‘Hullo, old fellow! Why don’t you stay outside? Don’t the lasses play merrily enough out there?’ said a voice.
‘They’re playing such tunes as we never hear in our village,’ laughingly replied the man who had just run in.
‘Ah, Vásin don’t like bombs – that he don’t!’ said someone in the aristocratic corner.
‘If it was necessary, that would be a different matter,’ replied Vásin slowly, and when he spoke all the others were silent. ‘On the 24th we were at least firing, but why grumble at me now? The authorities won’t thank the likes of us for getting killed uselessly.’
At these words everyone laughed.
‘There’s Mélnikov – he’s out there now, I fancy,’ said someone.
‘Go and send Mélnikov in here,’ said the old sergeant, ‘or else he really will get killed uselessly.’
‘Who is Mélnikov?’ asked Volódya.
‘Oh, he’s a poor silly soldier of ours, your Honour. He’s just afraid of nothing, and he’s walking about outside now. You should have a look at him, he’s just like a bear.’
‘He knows a charm,’ came Vásin’s long-drawn accents from the other corner.
Mélnikov entered the bomb-proof. He was stout (an extremely rare thing among soldiers), red-haired and red-faced, with an enormous bulging forehead and prominent pale-blue eyes.
‘Aren’t you afraid of the bombs?’ asked Volódya.
‘What’s there to be afraid of in them bombs?’ answered Mélnikov, wriggling and scratching himself. ‘They won’t kill me with a bomb, I know.’
‘So you’d like to live here?’
‘’Course I should. It’s jolly here,’ he said and burst out laughing.
‘Oh, then they should take you for a sortie! Shall I speak to the general about it?’ said Volódya, though he did not know a single genera] in the place.
‘Like, indeed! ‘Course I should!’ And Mélnikov hid behind the others.
‘Let’s have a game of “noses” lads! Who has the cards?’ his voice was heard to say hurriedly.
And soon the game had started in the far corner: laughter could be heard, and noses being smacked and trumps declared. The drummer having heated the samovar for him, Volódya drank some tea, treated the non-commissioned officers to some, and, wishing to gain popularity, joked and talked with them and felt very pleased at the respect paid him. The soldiers, seeing that the gentleman gave himself no airs, became talkative too. One of them explained that the siege of Sevastopol would not last much longer, because a reliable fellow in the fleet had told him that Constantine, the Tsar’s brother, was coming with the ‘merican fleet to help us, and also that there would soon be an agreement not to fire for a fortnight, but to have a rest, and that if anyone did fire, he’d have to pay a fine of seventy-five kopeks for each shot. Vásin, who was a small man with whiskers and large kind eyes, as Volódya had already noticed, related, first amid general silence and then amid roars of laughter, how he had gone home on leave and at first everyone was glad to see him, but then his father had begun sending him to work while the forester-lieutenant sent a horse and trap to fetch his wife! All this amused Volódya very much. He not only felt no fear or annoyance because of the overcrowding and bad air in the bomb-proof, but on the contrary felt exceedingly bright and contented.
Many of the soldiers were already snoring. Vlang had also stretched himself out on the floor, and the old sergeant having spread his cloak on the ground was crossing himself and muttering prayers before going to sleep, when Volódya felt moved to go out of the bomb-proof and see what was happening outside.
‘Draw in your legs!’ the soldiers called to one another as soon as he rose, and the legs were drawn in to make room for him.
Vlang, who had seemed to be asleep, suddenly raised his head and seized Volódya by the skirts of his cloak.
‘Don’t go! Don’t go – how can you?’ he began in a tearfully persuasive voice. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. Cannon-balls are falling all the time out there. It’s better in here.’
But in spite of Vlang’s entreaties Volódya made his way out of the bomb-proof and sat down on the threshold, where Mélnikov was already sitting making his feet comfortable.
The air was pure and fresh, especially after that of the bombproof, and the night was clear and calm. Mingling with the booming of the cannon could be heard the rumbling of the wheels of carts bringing gabions, and voices of men at work in the powder-vault. High overhead stretched the starry sky, across which the fiery trails of the bombs ran incessantly. On the left was another bomb-proof, through the three-foot opening of which the legs and backs of the sailors who lived there could be seen and their voices heard. In front was the roof of the powder-vault, past which flitted the figures of stooping men, while on the top of it, under the bullets and bombs that kept flying past, was a tall figure in a black cloak with its hands in its pockets, treading down the earth the others carried up in sacks. Many a bomb flew past and exploded very near the vault. The soldiers who were carrying the earth stooped and stepped aside, but the black figure continued calmly to stamp the earth down with its feet and remained on the spot in the same position.
‘Who is that black fellow there?’ said Volódya to Mélnikov.
‘Can’t say. I’ll go and see.’
‘No, don’t. There’s no need.’
But Mélnikov rose without heeding him, approached the black figure, and for a long time stood beside it just as indifferent and immovable.
‘That’s the powder-master, your Honour!’ he said when he returned. ‘The vault has been knocked in by a bomb, so the infantry are carrying earth there.’
Now and then a bomb seemed to fly straight at the door of the bomb-proof. Then Volódya pressed behind the corner, but soon crept out again looking up to see if another was coming that way. Though Vlang from inside the bomb-proof again and again entreated him to come in, Volódya sat at the threshold for about three hours, finding a kind of pleasure in tempting fate and watching the flying bombs. By the end of the evening he knew how many guns were firing, from which positions, and where their shots fell.
XXIII
THE next morning, 27 August, Volódya, fresh and vigorous after ten hours’ sleep, stepped across the threshold of the bombproof. Vlang too came out, but at the first sound of a bullet rushed wildly back to the entrance, pushing his way through the crowd with his head amid the general laughter of the soldiers, most of whom had also come out into the fresh air.
Vlang, the old sergeant, and a few others only came out into the trench at rare intervals, but the rest could not be kept inside: they all crept out of the stuffy bomb-proof into the fresh morning air and in spite of the firing, which continued as violently as on the day before, settled themselves – some by the threshold of the bomb-proof and some under the breastwork. Mélnikov had been strolling about from battery to battery since early dawn, looking calmly upwards.
Near the threshold sat two old soldiers and one young curly-haired one, a Jew transferred to the battery from an infantry regiment. This latter had picked up one of the bullets that were lying about, and after flattening it out on a stone with the fragment of a bomb, was now carving out a cross like the Order of St George. The others sat talking and watching his work. The cross was really turning out very well.
‘I say,’ said one of them, ‘if we stay here much longer we shall all have served our time and get discharged when there’s peace.’