A table, covered with a stained tablecloth, was placed in the middle of
the room in which Volodia had been received by the colonel the evening
before. The latter gave him his hand, and asked him questions about
Petersburg and about his journey.
“Now, gentlemen, please come up to the brandy. The ensigns don’t drink,”
he added, with a smile.
The commander of the battery did not seem as stern to-day as the day
before; he had rather the air of a kind and hospitable host than that of
a comrade among his officers. In spite of that, all, from the old
captain to Ensign Dedenko, evinced respect for him which betrayed itself
in the timid politeness with which they spoke to him and came up in line
to drink their little glass of brandy.
The dinner consisted of cabbage-soup, served in a great tureen in which
swam lumps of meat with fat attached, laurel leaves, and a good deal of
pepper, Polish _zrasi_ with mustard, _koldouni_ with slightly rancid
butter; no napkins; the spoons were of pewter and of wood, the glasses
were two in number. On the table was a single water decanter with broken
neck. The conversation did not flag. They first spoke of the battle of
Inkerman, in which the battery took a part. Each related his
impressions, his opinions on the causes of the failure, keeping silent
as soon as the battery commander spoke. Then they complained of the lack
of cannon of a certain calibre; they talked of certain other
improvements, which gave Volodia an opportunity of showing his
knowledge. The curious part was that the talk did not even touch upon
the frightful situation of Sebastopol, which seemed to mean that each
one, on his part, thought too much about it to speak of it.
Volodia, very much astonished, and even vexed, that there was no
question of the duties of his service, said to himself that he seemed to
have come to Sebastopol only in order to give the details about the new
cannon and to dine with the battery commander.
During the repast a shell burst very near the house. The floor and the
wall were shaken by it as by an earthquake, and powder-smoke spread over
the window outside.
“You certainly didn’t see that at Petersburg, but here we often have
these surprises. Go, Vlang,” added the commander, “and see where the
shell burst.”
Vlang went to look, and announced that it had burst in the yard. After
that they did not speak of it again.
A little before the end of the dinner one of the military clerks came in
to give to his chief three sealed envelopes. “This one is very urgent. A
Cossack has just brought it from the commander of the artillery,” he
said. The officers watched the practised fingers of their superior with
anxious impatience while he broke the seal of the envelope, which bore
the words “in haste,” and drew a paper from it.
“What can that be?” each one thought. “Can it be the order to leave
Sebastopol for a rest, or the order to bring out the whole battery upon
the bastion?”
“Once more!” cried the commander, angrily, throwing the sheet of paper
on the table.
“What is it, Apollo Serguéïtch?” asked the oldest of the officers.
“They want an officer and men for a mortar battery. I have only four
officers, and my men are not up to the full number,” he growled, “and
now they ask for some of them. However, some one must go, gentlemen,” he
continued, after a moment; “they must be there at seven o’clock. Send me
the sergeant-major. Now, gentlemen, who will go? Decide it among
yourselves.”
“But here is this gentleman who hasn’t yet served,” said Tchernovitzky,
pointing to Volodia.
“Yes; I wouldn’t ask for anything better,” said Volodia, feeling a cold
sweat moisten his neck and his backbone.
“No--why not?” interrupted the captain. “No one ought to refuse; but it
is useless to ask him to go; and since Apollo Serguéïtch leaves us free,
we will draw lots, as we did the other time.”
All consented to this. Kraut carefully cut several little paper squares,
rolled them up, and threw them into a cap. The captain cracked a few
jokes and profited by this occasion to ask the colonel for wine, “to
give us courage,” he added. Dedenko had a depressed air, Volodia smiled,
Tchernovitzky declared that he would be chosen by the lot. As to Kraut,
he was perfectly calm.
They offered Volodia the first chance. He took one of the papers, the
longest, but immediately changed it for another, shorter and smaller,
and unrolling it, read the word “Go.”
“It is I,” he said, with a sigh.
“All right. May God protect you! It will be your baptism of fire,” said
the commander, looking with a pleasant smile at the disturbed face of
the ensign. “But get ready quickly, and in order that it may be
pleasanter, Vlang will go with you in the place of the artificer.