Vlang found his battery on the second line of defence. Out of the
twenty soldiers who had been in the mortar battery, only eight survived.
At nine o'clock in the evening, Vlang set out with the battery on a
steamer loaded down with soldiers, cannon, horses, and wounded men, for
Severnaya.
There was no firing anywhere. The stars shone brilliantly in the
sky, as on the preceding night; but a strong wind tossed the sea. On
the first and second bastions, lightnings flashed along the earth;
explosions rent the atmosphere, and illuminated strange black objects
in their vicinity, and the stones which flew through the air.
Something was burning near the docks, and the red glare was reflected
in the water. The bridge, covered with people, was lighted up by the
fire from the Nikolaevsky battery. A vast flame seemed to hang over the
water, from the distant promontory of the Alexandrovsky battery, and
illuminated the clouds of smoke beneath, as it rose above them; and
the same tranquil, insolent, distant lights as on the preceding evening
gleamed over the sea, from the hostile fleet.
The fresh breeze raised billows in the bay. By the red light of the
conflagrations, the masts of our sunken ships, which were settling
deeper and deeper into the water, were visible. Not a sound of
conversation was heard on deck; there was nothing but the regular swish
of the parted waves, and the steam, the neighing and pawing of the
horses, the words of command from the captain, and the groans of the
wounded. Vlang, who had had nothing to eat all day, drew a bit of bread
from his pocket, and began to chew it; but all at once he recalled
Volodya, and burst into such loud weeping that the soldiers who were
near him heard it.
“See how our Vlang_a_[N] is eating his bread and crying too,” said
Vasin.
[N] The feminine form, as previously referred to.
“Wonderful!” said another.
“And see, they have fired our barracks,” he continued, with a sigh.
“And how many of our brothers perished there; and the French got it for
nothing!”
“At all events, we have got out of it alive—thank God for that!” said
Vasin.
“But it's provoking, all the same!”
“What is there provoking about it? Do you suppose they are enjoying
themselves there? Not exactly! You wait, our men will take it away from
them again. And however many of our brethren perish, as God is holy, if
the emperor commands, they will win it back. Can ours leave it to them
thus? Never! There you have the bare walls; but they have destroyed all
the breastworks. Even if they have planted their standard on the hill,
they won't be able to make their way into the town.”
“Just wait, we'll have a hearty reckoning with you yet, only give us
time,” he concluded, addressing himself to the French.
“Of course we will!” said another, with conviction.
Along the whole line of bastions of Sevastopol, which had for so many
months seethed with remarkably vigorous life, which had for so many
months seen dying heroes relieved one after another by death, and which
had for so many months awakened the terror, the hatred, and finally
the admiration of the enemy,—on the bastions of Sevastopol, there was
no longer a single man. All was dead, wild, horrible,—but not silent.
Destruction was still in progress. On the earth, furrowed and strewn
with the recent explosions, lay bent gun-carriages, crushing down the
bodies of Russians and of the foe; heavy iron cannons silenced forever,
bombs and cannon-balls hurled with horrible force into pits, and
half-buried in the soil, then more corpses, pits, splinters of beams,
bomb-proofs, and still more silent bodies in gray and blue coats. All
these were still frequently shaken and lighted up by the crimson glow
of the explosions, which continued to shock the air.
The foe perceived that something incomprehensible was going on in that
menacing Sevastopol. Those explosions and the death-like silence on
the bastions made them shudder; but they dared not yet believe, being
still under the influence of the calm and forcible resistance of the
day, that their invincible enemy had disappeared, and they awaited
motionless and in silence the end of that gloomy night.
The army of Sevastopol, like the gloomy, surging sea, quivering
throughout its entire mass, wavering, ploughing across the bay, on
the bridge, and at the north fortifications, moved slowly through the
impenetrable darkness of the night; away from the place where it had
left so many of its brave brethren, from the place all steeped in its
blood, from the place which it had defended for eleven months against
a foe twice as powerful as itself, and which it was now ordered to
abandon without a battle.
The first impression produced on every Russian by this command was
inconceivably sad. The second feeling was a fear of pursuit. The men
felt that they were defenceless as soon as they abandoned the places on
which they were accustomed to fight, and they huddled together uneasily
in the dark, at the entrance to the bridge, which was swaying about in
the heavy breeze.
The infantry pressed forward, with a clash of bayonets, and a
thronging of regiments, equipages, and arms; cavalry officers made
their way about with orders, the inhabitants and the military servants
accompanying the baggage wept and besought to be permitted to cross,
while the artillery, in haste to get off, forced their way to the bay
with a thunder of wheels.
In spite of the diversions created by the varied and anxious demands
on their attention, the instinct of self-preservation and the desire
to escape as speedily as possible from that dread place of death were
present in every soul. This instinct existed also in a soldier mortally
wounded, who lay among the five hundred other wounded, upon the stone
pavement of the Pavlovsky quay, and prayed God to send death; and in
the militia-man, who with his last remaining strength pressed into
the compact throng, in order to make way for a general who rode by,
and in the general in charge of the transportation, who was engaged
in restraining the haste of the soldiers, and in the sailor, who had
become entangled in the moving battalion, and who, crushed by the
surging throng, had lost his breath, and in the wounded officer, who
was being borne along in a litter by four soldiers, who, stopped by the
crowd, had placed him on the ground by the Nikolaevsky battery, and in
the artillery-man, who had served his gun for sixteen years, and who,
at his superior's command, to him incomprehensible, to throw overboard
the guns, had, with the aid of his comrades, sent them over the steep
bank into the bay; and in the men of the fleet, who had just closed the
port-holes of the ships, and had rowed lustily away in their boats.
On stepping upon the further end of the bridge, nearly every soldier
pulled off his cap and crossed himself.
But behind this instinct there was another, oppressive and far deeper,
existing along with it; this was a feeling which resembled repentance,
shame, and hatred. Almost every soldier, as he gazed on abandoned
Sevastopol, from the northern shore, sighed with inexpressible
bitterness of heart, and menaced the foe.