Chapter VIII

Kalouguine met many wounded on his way to the bastion. Knowing by experience the bad influence of this spectacle on the spirit of a man who is going under fire, he not only did not stop them to ask questions, but he tried not to notice those he met. At the foot of the hill he ran across a staff-officer coming down from the bastion full speed.

“Zobkine! Zobkine! one moment!”

“What?”

“Where do you come from?”

“From the quarters.”

“Well, what is going on there? Is it hot?”

“Terribly!”

And the officer galloped off. The fusillade seemed to grow less; on the other hand, the cannonade began again with renewed vigor.

“Hum--a bad business!” thought Kalouguine. He had an indefinite but very disagreeable feeling; he had even a presentiment, that is to say, a very common thought--the thought of death.

Kalouguine possessed self-love and nerves of steel. He was, in a word, what is commonly called a brave man. He did not give way to this first impression; he raised his courage by recalling the story of one of Napoleon’s aides-de-camp, who came to his chief with his head bloody, after having carried an order with all speed.

“Are you wounded?” asked the emperor.

“I crave pardon, sire, I am dead!” replied the aide-de-camp, and falling from his horse, died on the spot.

This anecdote pleased him. Putting himself in imagination in the place of the aide-de-camp, he lashed his horse, put on a still more “Cossack” gait, and rising in his stirrups to cast a look upon the platoon that followed him on a trot, he reached the place where they had to dismount. There he found four soldiers sitting on some rocks, smoking their pipes.

“What are you doing there?” he cried.

“We have been carrying a wounded man, your Excellency, and we are resting,” said one of them, hiding his pipe behind his back and taking off his cap.

“That’s it--you are resting! Forward! to your post!”

He put himself at their head and proceeded with them along the trench, meeting wounded men at every step. On the top of the plateau he turned to the left and found himself, a few steps farther on, completely isolated. A piece of a shell whistled near him and buried itself in the trenches; a mortar-bomb rising in the air seemed to fly straight for his breast. Seized by a sudden terror, he rushed on several steps and threw himself down. When the bomb had burst some distance off he was very angry with himself and got up. He looked around to see if any one had noticed him lying down; no one was near.

Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment. He who had boasted of never bowing his head, went along the trenches at a rapid pace, and almost on his hands and feet.

“Ah! it is a bad sign,” thought he, as his foot tripped. “I shall be killed, sure!”

He breathed with difficulty; he was bathed with sweat, and he was astonished that he made no effort to overcome his fright. Suddenly, at the sound of a step which approached, he quickly straightened up, raised his head, clinked his sabre with a swagger, and lessened his pace. He met an officer of sappers and a sailor. The former shouted, “Lie down!” pointing to the luminous point of a bomb-shell, which came nearer, redoubling its speed and its brightness.

The projectile struck in the side of the trench. At the cry of the officer, Kalouguine made a slight, involuntary bow, then continued on his way without a frown.

“There’s a brave fellow!” said the sailor who coolly watched the fall of the bomb. His practised eye had calculated that the pieces would not fall into the trench. “He wouldn’t lie down!”

In order to reach the bomb-proof occupied by the commander of the bastion, Kalouguine had only one more open space to pass when he felt himself again overcome by a stupid fear. His heart beat as if it would burst, the blood rushed to his head, and it was only by a violent effort of self-control that he reached the shelter at a run.

“Why are you so out of breath?” asked the general, after he had delivered the order he brought.

“I walked very quickly, Excellency.”

“Can I offer you a glass of wine?”

Kalouguine drank a bumper and lit a cigarette. The engagement was finished, but a violent cannonade continued on both sides. The commander of the bastion and several officers, among them Praskoukine, were assembled in the bomb-proof; they were talking over the details of the affair. The interior, covered with figured paper with a blue ground, was furnished with a lounge, a bed, a table covered with papers, and decorated with a clock hanging on the wall and an image, before which burned a small lamp. Seated in this comfortable room, Kalouguine saw all the marks of a quiet life; he measured with his eye the great beams of the ceiling half a yard thick; he heard the noise of the cannonade, deafened by the bomb-proofs, and he could not understand how he could have yielded twice to unpardonable attacks of weakness. Angry with himself, he would have liked to expose himself to danger again to put his courage to the proof.

A naval officer with a great mustache and a cross of Saint George on his staff overcoat came at this moment to beg the general to give him some workmen to repair two sand-bag embrasures in the battery.

“I am very glad to see you, captain,” said Kalouguine to the new-comer; “the general charged me to ask you if your cannon can fire grape into the trenches.”

“One single gun,” replied the captain, with a morose air.

“Let’s go and look at them!”

The officer frowned and growled out,

“I have just passed the whole night there, and I have come in to rest a little; can’t you go there alone? You will find my second in command, Lieutenant Kartz, who will show you everything.”

The captain had commanded this same battery for full six months, and it was one of the most dangerous posts. He had not left the bastion, indeed, since the beginning of the siege, and even before the construction of the bomb-proof shelters. He had gained among the sailors a reputation for invincible courage. On this account his refusal was a lively surprise to Kalouguine.

“That’s what reputations are!” thought the latter. “Then I will go alone, if you allow me,” he added aloud, in a mocking tone, to which the officer paid no attention.

Kalouguine forgot that this man counted six whole months of life in the bastion, while he, altogether, at different times, had not passed more than fifty hours there. Vanity, desire to shine, to get a reward, to make a reputation, even the delight in danger, incited him still more, while the captain had become indifferent to all that. He had also made a show, had performed courageous deeds, had uselessly risked his life, had hoped for and had received rewards, had established his reputation as a brave officer. But to-day these stimulants had lost their power over him; he looked at things differently. Well understanding that he had little chance of escaping death after six months in the bastions, he did not thoughtlessly risk his life, and limited himself to fulfilling strictly his duty. In fact, the young lieutenant appointed to his battery only eight days ago, and Kalouguine to whom this lieutenant showed it in detail, seemed ten times braver than the captain. Rising in each other’s estimation, these two hung out of the embrasures and climbed over the ramparts.

His inspection ended, and as he was returning to the bomb-proof, Kalouguine ran against the general, who was going to the observation tower, followed by his staff.

“Captain Praskoukine,” ordered the general, “go down, I beg, into the quarters on the right. You will find there the second battalion from M---- which is working down there. Order it to stop work, to retire without noise, and to rejoin its regiment in the reserve force at the bottom of the hill. You understand? Lead it yourself to the regiment.”

“I’m off,” replied Praskoukine, and he departed on the run.

The cannonade diminished in violence.