Vlang, delighted with his mission, ran away to dress, and came back at
once to assist Volodia to make up his bundles, advising him to take his
bed, his fur cloak, an old number of the “Annals of the Country,” a
coffee-pot with an alcohol lamp, and other useless articles. The
captain, in his turn, advised Volodia to read in the “Manual for the
use of Artillery Officers” the passage relating to firing mortars, and
to copy it at once! Volodia set himself to work at it immediately, happy
and surprised to feel that the dread of danger, especially the fear of
passing for a coward, was less strong than on the evening before. His
impressions of the day and his occupation had partly contributed to
diminish the violence of this; and then it is well known that an acute
sensation cannot last long without weakening. In a word, his fear was
being cured. At seven in the evening, at the moment the sun was setting
behind the Nicholas barracks, the sergeant-major came to tell him that
the men were ready, and were waiting for him.
“I have given the list to Vlang, your Excellency; you can ask him for
it,” he said.
“Must I make a little speech to them?” thought Volodia, on his way,
accompanied by the yunker, to join the twenty artillery-men who, swords
by their sides, were waiting for him outside--“or must I simply say to
them, ‘How do you do, children?’ or, indeed, say nothing at all? Why not
say ‘How do you do, children?’ I think I ought to;” and with his full
and sonorous voice he cried boldly, “How do you do, children?” The
soldiers replied cheerfully to his salutation; his young and fresh voice
sounded agreeably in their ears. He put himself at their head, and
although his heart was beating as if he had just run several furlongs,
his walk was light and his face was smiling. When they got near the
Malakoff mamelon, he noticed, while climbing up it, that Vlang, who did
not leave his heels, and who had seemed so courageous down below in
their quarters, stooped and ducked his head as if the bullets and shells
which were whistling without cessation were coming straight towards him.
Several soldiers did the same, and the majority of the faces expressed,
if not fear, at least disquiet. This circumstance reassured him and
revived his courage.
“Here I am, then, I also, on the Malakoff mamelon. I imagined it a
thousand times more terrible, and I am walking, I am advancing, without
saluting the bullets! I am less afraid than the others, and I am not a
coward, then,” he said to himself joyfully, with the enthusiasm of
satisfied self-love.
This feeling was, however, shaken by the spectacle that presented itself
to his eyes. When he reached in the twilight the Korniloff battery, four
sailors, some holding by the legs, others by the arms, the bloody corpse
of a man with bare feet and no coat, were in the act of throwing him
over the parapet. (The second day of the bombardment they threw the dead
into the ditch, because they had no time to carry them off.) Volodia,
stupefied, saw the corpse strike the upper part of the rampart, and
slide from there into the ditch. Fortunately for him, he met at this
very moment the commander of the bastion, who gave him a guide to lead
him to the battery and into the bomb-proof quarters of the men. We will
not relate how often our hero was exposed to danger during that night.
We will say nothing of how he was undeceived when he noticed that
instead of finding them firing here according to the precise rules such
as they practise at Petersburg on the plain of Volkovo, he saw himself
in front of two broken mortars, one with its muzzle bruised by a shell,
the other still upright on the pieces of a destroyed platform. We will
not tell how it was impossible for him to get the soldiers in order to
repair it before daylight, how he found no charge of the calibre
indicated in the “Manual,” nor describe his feelings at seeing two of
his soldiers fall, hit before his eyes, nor how he himself, even,
escaped death twenty times by a hair’s-breadth. Happily for him, the
captain of the mortar, who had been given him for an assistant, a tall
sailor attached to these mortars since the beginning of the siege,
assured him that they could make use of them still, and promised him
while he was walking on the bastion, lantern in hand, as calmly as if he
were in his kitchen-garden, to put them in good condition before
morning.
The bomb-proof reduct into which his guide conducted him was only a
great, long cavern dug in the rocky earth, two fathoms deep, protected
by oaken timbers eighteen inches thick. There he established himself
with his soldiers.
As soon as Vlang noticed the little low door which led into it, he threw
himself in the first with such haste that he nearly fell on the
stone-paved floor, cowered down in a corner, and did not care to come
out of it. The soldiers placed themselves on the ground along the wall.
Some of them lighted their pipes, and Volodia arranged his bed in a
corner, stretched himself on it, lighted a candle in his turn, and
smoked a cigarette. Over their heads could be heard, deadened by the
bomb-proof, the uninterrupted roar of the discharges. A single cannon
close beside them shook their shelter every time it thundered. In the
interior everything was quiet. The soldiers, still intimidated by the
presence of the new officer, only exchanged a word with each other now
and then to ask for a light or a little room. A rat was scratching
somewhere among the stones, and Vlang, who had not yet recovered from
his emotion, occasionally sighed deeply as he looked about him. Volodia,
on his bed in this peaceful corner crammed with people, lighted by a
single candle, gave himself up to the feeling of comfort which he had
often had as a child when, playing hide-and-seek, he slipped into a
wardrobe or under his mother’s skirt, holding his breath, stretching his
ears, being very much afraid of the dark, and feeling at the same time
an unconscious impression of well-being.
In the same way here, without being altogether at his ease, he felt
rather disposed to be cheerful.