The officer was taking a nap, seated on an anchor. He arose and gave the order to let them pass.
“You can go in, but you can’t come out. Attention! Where are you getting to all together?” he shouted to the wagons piled up with gabions, which were stopping at the entrance to the bridge.
On the first pontoon they met some soldiers talking in a loud voice.
“He has received his outfit; he has received it all.”
“Ah! friends,” said another voice, “when a fellow gets to Severnaïa he begins to revive. There is quite another air here, by heavens!”
“What nonsense are you talking there?” said the first. “The other day a cursed bomb-shell carried away the legs of two sailors. Oh! oh!”
The water in several places was dashing into the second pontoon, where the two brothers stopped to await their carriage. The wind, which had appeared light on land, blew here with violence and in gusts. The bridge swayed, and the waves, madly dashing against the beams, broke upon the anchors and the ropes and flooded the flooring. The sea roared with a hollow sound, forming a black, uniform, endless line, which separated it from the starry horizon, now lighted by a silvery glow. In the distance twinkled the lights of the hostile fleet. On the left rose the dark mass of a sailing ship, against the sides of which the water dashed violently; on the right, a steamer coming from Severnaïa, noisily and swiftly advanced. A bomb-shell burst, and lighted up for a second the heaps of gabions, revealing two men standing on the deck of the ship, a third in shirt-sleeves, sitting with swinging legs, busy repairing the deck, and showing the white foam and the dashing waves with green reflections made by the steamer in motion.
The same lights continued to furrow the sky over Sebastopol, and the fear-inspiring sounds came nearer. A wave driven from the sea broke into foam on the right side of the bridge and wet Volodia’s feet. Two soldiers, noisily dragging their legs through the water, passed by. Suddenly something burst with a crash and lighted up before them the part of the bridge along which was passing a carriage, followed by a soldier on horseback. The pieces fell whistling into the water, which spouted up in jets.
“Ah, Mikhaïl Semenovitch!” said the horseman, drawing up before Koseltzoff the elder, “here you are—well again?”
“Yes, as you see. Where in God’s name are you going?”