ONE would naturally have expected that in the almost inconceivably wretched conditions in which the Russian soldiers were placed at that time—without thick boots, without fur coats, without a roof over their heads in the snow, with a frost of eighteen degrees, often without full rations—they must have presented a most melancholy and depressing spectacle.
It was quite the opposite. Never under the most favourable material conditions had the army worn a livelier and more cheerful aspect. This was due to the fact that every element that showed signs of depression or weakness was sifted every day out of the army. All the physically and morally weak had long ago been left behind. What was left was the pick of the army—in strength of body and of spirit.
The camp-fire of the eighth company, screened by their wattle fence, attracted a greater crowd than any. Two sergeants were sitting by it, and the fire was blazing more brightly than any of them. They insisted on logs being brought in return for the right of sitting under the screen.
Hi, Makyev, hullo … are you lost, or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some wood,” shouted a red-faced, red-haired soldier, screwing up his eyes, and blinking from the smoke, but not moving back from the fire.
You run, Crow, and fetch some wood,” he cried, addressing another soldier. The red-headed man was not a non-commissioned officer, nor a corporal, but he was a sturdy fellow, and so he gave orders to those who were weaker than himself. A thin, little soldier, with a sharp nose, who was called the “Crow,” got up submissively, and was about to obey; but at that moment there stepped into the light of the fire the slender, hand-some figure of a young soldier, carrying a load of wood.
Give it here. Well, that's something like
They broke up the wood and threw it on, blew up the fire with their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their coats, and the flame began to hiss and crackle. The soldiers drew nearer the fire and lighted their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought in the wood put his arms akimbo, and began a smart and nimble shuffle with his frozen feet as he stood.
Ah, mother dear, the dew is cold, but yet it is fine, and a musketeer!” … he began singing, with a sort of hiccup at each syllable of the song.
Hey, his soles are flying off!” cried the red-haired man, noticing that the dancer's soles were loose. “He's a rare devil for dancing
The dancer stopped, tore off the loose leather, and flung it in the fire.
You're right there, brother,” said he, and sitting down he took out of his knapsack a strip of French blue cloth, and began binding it round his foot. “It's the steam that warps them,” he added, stretching his feet out to the fire.
They'll soon serve us new ones. They say when we finish them off, we are all to have a double lot of stuff.
I say, that son of a bitch, Petrov, has sneaked off, it seems,” said a sergeant.
It's a long while since I've noticed him,” said the other.
Oh, well, a poor sort of soldier
And in the third company, they were saying, there were nine men missing at the roll-call yesterday.
Well, but after all, when one's feet are frozen, how's one to walk
Oh, stuff and nonsense!” said the sergeant.
Why, do you want to do the same?” said an old soldier; reproachfully addressing the man who had talked of frozen feet.
Well, what do you think?” the sharp-nosed soldier, called “Crow,” said suddenly, in a squeaking and quavery voice, turning himself on one elbow behind the fire. “If a man's sleek and fat, he just grows thin, but for a thin man it's death. Look at me, now! I have no strength left,” he said, with sudden resolution, addressing a sergeant. “Say the word for me to be sent off to the hospital. I'm one ache with rheumatism, and one only gets left behind just the same
There, that's enough; that's enough,” said the sergeant calmly.
The soldier was silent, and the conversation went on.
There's a rare lot of these Frenchies have been taken to-day; but not a pair of boots on one of them, one may say, worth having; no, not worth mentioning,” one of the soldiers began, starting a new subject.
The Cossacks had stripped them of everything. We cleaned a hut for the colonel, and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, lads,” said the dancer. “We overhauled them. One was alive, would you believe it, muttering something in their lingo.
They're a clean people, lads,” said the first. “White—why, as white as a birch-tree, and brave they are, I must say, and gentlemen too.
Well, what would you expect? Soldiers are taken from all classes with them.
And yet they don't understand a word we say,” said the dancer, with a wondering smile. “I says to him, ‘Of what kingdom are you?' and he mutters away his lingo. A strange people
I'll tell you a wonderful thing, mates,” went on the man who had expressed surprise at their whiteness. “The peasants about Mozhaisk were telling how, when they went to take away the dead where the great battle was, why, their bodies had been lying there a good month. Well, they lay there, as white and clean as paper, and not a smell about them.
Why, from the cold, eh?” asked one.
You're a clever one! Cold, indeed! Why, it was hot weather. If it had been from the cold, our men, too, wouldn't have rotted. But they say, go up to one of ours, and it would all be putrefied and maggoty. They tie handkerchiefs round their noses, and drag them off, turning their faces away, so they say. They can't help it. But they're white as paper; not a smell about them.
There was a general silence.
Must be from the feeding,” said the sergeant: “they are gorged like gentry.
No one replied.
That peasant at Mozhaisk, where the battle was, was saying that they were fetched from ten villages round, and at work there for twenty days, and couldn't get all the dead away. A lot of those wolves, says he
That was something like a battle,” said an old soldier. “The only one worth mentioning; everything since … it's simply tormenting folks for nothing.
Oh, well, uncle, we did attack them the day before yesterday. But what's one to do? They won't let us get at them. They were so quick at laying down their arms, and on their knees. Pardon!—they say. And that's only one example. They have said twice that Platov had taken Polion himself. He catches him, and lo! he turns into a bird in his hands and flies away and away. And as to killing him, no manner of means of doing it.
You're a sturdy liar, Kiselov, by the look of you
Liar, indeed! It's the holy truth.
Well, if you ask me, I'd bury him in the earth, if I caught him. Yes, with a good aspen cudgel. The number of folk he has destroyed
Any way, we shall soon make an end of him; he won't come again,” said the old soldier, yawning.
The conversation died away; the soldiers began making themselves comfortable for the night.
I say, what a lot of stars; how they shine! One would say the women had been laying out their linen!” said a soldier admiring the Milky Way.
That's a sign of a good harvest, lads
We shall want a little more wood.
One warms one's back, and one's belly freezes. That's queer.
O Lord
What are you shoving for—is the fire only for you, eh? See … there he sprawls.
In the silence that reigned snoring could be heard from a few who had gone to sleep. The rest turned themselves to get warm by the fire, exchanging occasional remarks. From a fire a hundred paces away came a chorus of merry laughter.
They are guffawing in the fifth company,” said a soldier. “And what a lot of them there
A soldier got up and went off to the fifth company.
There's a bit of fun!” he said, coming back. “Two Frenchies have come. One's quite frozen, but the other's a fine plucky fellow! He's singing songs.
O-O! must go and look …” Several soldiers went across to the fifth company.