This, as Captain Hlopov said, was “not yet business, but only play.”
The commander of the 9th Company of Chasseurs, that formed our support, came up to our guns, pointed to three Tartars11 on horseback skirting the forest some 1,400 yards from us, and, with the fondness for artillery fire common among infantry officers in general, asked me to let off a ball or bomb at them.
“Do you see?” he said with a kind and persuasive smile, as he stretched his hand from behind my shoulder, “in front of those big trees there … one on a white horse and in a black Circassian cloak, and two others behind. Do you see? Could you not, please?”
“And there are three more riding at the outskirt of the forest,” said Antonov, who had astonishingly sharp eyesight, coming up to us, and hiding behind his back the pipe he had been smoking. “There, the one in front has taken his gun out of its case. They can be seen distinctly, y’r honor!”
“Look there! he’s fired, lads. D’ye see the white smoke?” said Velenchuk, who was one of a group of soldiers standing a little behind us.
“At our line surely, the blackguard!” remarked another.
“See what a lot of ’em come streaming out of the forest. Must be looking round … want to place a gun,” said a third.
“Supposing now a bomb was sent right into that lot, wouldn’t they spit!”
“And what d’ye think, old fellow—that it would just reach ’em?” said Chikin.
“Twelve hundred or twelve hundred and fifty yards: not more than that,” said Maksimov calmly and as if speaking to himself, though it was evident he was just as anxious to fire as the rest: “if we were to give an elevation of forty-five lines to our ‘unicorn’12 we could hit the very point, that is to say, perfectly.”
“D’ye know, if you were now to aim at that group, you would be sure to hit somebody. There now, they are all together—please be quick and give the order to fire,” the company commander continued to entreat me.
“Are we to point the gun?” suddenly asked Antonov in an abrupt bass, with a look as if of gloomy anger.
I must admit that I also felt a strong wish to fire, so I ordered the second gun to be trained.
I had hardly given the order before the shell was charged and rammed in, and Antonov, leaning against the cheek of the gun-carriage and holding two of his thick fingers to the base-ring, was directing the movement of the tail of the gun. “Right, left—a bit to the left, a wee bit—more—more—right!” he said, stepping from the gun with a look of pride.
The infantry officer, I, and Maksimov, one after the other, approached, put our heads to the sights, and expressed our various opinions.
“By Heavens, it will shoot over,” remarked Velenchuk, clicking his tongue, though he was only looking over Antonov’s shoulder, and therefore had no grounds for this supposition. “By Hea—vens, it will shoot over; it will hit that there tree, my lads!”
I gave the order: “Two.”
The men stepped away from the gun. Antonov ran aside to watch the flight of the shot. The touch-hole flashed and the brass rang. At the same moment we were enveloped in a cloud of powder-smoke, and, emerging from the overpowering boom of the discharge, the humming, metallic sound of the flying shot receded with the swiftness of lightning and died away in the distance amid general silence.
A little beyond the group of horsemen a white cloudlet appeared; the Tartars galloped away in all directions, and the report of the explosion reached us. “That was very fine!” “Ah, how they galloped!” “The devils don’t like that!” came the words of approval and ridicule from the ranks of the artillery and infantry.
“If we had had the gun pointed only a touch lower we should just have caught him. I said it would hit the tree, and sure enough it did go to the right,” remarked Velenchuk.
VI
Leaving the soldiers to discuss how the Tartars galloped off when they saw the shell, why they had been riding there, and whether there were many of them in the forest, I went and sat down with the company commander under a tree a few steps off, to wait while the cutlets he had invited me to share were being warmed up. The company commander, Bolhov, was one of the officers nicknamed “Bonjourists” in the regiment. He was a man of some means, had formerly served in the Guards, and spoke French. But in spite of all this his comrades liked him. He was clever enough, and had tact enough, to wear a coat of Petersburg make, to eat a good dinner, and to speak French, without too much offending his fellow officers. After talking about the weather, the military operations, our mutual acquaintances among the officers, and having assured ourselves of the satisfactory state of each other’s ideas by questions and answers, and the views expressed, we involuntarily passed to more intimate conversation. And when people belonging to the same circle meet in the Caucasus, a very evident, even if unspoken, question arises: “Why are you here?” and it was to this silent question of mine that, as it seemed to me, my companion wished to reply.
“When will this expedition end?” he said lazily. “It is so dull.”
“I don’t think it dull,” said I. “It’s much worse on the staff.”
“Oh, it’s ten thousand times worse on the staff,” he said irascibly. “No, I mean when will the whole thing end?”
“What is it you want to
