But when the captain said: " Good-by, Nikita," on the porch, Nikita suddenly broke down into repressed sobs, and ran to kiss his master's hand.... ** Farewell, master! " he exclaimed, sobbing. The old sailor's wife, who was standing on the porch, could not, in her capacity of a woman, refrain from joining in this touching scene, so she began to wipe her eyes with her dirty sleeve, and to say something about even gentlemen having their trials to bear, and that she, poor creature, had been left a widow. And she related for the hundredth time to drunken Nikita the story of her woes; how her husband had been killed in the first bombardment, and how her little house had been utterly ruined (the one in which she was now living did not belong to her), and so on. When his master had departed, Nikita lighted his pipe, requested the daughter of their landlord to go for some vodka, and very soon ceased to weep, but, on the contrary, got into a quarrel with the old woman about some small bucket, which, he declared, she had broken.
" But perhaps I shall only be wounded," meditated the captain, as he marched through the twilight to the bastion with his company. " But where t How } Here or here t " he thought, indicating his belly and his breast...." If it should be here (he thought of the upper portion of his leg), it might run round. Well, but if it were here, and by a splinter, that would finish me."
The captain reached the fortifications safely
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through the trenches, set his men to work, with the assistance of an officer of sappers, in the darkness, which was complete, and seated himself in a pit behind the breastworks. There was not much firing; only once in a while the lightning flashed from our batteries, then from /its, and the brilliant fuse of a bomb traced an arc of flame against the dark, starry heavens. But all the bombs fell far in the rear and to the right of the rifle-pits in which the captain sat. He drank his vodka, ate his cheese, lit his cigarette, and, after saying his prayers, he tried to get a little sleep.
V.
Prince Galtsin, Lieutenant-Colonel Neferdoff, and Praskukhin, whom no one had invited, to whom no one spoke, but who never left them, all went to drink tea with Adjutant Kalugin.
"Well, you did not finish telling me about Vaska Mendel," said Kalugin, as he took off his cloak, seated himself by the window in a soft lounging-chair, and unbuttoned the collar of his fresh, stiffly starched cambric shirt: " How did he come to marry? "
" That's a joke, my dear fellow! There was a time, I assure you, when nothing else was talked of in Petersburg," said Prince Galtsin, with a laugh, as he sprang up from the piano, and seated himself on the window beside Kalugin. " It is simply ludicrous, and I know all the details of the affair."
And he began to relate — in a merry, and skilful manner — a love story, which we will omit,
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because it possesses no interest for us. But it is worthy of note that not only Prince Galtsin, but all the gentlemen who had placed themselves here, one on the window-sill, another with his legs coiled up under him, a third at the piano, seemed totally different persons from what they were when on the boulevard; there was nothing of that absurd arrogance and haughtiness which they and their kind exhibit in public to the infantry officers; here they were among their own set and natural, especially Kalugin and Prince Galtsin, and were, like very good, amiable, and rherry children. The conversation turned on their compan- -^ons in the service in Petersburg, and on their acquaintances.
" What of Maslovsky } "
*' Which } the uhlan of the body-guard or of the horse-guard.? "
" I know both of them. The one in the horseguards was with me when he was a little boy, and had only just left school. What is the elder one? a captain of cavalry t "
*' Oh, yes! long ago."
" And is he still going about with his gypsy maid? "
"No, he has deserted her..." and so forth, and so forth, in the same strain.
Then Prince Galtsin seated himself at the piano, and sang a gypsy song in magnificent style. Praskukhin began to sing second, although no one had asked him, and he did it so well that they requested him to accompany the prince again, which he gladly consented to do.
The servant came in with the tea, cream, and cracknels on a silver salver.
" Serve the prince," said Kalugin.