"D--n it all! I shall go home."
"Home?"
"You don't understand what duty is!"
"Home? Listen! he wants to go home!"
There was a burst of laughter and of painful shouts--and again all
became silent--giving way before the incomprehensible. And then not
only I, but every one of us felt _that_. It was coming towards us out
of those dark, mysterious and strange fields; it was rising from out
of those obscure dark ravines, where, maybe, the forgotten and lost
among the stones were still dying; it was flowing from the strange,
unfamiliar sky. We stood around the dying-out samovar in silence,
losing consciousness from horror, while an enormous, shapeless shadow
that had risen above the world, looked down upon us from the sky with
a steady and silent gaze. Suddenly, quite close to us, probably at
the Commander's house, music burst forth, and the frenzied, joyous,
loud sounds seemed to flash out into the night and stillness. The band
played with frenzied mirth and defiance, hurriedly, discordantly,
too loudly, and too joyously, and one could feel that those who
were playing, and those who were listening, saw as we did, that same
enormous, shapeless shadow, risen above the world. And it was clear the
player on the trumpet carried in himself, in his very brain and ears,
that same enormous dumb shadow. The abrupt and broken sound tossed
about, jumping and running away from the others, quivering with horror
and insanity in its lonesomeness. And the other sounds seemed to be
looking round at it, so clumsily they ran, stumbling, falling, and
again rising in a disorderly crowd--too loud, too joyous, too close to
the black ravines, where most probably the forgotten and lost among the
boulders were still dying.
And we stood for a long time around the cold samovar and were silent.