Volodia and Vlang, who did not leave his heels, went out together and ran to the battery. On one side as well as on the other the artillery had ceased firing. The despicable and cynical cowardice of the yunker still more than the coolness of the soldiers had the effect of restoring his courage.
“Am I like him?” he thought, rushing quickly towards the parapet, near which the mortars were placed. From there he distinctly saw the French dash across the space, free from every obstacle, and run straight towards him. Their bayonets, sparkling in the sun, were moving in the nearest trenches. A small, square-shouldered Zouave ran ahead of the others, sabre in hand, leaping over the ditches. “Grape!” shouted Volodia, throwing himself down from the parapet. But the soldiers had already thought of it, and the metallic noise of the grape, thrown first by one mortar and then by the other, thundered over his head. “First! second!” he ordered, running across between the two mortars, completely forgetting the danger. Shouts and the musket reports of the battalion charged with the defence of the battery were heard on one side, and suddenly on the left arose a desperate clamor, repeated by many voices: “They are coming in our rear!” and Volodia, turning around, saw a score of Frenchmen. One of them, a fine man with a black beard, ran towards him, and halting ten paces from the battery, fired at him point-blank and went on. Volodia, petrified, could not believe his eyes. In front of him, on the rampart, were blue uniforms, and two Frenchmen who were spiking a cannon. With the exception of Melnikoff, killed by a bullet at his side, and Vlang, who with downcast eyes, and face inflamed by fury, was brandishing a hand-spike, no one was left.
“Follow me, Vladimir Semenovitch! follow me!” shouted Vlang, in a despairing tone, defending himself with the lever from the French who came behind him. The yunker’s menacing look, and the blow which he struck two of them, made them halt.
“Follow me, Vladimir Semenovitch!—What are you waiting for? Fly!” and he threw himself into the trench, from which our infantry were firing on the enemy. He immediately came out of it, however, to see what had become of his beloved lieutenant. A shapeless thing, clothed in a gray overcoat, lay, face to earth, on the spot where Volodia stood, and the whole place was filled by the French, who were firing at our men.
XXVI.
Vlang found his battery again in the second line of defence, and of the twenty soldiers who recently composed it, only eight were alive.
Towards nine o’clock in the evening Vlang and his men were crossing the bay in a steamboat in the direction of Severnaïa. The boat was laden with wounded, with cannon, and with horses. The firing had stopped everywhere. The stars sparkled in the sky as on the night before, but a strong wind was blowing and the sea was rough. On the first and second bastions flames flashed up close to the ground, preceding explosions which shook the atmosphere and showed stones and black objects of strange form thrown into the air. Something near the docks was on fire, and a red flame was reflected in the water. The bridge, covered with people, was lighted up by fires from the Nicholas battery. A great sheaf of flames seemed to rise over the water on the distant point of the Alexander battery, and lighted up the under side of a cloud of smoke which hovered over it. As on the preceding evening, the lights of the hostile fleet sparkled afar on the sea, calm and insolent. The masts of our scuttled vessels, slowly settling into the depths of the water, contrasted sharply against the red glow of the fires. On the deck of the steamboat no one spoke. Now and then, in the midst of the regular chopping of the waves struck by the wheels, and the hissing of escaping steam, could be heard the snorting of horses, the striking of their iron-shod hoofs on the planks, the captain speaking a few words of command, and also the dolorous groaning of the wounded. Vlang, who had not eaten since the day before, drew a crust of bread from his pocket and gnawed it, but at the thought of Volodia he broke out sobbing so violently that the soldiers were surprised at it.
“Look! our Vlang is eating bread and weeping,” said Vassina.
“Strange!” added one of them.
“See! they have burned our barracks!” he continued, sighing. “How many of our fellows are dead, and dead to no purpose, for the French have got possession!”