“My chief is in the bastion, I must go there,” said Praskoukine, putting on his sword.
No one replied; he ought to know what he had to do. Praskoukine and Neferdorf went out to go to their posts.
“Good-by, gentlemen, au revoir! we will meet again to-night,” cried Kalouguine through the window, while they set out at a rapid trot, bending over the pommels of their Cossack saddles. The sound of their horses’ shoes quickly died away in the dark street.
“Come, tell me, will there really be something going on to-night?” said Galtzine, leaning on the window-sill near Kalouguine, whence they were watching the shells rising over the bastions.
“I can tell you, you alone. You have been in the bastions, haven’t you?”
Although Galtzine had only been there once he replied by an affirmative gesture.
“Well, opposite our lunette there was a trench”—and Kalouguine, who was not a specialist, but who was satisfied of the value of his military opinions, began to explain, mixing himself up and making wrong use of the terms of fortification, the state of our works, the situation of the enemy, and the plan of the affair which had been prepared.
“There! there! They have begun to fire heavily on our quarters; is that coming from our side or from his—the one that has just burst there?” And the two officers, leaning on the window, watched the lines of fire which the shells traced crossing each other in the air, the white powder-smoke, the flashes which preceded each report and illuminated for a second the blue-black sky; they listened to the roar of the cannonade, which increased in violence.
“What a charming panorama!” said Kalouguine, attracting his guest’s attention to the truly beautiful spectacle. “Do you know that sometimes one can’t tell a star from a bomb-shell?”
“Yes, it is true; I just took that for a star, but it is coming down. Look! it bursts! And that large star there yonder—what do they call it? One would say it was a shell!”