Sevastopol

IX

Volodya was not precisely out of sorts when, nearly at nightfall, they reached the great bridge over the bay, but he felt a certain heaviness at his heart. All that he had heard and seen was so little in consonance with the impressions which had recently passed away; the huge, light examination hall, with its polished floor, the kind and merry voices and laughter of his comrades, the new uniform, his beloved tsar, whom he had been accustomed to see for the last seven years, and who, when he took leave of them, had called them his children, with tears in his eyes,—and everything that he had seen so little resembled his very beautiful, rainbow-hued, magnificent dreams.

“Well, here we are at last!” said the elder brother, when they arrived at the Mikhaïlovsky battery, and dismounted from their cart. “If they let us pass the bridge, we will go directly to the Nikolaevsky barracks. You stay there until morning, and I will go to the regiment and find out where your battery is stationed, and to-morrow I will come for you.”

“You may say more!” said the first speaker. “A cursed shell flew in there the other day, and it tore the legs off of two sailors, so that....”

“You can go that way, but not this. Where are you driving to, all in a heap!” he cried to the transport wagons piled high with gabions, which had clustered about the entrance.

“Yes; it has taken the place of the M—— regiment. Go to the field-hospital; some of our men are there, and they will show you the way.”

“Why, my good fellow, they were smashed to bits long ago by the bombs. You will not recognize Sevastopol now; there's not a single woman there now, nor any inns nor music; the last establishment took its departure yesterday. It has become horribly dismal there now.... Farewell!”

“Who goes there?”

“What of that! We have business! We must pass!”

“Well, and are my quarters on the Morskaya still intact?”

“To the Severnaya, for cartridges; I am on my way to the adjutant of the regiment ... we expect an assault to-morrow, at any hour.”

“The regiment is in the fifth bastion, isn't it?”

“The orders are not to let any one pass!”

“No, if you please; I do know, at least, that....”

“My advice is, not to go; but if you choose....”

“Lord, will they kill me—me in particular? Lord, have mercy on me!” said he, in a whisper, and he crossed himself.

“If he has received his ammunition money, then he has squared his accounts in full—that's what it is!”

“He lost a leg yesterday; he was in the town, asleep in his room.... Perhaps you know it?”

“Eh, brothers!” said another voice, “when you get over on the Severnaya you will see the world, by heavens! The air is entirely different.”

“Come, Volodya, let us go on!” said the elder brother, when their little cart had driven upon the bridge. “Did you see that bomb?”

“But why? It would be better if we both went together,” said Volodya; “I will go to the bastion with you. It won't make any difference; I shall have to get used to it. If you go, then I can too.”

“Better not go.”

“Ask the officer.”

“As you see. Whither is God taking you?”

“And where is Martzoff?”

“Ah, Mikhaïlo Semyónitch!” said the rider, stopping, reining in his horse in front of the elder Kozeltzoff, “have you fully recovered already?”

“A soldier.”

Volodya heaved a deep sigh, and went a little apart from his brother.

The sky was clear and dark; the stars, and the fires of the bombs in incessant movement and discharges, were gleaming brilliantly through the gloom. The large white building of the battery, and the beginning of the bridge stood out in the darkness. Literally, every second several discharges of artillery and explosions, following each other in quick succession or occurring simultaneously, shook the air with increasing thunder and distinctness. Through this roar, and as though repeating it, the melancholy dash of the waves was audible. A faint breeze was drawing in from the sea, and the air was heavy with moisture. The brothers stepped upon the bridge. A soldier struck his gun awkwardly against his arm, and shouted:—

The officer, who was drowsing as he sat on an anchor, rose up and gave the order to let them pass.

The flash of a bomb, as it burst near it, illuminated for a moment the lofty heaps of gabions on the deck, two men who were standing on it, and the white foam and the spurts of greenish waves, as the steamer ploughed through them. On the edge of the bridge, with his legs dangling in the water, sat a man in his shirt-sleeves, who was repairing something connected with the bridge. In front, over Sevastopol, floated the same fires, and the terrible sounds grew louder and louder. A wave rolled in from the sea, flowed over the right side of the bridge, and wet Volodya's feet; two soldiers passed them, dragging their feet through the water. Something suddenly burst with a crash and lighted up the bridge ahead of them, the wagon driving over it, and a man on horseback. The splinters fell into the waves with a hiss, and sent up the water in splashes.

The brothers traversed the first pontoon, while waiting for the wagon, and halted on the second, which was already flooded with water in parts. The breeze, which had seemed weak inland, was very powerful here, and came in gusts; the bridge swayed to and fro, and the waves, beating noisily against the beams, and tearing at the cables and anchors, flooded the planks. At the right the gloomily hostile sea roared and darkled, as it lay separated by an interminable level black line from the starry horizon, which was light gray in its gleam; lights flashed afar on the enemy's fleet; on the left towered the black masts of one of our vessels, and the waves could be heard as they beat against her hull; a steamer was visible, as it moved noisily and swiftly from the Severnaya.

On the bridge, the brothers met wagons filled with the wounded, with gabions, and one loaded with furniture, which was driven by a woman. On the further side no one detained them.

As they descended to the first pontoon, the brothers encountered soldiers who were coming thence, and talking loudly.

And the officer rode on his way at a trot.

All at once, Volodya became terribly frightened; it seemed to him as though a cannon-ball or a splinter of bomb would fly in their direction, and strike him directly on the head. This damp darkness, all these sounds, especially the angry splashing of the waves, seemed to be saying to him that he ought not to go any farther, that nothing good awaited him yonder, that he would never again set foot on the ground upon this side of the bay, that he must turn about at once, and flee somewhere or other, as far as possible from this terrible haunt of death. “But perhaps it is too late now, everything is settled,” thought he, trembling partly at this thought and partly because the water had soaked through his boots and wet his feet.

Clinging instinctively to the walls of the Nikolaevsky battery, the brothers listened in silence to the noise of the bombs, exploding overhead, and to the roar of the fragments, showering down from above, and came to that spot in the battery where the image was. There they learned that the fifth light battery, to which Volodya had been assigned, was stationed on the Korabelnaya, and they decided that he should go, in spite of the danger, and pass the night with the elder in the fifth bastion, and that he should from there join his battery the next day. They turned into the corridor, stepping over the legs of the sleeping soldiers, who were lying all along the walls of the battery, and at last they arrived at the place where the wounded were attended to.