It was not until many days afterwards, when he had grown accustomed to the fact that he would have to go through life with one sleeve looped up to a button--though he still complained at times of pains in that hand--that Tatia gently broke the news to him that Jack was gone. The shell had killed him on the spot, had literally blown him to pieces.
And she broke down at sight of his face; and when he turned it over to the pillow and sobbed silently, she crept quietly out of the room and left him to his sorrow.
Jack gone! Jack! He felt stupid and newly broken. Dear old Jack! . . . smashed by that cursed shell! A British shell, too, unless he was very much mistaken. That was hard lines, after coming through so much. Hard lines! Hard lines!
He was very weak yet, and the tears welled out again and again, as he lay thinking dreamily of all the old times on the flats, and how close they had been to one another all through their lives. And Jack was gone . . . killed by a British shell! And he was so much the better man of the two. And now, if he himself lived, he would have to go home--some time--if this wretched war ever came to an end--and break all their hearts with the news. In his weakness and sorrow he wished that cursed shell had made an end of them both.
It was early summer before he was about again, for the bursting shell had ripped open his side and shoulder, in addition to shattering his arm beyond repair, and had given a shock to his system from which it recovered but slowly.
And still the siege dragged on. Early in June came the third bombardment. All the southern portion of the town had long been a heap of grass-grown ruins. Now, even the northern slopes became almost untenable.
The theatre was shattered out of all knowledge; in every barricaded street the roadway was furrowed like a ploughed field by the shot and shell which came raining in, and these were collected each day and piled into pyramids ten feet high. Not a house but was damaged, many were in ruins; the vertical shells from the mortars came down like bolts from heaven and spread destruction where they fell.
It was death to walk the streets, and no safer to stop indoors. Many crossed the harbour to the northern heights. The Greskis and Jim fitted up their cellars and lived there as in a bomb-proof.
Greski himself had made but a slow recovery. The bullet-wound in his thigh took long to heal, and left him limping still and quite unfit for service--at which nis mother and Tatia rejoiced greatly, and he did not greatly repine.
"As a soldier," he said, "I would shirk nothing; but all the same Russia is not my country, but my oppressor, and it makes a difference. For Poland I would die ten deaths. For Russia I grudge a finger."