We will not speak of all die dangers and disenchantments our hero lived through that evening: how — instead of the firing he was used to on the Volkov field amid conditions of perfect exactitude and order which he had expected to meet with here also — he found two damaged mortars, one with its muzzle battered in by a ball, the other standing on the splinters of its shattered platform; how he could not get workmen before the morning to mend the platform; how not a single charge was of the weight specified in the Handbook; how two of the men under him were wounded, and how he was twenty times within a hair’s-breadth of death. Fortunately a gigantic gunner, a seaman who had served with the mortars since the commencement of the siege, had been appointed to assist Volodya, and convinced him of the possibility of using the mortars. By the light of a lantern this gunner showed him all over the battery as he might have shown him over his own kitchen-garden, and undertook to have everything right by the morning. The bomb-proof to which his guide led him was an oblong hole dug in the rocky ground, twenty-five cubic yards in size and covered with oak beams two and a half feet thick. He and all his soldiers installed themselves in it.
As soon as he discovered the little door, not three feet high, Vlang rushed in headlong before anyone else, and at the risk of breaking his limbs against the stone bottom squeezed into the farthest corner and remained there. Volodya, when all the soldiers had settled on the ground along the walls and some had lit their pipes, made up his own bed in a corner, lit a candle, and after lighting a cigarette, lay down.
The reports of continuous firing could be heard overhead but not very distinctly, except from one cannon which stood quite close and shook the bombproof with its thunder. In the bomb-proof all was quiet, except when one or other of the soldiers, still rather shy in the presence of the new officer, spoke, asking a neighbour to move a little or to give him a light for his pipe, when a rat scratched somewhere among the stones, or when Vlang, who had not yet recovered and was still looking wildly around him, heaved a deep sigh.
Volodya, on his bed in this quiet corner crammed with people and lighted by a solitary candle, experienced a sensation of cosiness such as he had felt as a child when, playing hide-and-seek, he used to creep into a cupboard or under his mother’s skirt and sit listening in breathless silence, afraid of the dark yet conscious of enjoyment. It felt rather uncanny, yet his spirits were high.
XXII
After ten minutes or so the soldiers grew bolder and began to talk. The more important ones — two noncommissioned officers: an old grey-haired one with every possible medal and cross except the St. George, and a young one, a Cantonist,1 who was smoking cigarettes he had rolled himself — settled nearest to the light and to the officer’s bed. The drummer had as usual assumed the duty of waiting upon the officer. The bombardiers and those who had medals came
1 The Cantonists, under serfdom, which still prevailed at the time of the Crimean War, were the sons of soldiers, condemned by law and heredity to be soldiers also. next, and farther off, in the shadow nearer the entrance, sat the humbler folk. It was these last who started a conversation, caused by the noise a man made who came tumbling hurriedly into the bombproof.
‘Hullo, old fellow! Why don’t you stay outside? Don’t the lasses play merrily enough out there?’ said a voice.
‘They’re playing such tunes as we never hear in our village,’ laughingly replied the man who had just run in.
‘Ah, Vasin don’t like bombs — that he don’t!’ said some one in the aristocratic corner.
‘If it was necessary, that would be a different matter,’ replied Vasin slowly, and when he spoke all the others were silent. ‘On the 24th we were at least firing, but why grumble at me now? The authorities won’t thank the likes of us for getting killed uselessly.’
At these words everyone laughed.
‘There’s Melnikov — he’s out there now, I fancy,’ said someone.
‘Go and send Melnikov in here,’ said the old sergeant, ‘or else he really will get killed uselessly.’
‘Who is Melnikov?’ asked Volodya.
‘Oh, he’s a poor silly soldier of ours, your honour. He’s just afraid of nothing, and he’s walking about outside now. You should have a look at him, he’s just like a bear.’
‘He knows a charm,’ came Vasin’s long-drawn accents from the other corner,
Melnikov entered the bomb-proof. He was stout (an extremely rare thing among soldiers), red-haired and red-faced, with an enormous bulging forehead and prominent pale-blue eyes.
‘Aren’t you afraid of the bombs?’ asked Volodya.
‘What’s there to be afraid of in them bombs?’ answered Melnikov, wriggling and scratching himself. ‘They won’t kill me with a bomb, I know.’ ‘So you’d like to live here?’
“Course I should. It’s jolly here,’ he said and burst out laughing.
‘Oh, then they should take you for a sortie! Shall I speak to the general about it?’ said Volodya, though he did not know a single general in the place.
‘Like, indeed! ‘Course I should!’ And Melnikov hid behind the others.
‘Let’s have a game of “noses” lads! Who has the cards?’ his voice was heard to say hurriedly.
And soon the game had started in the far corner: laughter could be heard, and noses being smacked and trumps declared. The drummer having heated the samovar for him, Volodya drank some tea, treated the non-commissioned officers to some, and, wishing to gain popularity, joked and talked with them and felt very pleased at the respect paid him.
The soldiers, seeing that the gentleman gave himself no airs, became talkative too. One of them explained that the siege of Sevastopol would not last much longer, because a reliable fellow in the fleet had told him that Constantine, the Tsar’s brother, was coming with the ‘merican fleet to help us, and also that there would soon be an agreement not to fire for a fortnight, but to have a rest, and that if anyone did fire, he’d have to pay a fine of seventy-five kopeks for each shot. Vasin, who was a small man with whiskers and large kind eyes, as Volodya had already noticed, related, first amid general silence and then amid roars of laughter, how he had gone home on leave and at first everyone was glad to see him, but then his father had begun sending him to work while the forester-lieutenant sent a horse and trap to fetch his wife! All this amused Volodya very much. He not only felt no fear or annoyance because of the overcrowding and bad air in the bomb-proof, but on the contrary felt exceedingly bright and contented.
Many of the soldiers were already snoring. Vlang bad also stretched himself out on the floor, and the old sergeant having spread his cloak on the ground was crossing himself and muttering prayers before going to sleep, when Volodya felt moved to go out of the bomb-proof and see what was happening outside.
‘Draw in your legs!’ the soldiers called to one another as soon as he rose, and the legs were drawn in to make room for him.
Vlang, who had seemed to be asleep, suddenly raised his head and seized Volodya by the skirts of his cloak.
‘Don’t go! Don’t go — how can you?’ he began in a tearfully persuasive voice. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. Cannon-balls are falling all the time out there. It’s better in here.’
But in spite of Vlang’s entreaties Volodya made his way out of the bomb-proof and sat down on the threshold, where Melnikov was already sitting making his feet comfortable.
The air was pure and fresh, especially after that of the bomb-proof, and the night was clear and calm. Mingling with the booming of the cannon could be heard the rumbling of the wheels of carts bringing gabions, and voices of men at work in the powder-vault. High overhead stretched the starry sky, across which the fiery trails of the bombs ran incessantly. On the left was another bomb-proof, through the three-foot opening of which the legs and backs of the sailors who lived there could be seen and their voices heard. In front was the roof of the powder-vault, past which flitted the figures of stooping men, while on the top of it, under the bullets and bombs that kept flying past, was a tall figure in a black cloak with its hands in its pockets, treading down the earth the others carried up in sacks. Many a bomb flew past and exploded very near the vault. The soldiers who were carrying the earth stooped and stepped aside, but the black figure continued calmly to stamp the earth down with its feet and remained
