“It is I,” he said, with a sigh.
“All right. May God protect you! It will be your baptism of fire,” said the commander, looking with a pleasant smile at the disturbed face of the ensign. “But get ready quickly, and in order that it may be pleasanter, Vlang will go with you in the place of the artificer.
XX.
Vlang, delighted with his mission, ran away to dress, and came back at once to assist Volodia to make up his bundles, advising him to take his bed, his fur cloak, an old number of the “Annals of the Country,” a coffee-pot with an alcohol lamp, and other useless articles. The captain, in his turn, advised Volodia to read in the “Manual for the use of Artillery Officers” the passage relating to firing mortars, and to copy it at once! Volodia set himself to work at it immediately, happy and surprised to feel that the dread of danger, especially the fear of passing for a coward, was less strong than on the evening before. His impressions of the day and his occupation had partly contributed to diminish the violence of this; and then it is well known that an acute sensation cannot last long without weakening. In a word, his fear was being cured. At seven in the evening, at the moment the sun was setting behind the Nicholas barracks, the sergeant-major came to tell him that the men were ready, and were waiting for him.
“I have given the list to Vlang, your Excellency; you can ask him for it,” he said.
“Must I make a little speech to them?” thought Volodia, on his way, accompanied by the yunker, to join the twenty artillery-men who, swords by their sides, were waiting for him outside—“or must I simply say to them, ‘How do you do, children?’ or, indeed, say nothing at all? Why not say ‘How do you do, children?’ I think I ought to;” and with his full and sonorous voice he cried boldly, “How do you do, children?” The soldiers replied cheerfully to his salutation; his young and fresh voice sounded agreeably in their ears. He put himself at their head, and although his heart was beating as if he had just run several furlongs, his walk was light and his face was smiling. When they got near the Malakoff mamelon, he noticed, while climbing up it, that Vlang, who did not leave his heels, and who had seemed so courageous down below in their quarters, stooped and ducked his head as if the bullets and shells which were whistling without cessation were coming straight towards him. Several soldiers did the same, and the majority of the faces expressed, if not fear, at least disquiet. This circumstance reassured him and revived his courage.
“Here I am, then, I also, on the Malakoff mamelon. I imagined it a thousand times more terrible, and I am walking, I am advancing, without saluting the bullets! I am less afraid than the others, and I am not a coward, then,” he said to himself joyfully, with the enthusiasm of satisfied self-love.
This feeling was, however, shaken by the spectacle that presented itself to his eyes. When he reached in the twilight the Korniloff battery, four sailors, some holding by the legs, others by the arms, the bloody corpse of a man with bare feet and no coat, were in the act of throwing him over the parapet. (The second day of the bombardment they threw the dead into the ditch, because they had no time to carry them off.) Volodia, stupefied, saw the corpse strike the upper part of the rampart, and slide from there into the ditch. Fortunately for him, he met at this very moment the commander of the bastion, who gave him a guide to lead him to the battery and into the bomb-proof quarters of the men. We will not relate how often our hero was exposed to danger during that night. We will say nothing of how he was undeceived when he noticed that instead of finding them firing here according to the precise rules such as they practise at Petersburg on the plain of Volkovo, he saw himself in front of two broken mortars, one with its muzzle bruised by a shell, the other still upright on the pieces of a destroyed platform. We will not tell how it was impossible for him to get the soldiers in order to repair it before daylight, how he found no charge of the calibre indicated in the “Manual,” nor describe his feelings at seeing two of his soldiers fall, hit before his eyes, nor how he himself, even, escaped death twenty times by a hair’s-breadth. Happily for him, the captain of the mortar, who had been given him for an assistant, a tall sailor attached to these mortars since the beginning of the siege, assured him that they could make use of them still, and promised him while he was walking on the bastion, lantern in hand, as calmly as if he were in his kitchen-garden, to put them in good condition before morning.
The bomb-proof reduct into which his guide conducted him was only a great, long cavern dug in the rocky earth, two fathoms deep, protected by oaken timbers eighteen inches thick. There he established himself with his soldiers.
As soon as Vlang noticed the little low door which led into it, he threw himself in the first with such haste that he nearly fell on the stone-paved floor, cowered down in a corner, and did not care to come out of it. The soldiers placed themselves on the ground along the wall. Some of them lighted their pipes, and Volodia arranged his bed in a corner, stretched himself on it, lighted a candle in his turn, and smoked a cigarette. Over their heads could be heard, deadened by the bomb-proof, the uninterrupted roar of the discharges. A single cannon close beside them shook their shelter every time it thundered. In the interior everything was quiet. The soldiers, still intimidated by the presence of the new officer, only exchanged a word with each other now and then to ask for a light or a little room. A rat was scratching somewhere among the stones, and Vlang, who had not yet recovered from his emotion, occasionally sighed deeply as he looked about him. Volodia, on his bed in this peaceful corner crammed with people, lighted by a single candle, gave himself up to the feeling of comfort which he had often had as a child when, playing hide-and-seek, he slipped into a wardrobe or under his mother’s skirt, holding his breath, stretching his ears, being very much afraid of the dark, and feeling at the same time an unconscious impression of well-being.