"Please give a fellow-countryman a coal for his pipe," said he.
"Of course,[29] smoke away; there is plenty of fire," remarked Chikin.
"You were talking about Dargi, weren't you, friend?" asked the soldier, addressing Antónof.
The soldier shook his head, frowned, and squatted down near us on his heels.
"There were all sorts of things there," he remarked.
"Why did you leave him?" I asked of Antónof.
"He had awful cramps in his belly. When we stood still, he did not feel it; but when we moved, he screeched and screeched. He besought us by all that was holy to leave him: it was pitiful. Well, and when he began to vex us solely, and had killed three of our men at the guns and one officer, then our batteries opened on him, and did some execution too. We weren't able to drag out the guns, there was such mud."
"It was muddier under the Indian mountains than anywhere else," remarked the strange soldier.
"Well, but indeed it kept growing worse and worse for him; and we decided, Anóshenka—he was an old artillerist—and the rest of us, that indeed there was no chance for him but to say a prayer, and so we left him there. And so we decided. A tree grew there, welcome enough. We left some hard-tack for him,—Zhdánof had some,—we put him against the tree, put a clean shirt on him, said good-by to him, and so we left him."
"Was he a man of importance?"