It was with an inexpressible joy that Kalouguine found himself at home, far from danger. Lying on his bed in his nightshirt, he related to Galtzine the incidents of the fight. These incidents naturally arranged themselves so as to make it appear how he, Kalouguine, was a brave and capable officer. He discreetly touched on this because no one could be ignorant of it, and no one, with the exception of the defunct captain Praskoukine, had the right to doubt it. The latter, although he felt very much honored to walk arm-in-arm with the aide-de-camp, had told one of his friends in his very ear the evening before that Kalouguine—a very good fellow, however—did not like to walk on the bastions.
We left Praskoukine coming back with Mikhaïloff. He reached a less exposed place and began to breathe again, when he perceived, on turning around, the sudden light of a flash. The sentinel shouted, “Mor—tar!” And one of the soldiers who followed added, “It is coming straight into the bastion!” Mikhaïloff looked. The luminous point of the bomb-shell seemed to stop directly over his head, exactly the moment when it was impossible to tell what direction it was going to take. That was for the space of a second. Suddenly, redoubling its speed, the projectile came nearer and nearer. The sparks of the fuse could be seen flying out, the dismal hissing was plainly audible. It was going to drop right in the midst of the battalion. “To earth!” shouted a voice. Mikhaïloff and Praskoukine obeyed. The latter, with shut eyes, heard the shell fall somewhere on the hard earth very near him. A second, which appeared to him an hour, passed, and the shell did not burst. Praskoukine was frightened; then he asked himself what cause he had for fear. Perhaps it had fallen farther away, and he wrongly imagined that he heard the fuse hissing near him. Opening his eyes, he was satisfied to see Mikhaïloff stretched motionless at his feet; but at the same time he perceived, a yard off, the lighted fuse of the shell spinning around like a top. A glacial terror, which stifled every thought, every sentiment, took possession of his soul. He hid his face in his hands.
Another second passed, during which a whole world of thoughts, of hopes, of sensations, and of souvenirs passed through his mind.
“Whom will it kill? Me or Mikhaïloff, or indeed both of us together? If it is I, where will it hit me? If in the head, it will be all over; if on the foot, they will cut it off, then I shall insist that they give me chloroform, and I may get well. Perhaps Mikhaïloff alone will be killed, and later I will tell how we were close together, and how I was covered with his blood. No, no! it is nearer me—it will be I!”
Then he remembered the twelve rubles he owed Mikhaïloff, and another debt left at Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long ago. A Bohemian air that he sang the evening before came to his mind. He also saw in his imagination the lady he was in love with in her lilac trimmed bonnet; the man who had insulted him five years before, and whom he had never taken vengeance on. But in the midst of these and many other souvenirs the present feeling—the expectation of death—did not leave him. “Perhaps it isn’t going to explode!” he thought, and was on the point of opening his eyes with desperate boldness. But at this instant a red fire struck his eyeballs through the closed lids, something hit him in the middle of the chest with a terrible crash. He ran forward at random, entangled his feet in his sword, stumbled, and fell on his side.
“God be praised, I am only bruised.”
This was his first thought, and he wanted to feel of his breast, but his hands seemed as if they were tied. A vice griped his head, soldiers ran before his eyes, and he mechanically counted them:
“One, two, three soldiers, and, besides, an officer who is losing his cloak!”
A new light flashed; he wondered what had fired. Was it a mortar or a cannon? Doubtless a cannon. Another shot, more soldiers—five, six, seven. They passed in front of him, and suddenly he became terribly afraid of being crushed by them. He wanted to cry out, to say that he was bruised, but his lips were dry, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He had a burning thirst. He felt that his breast was damp, and the sensation of this moisture made him think of water.... He would have liked to drink that which drenched him.
“I must have knocked the skin off in falling,” he said to himself, more and more frightened at the idea of being crushed by the soldiers who were running in crowds before him. He tried again to cry out,