'Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot range and wipe them out?' These were the questions each man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a sinking heart--watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with their bayonets and guns.
'Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!' said Nesvitski; 'they are within grapeshot range now.'
'He shouldn't have taken so many men,' said the officer of the suite.
'True enough,' answered Nesvitski; 'two smart fellows could have done the job just as well.'
'Ah, your excellency,' put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. 'Ah, your excellency! How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our Bogdanich knows how things are done.'
'There now!' said the officer of the suite, 'that's grapeshot.'
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two reports one after another, and a third.
'Oh! Oh!' groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the officer of the suite by the arm. 'Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, fallen!'
'Two, I think.'
'If I were Tsar I would never go to war,' said Nesvitski, turning away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to him with the others. Again someone shouted, 'Stretchers!' Four men seized the hussar and began lifting him.
'Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!' cried the wounded man, but still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace and happiness... 'I should wishing for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,' thought Rostov. 'In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry... There--they are shouting again, and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water, that gorge!...'
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation.
'O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect me!' Rostov whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
'Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!' shouted Vaska Denisov just above his ear.
'It's all over; but I am a coward--yes, a coward!' thought Rostov, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one foot, from the orderly and began to mount.
'Was that grapeshot?' he asked Denisov.
'Yes and no mistake!' cried Denisov. 'You worked like wegular bwicks and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting at you like a target.'
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov, composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from the suite.
'Well, it seems that no one has noticed,' thought Rostov. And this was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.
'Here's something for you to report,' said Zherkov. 'See if I don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy.'
'Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!' said the colonel triumphantly and gaily.
'And if he asks about the losses?'
'A trifle,' said the colonel in his bass voice: 'two hussars wounded, and one knocked out,' he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and pronouncing the phrase 'knocked out' with ringing distinctness.
