Among these last we find our acquaintance Nikita, the old sailor’s widow with whom he had made up, and the little daughter of the latter, a child of ten years.
“Oh, my God! holy Virgin and Mother!” murmured the old woman, with a sigh; and she followed with her eyes the shells which flew through space from one point to another like balls of fire. “What a misfortune! what a misfortune! The first bombardment was not so hard. Look! one cursed thing has burst in the outskirts of the town right over our house!”
“No, it is farther off; they are falling in Aunt Arina’s garden,” said the child.
“Where is my master! where is he now!” groaned Nikita, still drunk, and drawling his words. “No tongue can tell how I love my master! If, God forbid, they commit the sin of killing him, I assure you, good aunt, I won’t be answerable for what I may do! Really, he is such a good master that—There is no word to express it, you see. I wouldn’t exchange him for those who are playing cards inside, true. Pooh!” concluded Nikita, pointing to the captain’s room, in which the yunker Yvatchesky had arranged with the ensigns a little festival to celebrate the decoration he had just received.
“What a lot of shooting-stars there are! what a lot of shooting-stars there are!” cried the child, breaking the silence which followed Nikita’s speech. “There! there! another one is falling! What is that for? Say, mother.”
“They’ll destroy our cabin!” sighed the old woman, without replying.
“To-day,” resumed the sing-song voice of the little prattler—“to-day I saw in uncle’s room, near the wardrobe, an enormous ball; it had come through the roof and had fallen right into the room. It is so large that they can’t lift it.”
“The women who had husbands and money are gone away,” continued the old woman. “I have only a cabin, and they are destroying that! Look! look how they are firing, the wretches! Lord, my God!”
“And just as we were coming out of uncle’s house,” the child went on, “a bomb-shell came straight down; it burst, and threw the earth on all sides; one little piece almost struck us!”