The detachment advanced to the river, the black hills and gorges were left behind, the dawn appeared. The vault of the heavens, in which a few pale stars were still dimly visible, seemed higher; the sunrise glow beyond shone brightly in the east, a fresh penetrating breeze blew from the west and the white mists rose like steam above the rushing stream.
Chapter VIII
OUR guide pointed out a ford and the cavalry vanguard, followed by the general, began crossing the stream. The water which reached to the horses’ chests rushed with tremendous force between the white boulders which here and there appeared on a level with its surface, and formed foaming and gurgling ripples round the horses’ legs. The horses, surprised by the noise of the water, lifted their heads and pricked their ears, but stepped evenly and carefully against the current on the uneven bottom of the stream. Their riders lifted their feet and their weapons. The infantry, literally in nothing but their shirts, linked arm in arm by twenties and holding above the water their muskets to which their bundles of clothing were fastened, made great efforts (as the strained expression of their faces showed) to resist the force of the current. The mounted artillerymen with loud shouts drove their horses into the water at a trot. The guns and green ammunition wagons, over which the water occasionally splashed, rang against the stony bottom, but the sturdy little horses, churning the water, pulled at the traces in unison and with dripping manes and tails clambered out on the opposite bank.
As soon as the crossing was accomplished the general’s face suddenly assumed a meditative and serious look and he turned his horse and, followed by the cavalry, rode at a trot down a broad glade which opened out before us in the midst of the forest. A cordon of mounted Cossacks was scattered along the skirts of the forest.
In the woods we noticed a man on foot dressed in a Circassian coat and wearing a tall cap – then a second and a third. One of the officers said: ‘Those are Tartars.’ Then a puff of smoke appeared from behind a tree, a shot, and another.… Our rapid fire drowns the enemy’s. Only now and then a bullet, with a slow sound like the buzzing of a bee’s wings, passes by and proves that the firing is not all ours. Now the infantry at a run and the guns at a trot pass into the cordon. You can hear the boom of the guns, the metallic sounds of flying grape-shot, the hissing of rockets, and the crackle of musketry. Over the wide glade on all sides you can see cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Puffs of smoke mingle with the dew-covered verdure and the mist. Colonel Khasánov, approaching the general at full gallop, suddenly reins in his horse.
‘Your Excellency, shall we order the cavalry to charge?’ he says, raising his hand to his cap. ‘The enemy’s colours11 are in sight,’ and he points with his whip to some mounted Tartars in front of whom ride two men on white horses with bits of blue and red stuff fastened to poles in their hands.
‘Go, and God be with you, Iván Mikháylovich!’ says the general.
The colonel turns his horse sharply round, draws his sword, and shouts ‘Hurrah!’
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ comes from the ranks, and the cavalry gallop after him.…
Everyone looks on with interest: there is a colour, another, a third and a fourth.…
The enemy, not waiting for the attack, hides in the wood and thence opens a small-arms fire. Bullets come flying more and more frequently.
‘Quel charmant coup d’œil!’12 says the general, rising slightly, English fashion, in his saddle on his slim-legged black horse.
‘Charmant!’ answers the major, rolling his r’s, and striking his horse he rides up to the generaclass="underline" ‘C’est un vrai plaisir que la guerre dans un aussi beau pays,’13 he says.
‘Et surtout en bonne compagnie,’14 replies the general with a pleasant smile.
The major bows.
At that moment a hostile cannon-ball flies past with a disagreeable whiz, and strikes something. We hear behind us the moan of a wounded man.
This moaning strikes me so strangely that the warlike scene instantly loses all its charm for me. But no one except myself seems to notice it: the major laughs with apparently greater gusto, another officer repeats with perfect calm the first words of a sentence he had just been saying, the general looks the other way and with the quietest smile says something in French.
‘Shall we reply to their fire?’ asks the commander of the artillery, galloping up.
‘Yes, frighten them a bit!’ carelessly replies the general, lighting a cigar.
The battery takes up its position and the firing begins. The earth groans under the shots, the discharges flash out incessantly, and smoke, through which it is scarcely possible to distinguish the artillerymen moving round their guns, veils your sight.
The aoul has been bombarded. Colonel Khasánov rides up again, and at the general’s command gallops towards the aoul. The war-cry is again heard and the cavalry disappears in the cloud of dust it has raised.
The spectacle was truly magnificent. The one thing that spoilt the general impression for me – who took no part in the affair and was unaccustomed to it – was that this movement and the animation and the shouting appeared unnecessary. The comparison involuntarily suggested itself to me of a man swinging his arms vigorously to cut the air with an axe.
Chapter IX
OUR troops had taken possession of the village and not a single soul of the enemy remained in it when the general and his suite, to which I had attached myself, rode up to it.
The long clean huts, with their flat earthen roofs and shapely chimneys, stood on irregular stony mounds between which flowed a small stream. On one side were green gardens with enormous pear and small plum trees brightly lit up by the sun, on the other strange upright shadows, the perpendicular stones of the cemetery, and long poles with balls and many-coloured flags fastened to their ends. (These marked the graves of dzhigits.)
The troops were drawn up outside the gates.
[‘Well, how about it, Colonel?’ said the general. ‘Let them loot. I see they are terribly anxious to,’ he added with a smile, pointing at the Cossacks.
You cannot imagine how striking was the contrast between the carelessness with which the general uttered these words, and their import and the military surroundings.]
A moment later, dragoons, Cossacks, and infantry spread with evident delight through the crooked lanes and in an instant the empty village was animated again. Here a roof crashes, an axe rings against the hard wood of a door that is being forced open, here a stack of hay, a fence, a hut, is set on fire and a pillar of thick smoke rises up in the clear air. Here is a Cossack dragging along a sack of flour and a carpet, there a soldier, with a delighted look on his face, brings a tin basin and some rag out of a hut, another is trying with outstretched arms to catch two hens that struggle and cackle beside a fence, a third has somewhere discovered an enormous pot of milk and after drinking some of it throws the rest on the ground with a loud laugh.
The battalion with which I had come from Fort N. was also in the aoul. The captain sat on the roof of a hut and sent thin whiffs of cheap tobacco smoke through his short pipe with such an expression of indifference on his face that on seeing him I forgot that I was in a hostile aoul and felt quite at home.
‘Ah, you are here too?’ he said when he noticed me.
The tall figure of Lieutenant Rosenkranz flitted here and there in the village. He gave orders unceasingly and appeared exceedingly engrossed in his task. I saw him with a triumphant air emerge from a hut followed by two soldiers leading an old Tartar. The old man, whose only clothing consisted of a mottled tunic all in rags and patchwork trousers, was so frail that his arms, tightly bound behind his bent back, seemed scarcely to hold onto his shoulders, and he could scarcely drag his bare crooked legs along. His face and even part of his shaven head were deeply furrowed. His wry toothless mouth kept moving beneath his close-cut moustache and beard, as if he were chewing something; but a gleam still sparkled in his red lashless eyes which clearly expressed an old man’s indifference to life.