The elder Kozeltzoff, who had succeeded in winning back his money and
losing it all again that night, including even the gold pieces which
were sewed into his cuffs, had fallen, just before daybreak, into a
heavy, unhealthy, but profound slumber, in the fortified barracks of
the fifth battalion, when the fateful cry, repeated by various voices,
rang out:—
“The alarm!”
“Why are you sleeping, Mikhaïl Semyónitch! There's an assault!” a voice
shouted to him.
“That is probably some school-boy,” he said, opening his eyes, but
putting no faith in it.
But all at once he caught sight of an officer running aimlessly from
one corner to the other, with such a pale face that he understood it
all. The thought that he might be taken for a coward, who did not wish
to go out to his company at a critical moment, struck him with terrible
force. He ran to his corps at the top of his speed. Firing had ceased
from the heavy guns; but the crash of musketry was at its height. The
bullets whistled, not singly like rifle-balls, but in swarms, like a
flock of birds in autumn, flying past overhead. The entire spot on
which his battalion had stood the night before was veiled in smoke, and
the shouts and cries of the enemy were audible. Soldiers, both wounded
and unwounded, met him in throngs. After running thirty paces further,
he caught sight of his company, which was hugging the wall.
“They have captured Schwartz,” said a young officer. “All is lost!”
“Nonsense!” said he, angrily, grasping his blunt little iron sword, and
he began to shout:—
“Forward, children! Hurrah!”
His voice was strong and ringing; it roused even Kozeltzoff himself.
He ran forward along the traverse; fifty soldiers rushed after him,
shouting as they went. From the traverse he ran out upon an open
square. The bullets fell literally like hail. Two struck him,—but
where, and what they did, whether they bruised or wounded him, he had
not the time to decide.
In front, he could already see blue uniforms and red trousers, and
could hear shouts which were not Russian; one Frenchman was standing on
the breastworks, waving his cap, and shouting something. Kozeltzoff was
convinced that he was about to be killed; this gave him courage.
He ran on and on. Some soldiers overtook him; other soldiers appeared
at one side, also running. The blue uniforms remained at the same
distance from him, fleeing back from him to their own trenches; but
beneath his feet were the dead and wounded. When he had run to the
outermost ditch, everything became confused before Kozeltzoff's eyes,
and he was conscious of a pain in the breast.
Half an hour later, he was lying on a stretcher, near the Nikolaevsky
barracks, and knew that he was wounded, though he felt hardly any pain;
all he wanted was something cooling to drink, and to be allowed to lie
still in peace.
A plump little doctor, with black side-whiskers, approached him, and
unbuttoned his coat. Kozeltzoff stared over his chin at what the doctor
was doing to his wound, and at the doctor's face, but he felt no pain.
The doctor covered his wound with his shirt, wiped his fingers on the
skirts of his coat, and, without a word or glance at the wounded man,
went off to some one else.
Kozeltzoff's eyes mechanically took note of what was going on before
him, and, recalling the fact that he had been in the fifth bastion,
he thought, with an extraordinary feeling of self-satisfaction, that
he had fulfilled his duty well, and that, for the first time in all
his service, he had behaved as handsomely as it was possible for any
one, and had nothing with which to reproach himself. The doctor, after
bandaging the other officer's wound, pointed to Kozeltzoff, and said
something to a priest, with a huge reddish beard, and a cross, who was
standing near by.
“What! am I dying?” Kozeltzoff asked the priest, when the latter
approached him.
The priest, without making any reply, recited a prayer and handed the
cross to the wounded man.
Death had no terrors for Kozeltzoff. He grasped the cross with his weak
hands, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.
“Well, were the French repulsed?” he inquired of the priest, in firm
tones.
“The victory has remained with us at every point,” replied the priest,
in order to comfort the wounded man, concealing from him the fact that
the French standard had already been unfurled on the Malakoff mound.
“Thank God!” said the wounded man, without feeling the tears which were
trickling down his cheeks.
The thought of his brother occurred to his mind for a single instant.
“May God grant him the same good-fortune,” he said to himself.