XXIV
The elder Kozeltsóf, who had during the preceding night won back his money and then again before morning lost everything, including the gold pieces sewn in his cuff, was lying in a heavy, unhealthy, but sound sleep in the Defensive Barracks of the Fifth Bastion, when a fateful cry arose, repeated by many voices—
“The alarm!”
“Why are you sleeping, Michael Semyónitch! We are attacked!” shouted someone.
“It must be a hoax,” he said, opening his eyes incredulously.
But suddenly he saw an officer running, without any apparent object, from one corner of the barrack to the other with such a pale face that he understood it all. The thought that they might take him for a coward who did not wish to be with his company at a critical moment upset him terribly. He rushed as fast as he could to join it. The artillery firing had ceased, but the clatter of musketry was at its height. The bullets did not whistle as single ones do, but came in swarms like a flock of autumn birds flying overhead.
The whole place where his battalion was stationed the day before was hidden in smoke, and angry shouts and exclamations were heard. Crowds of soldiers, wounded and not wounded, met him as he went. Having run another thirty paces he saw his company pressing to the wall.
“The Schwartz Redoubt is taken!” said a young officer. “All is lost!”
“Nonsense!” he said angrily, and drawing his little blunt iron sword, he cried—
“Forward, lads! Hurrah!”
His own loud, clear voice roused Kozeltsóf himself. He ran forward along the traverse, and about fifty soldiers ran shouting after him. From the traverse he ran out into the open ground. The bullets fell just like hailstones. Two hit him, but where, and what they had done—bruised or wounded—him he had no time to determine. Before him, through the smoke, he could already see blue uniforms and red trousers and could hear cries that were not Russian. One Frenchman stood on the breastwork waving his cap and shouting something. Kozeltsóf felt sure he would be killed, and this increased his courage. He ran on and on. Several soldiers outran him, others appeared from somewhere else and also ran. The blue uniforms remained at the same distance from him, running back to their trenches, but there were dead and wounded on the ground under his feet. When he had run to the outer ditch all became blurred to Kozeltsóf’s eyes, and he felt a pain in his chest.
Half-an-hour later he was lying on a stretcher by the Nicholas Barracks, and he knew that he was wounded, but felt hardly any pain. He only wished for something cool to drink and to lie more comfortably.
A little, plump doctor with large black whiskers came up to him and unbuttoned his cloak. Kozeltsóf looked over his chin to see what the doctor was doing to his wound, and at the doctor’s face, but he still felt no pain. The doctor covered the wound with the shirt, wiped his fingers on the skirt of his cloak, and silently, without looking at the wounded man, passed on to another patient. Kozeltsóf watched unconsciously what was going on around him, and remembering what had happened at the Fifth Bastion with an exceedingly joyful feeling of self-satisfaction, thought that he had performed his duty well—that for the first time during his whole service, he had acted as well as was possible and had nothing to reproach himself with. The doctor, bandaging another man, pointed to Kozeltsóf and said something to a priest with a large red beard who stood nearby with a cross.
“Am I dying?” asked Kozeltsóf, when the priest approached him.
The priest, without replying, said a prayer and held the cross to the lips of the wounded man.
Death did not frighten Kozeltsóf. He took the cross with his weak hands, pressed it to his lips and began to weep.
“Were the French driven back?” he asked the priest.
“The victory is ours at all points,” answered the latter to console the wounded man, hiding from him the fact that from the Maláhof Redoubt the French standard was already waving.
“Thank God!” exclaimed the dying man. He did not feel the tears that ran down his cheeks.
The thought of his brother flashed through his brain:
“God grant him as good a fate,” thought he.