Volodya was not precisely out of sorts when, nearly at nightfall,
they reached the great bridge over the bay, but he felt a certain
heaviness at his heart. All that he had heard and seen was so little
in consonance with the impressions which had recently passed away; the
huge, light examination hall, with its polished floor, the kind and
merry voices and laughter of his comrades, the new uniform, his beloved
tsar, whom he had been accustomed to see for the last seven years, and
who, when he took leave of them, had called them his children, with
tears in his eyes,—and everything that he had seen so little resembled
his very beautiful, rainbow-hued, magnificent dreams.
“Well, here we are at last!” said the elder brother, when they arrived
at the Mikhaïlovsky battery, and dismounted from their cart. “If
they let us pass the bridge, we will go directly to the Nikolaevsky
barracks. You stay there until morning, and I will go to the regiment
and find out where your battery is stationed, and to-morrow I will come
for you.”
“But why? It would be better if we both went together,” said Volodya;
“I will go to the bastion with you. It won't make any difference; I
shall have to get used to it. If you go, then I can too.”
“Better not go.”
“No, if you please; I do know, at least, that....”
“My advice is, not to go; but if you choose....”
The sky was clear and dark; the stars, and the fires of the bombs
in incessant movement and discharges, were gleaming brilliantly
through the gloom. The large white building of the battery, and the
beginning of the bridge stood out in the darkness. Literally, every
second several discharges of artillery and explosions, following each
other in quick succession or occurring simultaneously, shook the air
with increasing thunder and distinctness. Through this roar, and as
though repeating it, the melancholy dash of the waves was audible. A
faint breeze was drawing in from the sea, and the air was heavy with
moisture. The brothers stepped upon the bridge. A soldier struck his
gun awkwardly against his arm, and shouted:—
“Who goes there?”
“A soldier.”
“The orders are not to let any one pass!”
“What of that! We have business! We must pass!”
“Ask the officer.”
The officer, who was drowsing as he sat on an anchor, rose up and gave
the order to let them pass.
“You can go that way, but not this. Where are you driving to, all in a
heap!” he cried to the transport wagons piled high with gabions, which
had clustered about the entrance.
As they descended to the first pontoon, the brothers encountered
soldiers who were coming thence, and talking loudly.
“If he has received his ammunition money, then he has squared his
accounts in full—that's what it is!”
“Eh, brothers!” said another voice, “when you get over on the
Severnaya you will see the world, by heavens! The air is entirely
different.”
“You may say more!” said the first speaker. “A cursed shell flew in
there the other day, and it tore the legs off of two sailors, so
that....”
The brothers traversed the first pontoon, while waiting for the wagon,
and halted on the second, which was already flooded with water in
parts. The breeze, which had seemed weak inland, was very powerful
here, and came in gusts; the bridge swayed to and fro, and the waves,
beating noisily against the beams, and tearing at the cables and
anchors, flooded the planks. At the right the gloomily hostile sea
roared and darkled, as it lay separated by an interminable level black
line from the starry horizon, which was light gray in its gleam; lights
flashed afar on the enemy's fleet; on the left towered the black
masts of one of our vessels, and the waves could be heard as they
beat against her hull; a steamer was visible, as it moved noisily and
swiftly from the Severnaya.
The flash of a bomb, as it burst near it, illuminated for a moment
the lofty heaps of gabions on the deck, two men who were standing
on it, and the white foam and the spurts of greenish waves, as the
steamer ploughed through them. On the edge of the bridge, with his
legs dangling in the water, sat a man in his shirt-sleeves, who
was repairing something connected with the bridge. In front, over
Sevastopol, floated the same fires, and the terrible sounds grew louder
and louder. A wave rolled in from the sea, flowed over the right side
of the bridge, and wet Volodya's feet; two soldiers passed them,
dragging their feet through the water. Something suddenly burst with a
crash and lighted up the bridge ahead of them, the wagon driving over
it, and a man on horseback. The splinters fell into the waves with a
hiss, and sent up the water in splashes.
“Ah, Mikhaïlo Semyónitch!” said the rider, stopping, reining in his
horse in front of the elder Kozeltzoff, “have you fully recovered
already?”
“As you see. Whither is God taking you?”
“To the Severnaya, for cartridges; I am on my way to the adjutant of
the regiment ... we expect an assault to-morrow, at any hour.”
“And where is Martzoff?”
“He lost a leg yesterday; he was in the town, asleep in his room....
Perhaps you know it?”
“The regiment is in the fifth bastion, isn't it?”
“Yes; it has taken the place of the M—— regiment. Go to the
field-hospital; some of our men are there, and they will show you the
way.”
“Well, and are my quarters on the Morskaya still intact?”
“Why, my good fellow, they were smashed to bits long ago by the bombs.
You will not recognize Sevastopol now; there's not a single woman there
now, nor any inns nor music; the last establishment took its departure
yesterday. It has become horribly dismal there now.... Farewell!”
And the officer rode on his way at a trot.
All at once, Volodya became terribly frightened; it seemed to him
as though a cannon-ball or a splinter of bomb would fly in their
direction, and strike him directly on the head. This damp darkness,
all these sounds, especially the angry splashing of the waves, seemed
to be saying to him that he ought not to go any farther, that nothing
good awaited him yonder, that he would never again set foot on the
ground upon this side of the bay, that he must turn about at once, and
flee somewhere or other, as far as possible from this terrible haunt
of death. “But perhaps it is too late now, everything is settled,”
thought he, trembling partly at this thought and partly because the
water had soaked through his boots and wet his feet.
Volodya heaved a deep sigh, and went a little apart from his brother.
“Lord, will they kill me—me in particular? Lord, have mercy on me!”
said he, in a whisper, and he crossed himself.
“Come, Volodya, let us go on!” said the elder brother, when their
little cart had driven upon the bridge. “Did you see that bomb?”
On the bridge, the brothers met wagons filled with the wounded, with
gabions, and one loaded with furniture, which was driven by a woman. On
the further side no one detained them.
Clinging instinctively to the walls of the Nikolaevsky battery, the
brothers listened in silence to the noise of the bombs, exploding
overhead, and to the roar of the fragments, showering down from above,
and came to that spot in the battery where the image was. There they
learned that the fifth light battery, to which Volodya had been
assigned, was stationed on the Korabelnaya, and they decided that he
should go, in spite of the danger, and pass the night with the elder
in the fifth bastion, and that he should from there join his battery
the next day. They turned into the corridor, stepping over the legs
of the sleeping soldiers, who were lying all along the walls of the
battery, and at last they arrived at the place where the wounded were
attended to.