XI + 

“Your coat is bloody; you don’t mean to say you were in the hand-to-hand fight?” asked Kaloúgin. + 

“Oh, it was awful! Just fancy⁠—” + 

And Pesth began to relate how he led his company, how the Company-Commander was killed, how he himself stabbed a Frenchman, and how, had it not been for him, we should have lost the day. + 

This tale was founded on facts: the Company-Commander was killed, and Pesth had bayonetted a Frenchman, but in recounting the details the Junker invented and bragged. He bragged unintentionally, because during the whole of the affair he had been, as it were, in a fog, and so dazed that everything that happened seemed to him to have happened somehow, somewhere, and to someone. And, very naturally, he tried to recall the details in a light advantageous to himself. What really occurred was this:⁠— + 

The battalion the Junker had been ordered to join for the sortie, stood for two hours under fire close to some low wall. Then the Battalion-Commander in front said something, the Company-Commanders became active, the battalion advanced from behind the breastwork, and, after going about a hundred paces, it stopped to form into company columns. Pesth was told to place himself on the right flank of the second company. + 

Quite unable to realise where he was and why he was there, the Junker took his place, and involuntarily holding his breath, while cold shivers ran down his back, he gazed into the dark distance, expecting something dreadful. He was, however, not so much frightened (for there was no firing) as disturbed and agitated at being in the field beyond the fortifications. + 

Again the Battalion-Commander in front said something. Again the officers spoke in whispers, passing on the order, and the black wall formed by the first company suddenly sank out of sight. The order was to lie down. The second company also lay down, and, in lying down, Pesth hurt his hand on a sharp prickle. Only the Commander of the second company remained standing. His short figure, brandishing a sword, moved in front of the company, and he spoke incessantly. + 

“Mind, lads! show them what you’re made of! Don’t fire, but give it them with the bayonet⁠—the dogs! When I cry ‘Hurrah,’ altogether mind, that’s the thing! We’ll let them see who we are; we’ll not shame ourselves, eh, lads? For our father the Tsar!” + 

“What is your Company-Commander’s name?” asked Pesth of a Junker lying near him. “How brave he is!” + 

“Yes, he always is, in action,” answered the Junker. “His name is Lisinkóvsky.” + 

Just then a flame suddenly flashed up straight before the company, who were deafened by a resounding crash. High up in the air stones and splinters clattered. (Some fifty seconds later a stone fell from above and took a soldier’s leg off.) It was a bomb fired from an elevated stand, and the fact that it reached the company showed that the French had noticed the column. + 

“It’s bombs you’re sending! Wait a bit till we get at you, then you’ll taste a three-edged Russian bayonet, damn you!” said the Company-Commander, so loudly that the Battalion-Commander had to order him to hold his tongue and not make so much noise. + 

After that the first company rose, then the second. They were ordered to charge bayonets, and the battalion advanced. + 

Pesth was in such a fright that he could not in the least make out how long it lasted, where he went, or who was who. He went on as if he were drunk. But suddenly a million fires flashed from all sides, something whistled and clattered. He shouted and ran somewhere, because everyone ran and shouted. Then he stumbled and fell over something. It was the Company-Commander, who had been wounded at the head of his company, and who, taking the Junker for a Frenchman, had seized him by the leg. Then, when Pesth had freed his leg and risen, someone else ran against him from behind in the dark, and nearly knocked him down again. “Run him through!” someone else shouted, “what are you stopping for?” Then someone seized a gun and stuck it into something soft. “Ah Dieu!” cried a dreadful, piercing voice, and Pesth only then understood that he had bayonetted a Frenchman. A cold sweat covered his whole body, he trembled as in fever, and threw down the gun. But this lasted only a moment; the thought immediately entered his head that he was a hero. He again seized the gun, and shouting “Hurrah!” ran with the crowd away from the dead Frenchman. Having run twenty paces he came to a trench. Some of our men with the Battalion-Commander were there. + 

“And I have killed one!” said Pesth to the Commander. + 

“You’re a fine fellow, Baron!” + 