All agreed to this. Kraut cut some paper into bits, folded them up, and dropped them into a cap. The captain jested, and even plucked up the audacity, on this occasion, to ask the colonel for wine, to keep up their courage, he said. Dyadenko sat in gloomy silence, Volodya smiled at something or other, Tchernovitzky declared that it would infallibly fall to him, Kraut. was perfectly composed.
Volodya was allowed to draw first; he took one slip, which was rather long, but it immediately occurred to him to change it; he took another, which was smaller and thinner, unfolded it, and read on it, ** I go."
" It has fallen to me," he said, with a sigh.
" Well, God be with you. You will get your baptism of fire at once," said the commander of the battery, gazing at the perturbed countenance of the ensign with a kindly smile; " but you must get there as speedily as possible. And, to make it more cheerful for you, Viang shall go with you as gun-sergeant.
XX.
Vlang was exceedingly well pleased with the duty assigned to him, and ran hastily to make his preparations, and, when h.e was dressed, he went to the assistance of Volodya, and tried to persuade the latter to take his cot and fur coat with him, and some old '* Annals of the Country," and a spirit-lamp coffee-pot, and other useless things. The captain advised Volodya to read up his ** Manual," * first, about mortar-firing, and immediately to copy the tables out of it.
Volodya set about this at once, and, to his amazement and delight, he perceived that, though he was still somewhat troubled with a sensation of fear of danger, and still more lest he should turn out a coward, yet it was far from being to that degree to which it had affected him on the preceding evening. The reason for this lay partly in the daylight and in active occupation, and partly, principally, also, in the fact that fear and all pow-
* " Manual for Artillery Officers," by Bezak.
erful emotions cannot long continue with the same intensity. In a word, he had already succeeded in recovering from his terror.
At seven o'clock, just as the sun had begun to hide itself behind the Nikolaevsky barracks, the sergeant came to him, and announced that the men were ready and waiting for him.
" I have given the list to Vlang^. You will please to ask him for it. Your Honor!" said he.
Twenty artillery-men, with side-arms, but without loading-tools, were standing at the corner of the house. Volodya and the yunker stepped up to them.
" Shall I make them a' little speech, or shall I simply say, * Good day, children! * or shall I say nothing at all } " thought he. " And why should I not say, * Good day, children! ' Why, I ought to say that much!" And he shouted boldly, in his ringing voice: —
"Good day, children! "
The soldiers responded cheerfully. The fresh, young voice sounded pleasant in the ears of all. Volodya marched vigorously at their head, in front of the soldiers, and, although his heart beat as if he had run several versts at the top of his speed, his step was light and his countenance cheerful.
On arriving at the Malakoff mound, and climbing the slope, he perceived that Viang, who had not lagged a single pace behind him, and who had appeared such a valiant fellow at home in the house, kept constantly swerving to one side, and ducking his head, as though all the cannon-balls and bombs, which whizzed by very frequently in that locality, were flying straight at him. Some of the soldiers did the same, and the faces of the majority of them betrayed, if not fear, at least anxiety. This circumstance put the finishing touch to Volodya's composure and encouraged him finally.
*' So here I am also on the Malakoff mound, which I imagined to be a thousand times more terrible! And I can walk along without ducking my head before the bombs, and am far less terrified than the rest! So I am not a coward, after all } " he thought with delight, and even with a somewhat enthusiastic self-sufficiency.
But this feeling was soon shaken by a spectacle upon which he stumbled in the twilight, on the Kornilovsky battery, in his search for the commander of the bastion. Four sailors standing near the breastworks were holding the bloody body of a man, without shoes or coat, by its arms and legs, and staggering as they tried to fling it over the ramparts.
(On the second day of the bombardment, it had been found impossible, in some localities, to carry off the corpses from the bastions, and so they were flung into the trench, in order that they might not impede action in the batteries.)