II
At the entrance to a street of remains of ruined stone Tartar houses in Douvánka, Lieutenant Kozeltsóf was stopped by a convoy of bombs and cannonballs on its way to Sevastopol, which blocked the road.
Two foot-soldiers sat on the stones of a ruined wall in the midst of a cloud of dust eating a watermelon and bread.
“Going far, comrade?” asked one of them, with his mouth full of bread, as another soldier with a little bag on his back stopped near them.
“Going to join our regiment,” answered the soldier, looking past the watermelon and readjusting his bag: “We have been nigh on three weeks in the province looking after hay for our company, but now we’ve all been recalled, but we don’t know where the regiment is. Some say it crossed to the Korábelnaya last week. Perhaps you have heard, good people?”
“In the town, friend, it’s quartered in the town,” muttered the other, an old convoy soldier, who was digging with a clasp-knife into an unripe, whitish watermelon. “We’ve only come from there since noon. Ah, it’s awful there, my lad!”
“How so, good people?”
“Why, can’t you hear? They’re firing from all sides today, there’s not a place left whole. As for the likes of us as has been killed—there’s no counting ’em!” And making an expressive gesture with his hand the speaker put his cap straight.
The soldier who had stopped shook his head meditatively and clicked his tongue, then he took a pipe out of his bootleg, and, without filling it, merely loosened the scorched tobacco in it, and lit a bit of tinder at the pipe of one of the soldiers. Then he raised his cap and said—
“One can’t get away from God, good people! Forgive me.” And straightening his bag with a jerk he went his way.
“Ah, it would be far better to wait!” said with conviction he who was digging into the watermelon.
“It all comes to the same!” muttered the soldier, squeezing between the wheels of the crowded carts.