“Brakes on!” the word of command rang out every time they went downhill.
He, too, shouted “Brakes on!” and was afraid this shout would disturb his reverie and bring him back to reality. . . .
As they passed by some landowner’s estate Ryabovitch looked over the fence into the garden. A long avenue, straight as a ruler, strewn with yellow sand and bordered with young birch-trees, met his eyes. . . . With the eagerness of a man given up to dreaming, he pictured to himself little feminine feet tripping along yellow sand, and quite unexpectedly had a clear vision in his imagination of the girl who had kissed him and whom he had succeeded in picturing to himself the evening before at supper. This image remained in his brain and did not desert him again.
At midday there was a shout in the rear near the string of wagons:
“Easy! Eyes to the left! Officers!”
The general of the brigade drove by in a carriage with a pair of white horses. He stopped near the second battery, and shouted something which no one understood. Several officers, among them Ryabovitch, galloped up to them.
“Well?” asked the general, blinking his red eyes. “Are there any sick?”
Receiving an answer, the general, a little skinny man, chewed, thought for a moment and said, addressing one of the officers:
“One of your drivers of the third cannon has taken off his leg-guard and hung it on the fore part of the cannon, the rascal. Reprimand him.”
He raised his eyes to Ryabovitch and went on: