“I am so accustomed to them that when I go back to Russia a starry sky will seem to me to be sparkling with bomb-shells. One gets so used to it.”
“Ought I not to go and take part in this sortie?” said Prince Galtzine, after a pause.
“My dear fellow, what an idea! Don’t think of it. I won’t let you go; you will have time enough.”
“Seriously—do you think I ought not to?”
At this moment, right in the direction these gentlemen were looking, could be heard above the roar of artillery the rattle of a terrible fusillade; a thousand little flames spurted and sparkled along the whole line.
“Look, it is in full swing,” said Kalouguine. “I can’t calmly listen to this fusillade; it stirs my soul! They are shouting ‘Hurrah!’” he added, stretching his ear towards the bastion, from which arose the distant and prolonged clamor of thousands of voices.
“Who is shouting ‘Hurrah’—he or we?”
“I don’t know; but they are surely fighting at the sword’s point, for the fusillade has stopped.”
An officer on horseback, followed by a Cossack, galloped up under their window, stopped, and dismounted.
“Where do you come from?”