Soldiers carried the wounded on stretchers, and supported others under
the arms. It was very dark in the streets; here and there shone the
lights in the hospital windows or in the quarters of a wakeful officer.
The uninterrupted sound of the cannonade and the fusillade came from the
bastions, and the same fires still lighted up the black sky. From time
to time could be recognized the gallop of a staff-officer, the groan of
a wounded man, the steps and the voices of the stretcher-bearers, the
exclamations of doting women who stood on the thresholds of their houses
and watched in the direction of the firing.
Among these last we find our acquaintance Nikita, the old sailor’s widow
with whom he had made up, and the little daughter of the latter, a child
of ten years.
“Oh, my God! holy Virgin and Mother!” murmured the old woman, with a
sigh; and she followed with her eyes the shells which flew through
space from one point to another like balls of fire. “What a misfortune!
what a misfortune! The first bombardment was not so hard. Look! one
cursed thing has burst in the outskirts of the town right over our
house!”
“No, it is farther off; they are falling in Aunt Arina’s garden,” said
the child.
“Where is my master! where is he now!” groaned Nikita, still drunk, and
drawling his words. “No tongue can tell how I love my master! If, God
forbid, they commit the sin of killing him, I assure you, good aunt, I
won’t be answerable for what I may do! Really, he is such a good master
that--There is no word to express it, you see. I wouldn’t exchange him
for those who are playing cards inside, true. Pooh!” concluded Nikita,
pointing to the captain’s room, in which the yunker Yvatchesky had
arranged with the ensigns a little festival to celebrate the decoration
he had just received.
“What a lot of shooting-stars there are! what a lot of shooting-stars
there are!” cried the child, breaking the silence which followed
Nikita’s speech. “There! there! another one is falling! What is that
for? Say, mother.”
“They’ll destroy our cabin!” sighed the old woman, without replying.
“To-day,” resumed the sing-song voice of the little prattler--“to-day I
saw in uncle’s room, near the wardrobe, an enormous ball; it had come
through the roof and had fallen right into the room. It is so large that
they can’t lift it.”
“The women who had husbands and money are gone away,” continued the old
woman. “I have only a cabin, and they are destroying that! Look! look
how they are firing, the wretches! Lord, my God!”
“And just as we were coming out of uncle’s house,” the child went on, “a
bomb-shell came straight down; it burst, and threw the earth on all
sides; one little piece almost struck us!”