that he was a hero. He again seized his musket, and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ ran with the crowd away from the dead Frenchman. Having run twenty paces he came to a trench. Some of our men were there with the battalion-commander.
‘And I have killed one!’ said Pesth to the commander.
‘You’re a fine fellow, Baron!’
XII
‘Do you know Praskukhin is killed?’ said Pesth, while accompanying Kalugin on his way home.
‘Impossible!’
‘It is true. I saw him myself.’
‘Well, good-bye … I must be off.’
‘This is capital!’ thought Kalugin, as he came to his lodgings. ‘It’s the first time I have had such luck when on duty. It’s first-rate. I am alive and well, and shall certainly get an excellent recommendation and am sure of a gold sabre. And I really have deserved it.’ After reporting what was necessary to the General he went to his room, where Prince Galtsin, long since returned, sat awaiting him, reading a book he had found on Kalugin’s table.
It was with extraordinary pleasure that Kalugin found himself safe at home again, and having put on his night-shirt and got into bed he gave Galtsin all the details of the affair, telling them very naturally from a point of view where those details showed what a capable and brave officer he, Kalugin, was (which it seems to me it was hardly necessary to allude to, since everybody knew it and had no right or reason to question it, except perhaps the deceased Captain Praskukhin who, though he had considered it an honour to walk arm in arm with Kalugin, had privately told a friend only yesterday that though Kalugin was a first-rate fellow, yet, ‘between you and me, he was awfully disinclined to go to the bastions’).
Praskukhin, who had been walking beside Mikhaylov after Kalugin had slipped away from him, had scarcely begun to revive a little on approaching a safer place, than he suddenly saw a bright light flash up behind him and heard the sentinel shout ‘Mortar!’ and a soldier walking behind him say: ‘That’s coming straight for the bastion!’
Mikhaylov looked round. The bright spot seemed to have stopped at its zenith, in the position which makes it absolutely impossible to define its direction. But that only lasted a moment: the bomb, coming faster and faster, nearer and nearer, so that the sparks of its fuse were already visible and its fatal whistle audible, descended towards the centre of the battalion.
‘Lie down!’ shouted someone.
Mikhaylov and Praskukhin lay flat on the ground. Praskukhin, closing his eyes, only heard the bomb crash down on the hard earth close by. A second passed which seemed an hour: the bomb had not mentally and repeated, ‘Thy will be done.’ And at the same time he thought, ‘Why did I enter the army? And why did I join lie infantry to take Part in this campaign? Wouldn’t it have been better to have remained with the Uhlan regiment at T — and spent my time with my friend Natasha? And now here I am . . .’ and he began to count, ‘One, two, three, four,’ deciding that if the bomb burst at an even number he would live but if at an odd number he would be killed. ‘It is all over, I’m killed!’ he thought when the bomb burst (he did not remember whether at an odd or even number) and he felt a blow and a cruel pain in his head. ‘Lord, forgive me my trespasses!’ he muttered, folding his hands. He rose, but fell on his back senseless.
When he came to, his first sensations were that of blood trickling down his nose, and the pain in his head which had become much less violent. ‘That’s the soul passing,’ he thought. ‘How will it be there? Lord, receive my soul in peace!… Only it’s strange,’ thought he, ‘that while dying I should hear the steps of the soldiers and the sounds of the firing so distinctly.’
‘Bring stretchers! Eh, the Captain has been hit!’ shouted a voice above his head, which he recognized as the voice of the drummer Ignatyev.
Someone took him by the shoulders. With an effort he opened his eyes and saw above him the sky, some groups of stars, and two bombs racing one another as they flew over him. He saw Ignatyev, soldiers with stretchers and guns, the embankment, the trenches, and suddenly realized that he was not yet in the other world.
He had been slightly wounded in the head by a stone. His first feeling was one almost of regret: he had prepared himself so well and so calmly to go there that the return to reality, with its bombs, stretchers, and blood, seemed unpleasant. The second feeling was unconscious joy at being alive, and the third a wish to get away from the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer tied a handkerchief round his commander’s head and taking his arm led him towards the ambulance station.
‘But why and where am I going?’ thought the lieutenant-captain when he had collected his senses. ‘My duty is to remain with the company and not leave it behind — especially,’ whispered a voice, ‘as it will soon be out of range of the guns.’
‘Don’t trouble about me, my lad,’ said he, drawing his hand away from the attentive drummer. ‘I won’t go to the ambulance station: I’ll stay with the company.’
And he turned back.
‘It would be better to have it properly bandaged, your honour,’ said Ignatyev. ‘It’s only in the heat of the moment that it seems nothing. Mind it doesn’t get worse. . . . And just
