Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1855
Source: Text from WikiSource.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
In midwinter of 185 - the division of our battery- was doing frontier service in the Great Chechnya. Having learned, on the evening of the 14th of February, that the platoon, which I was to command in the absence of the officer, was detailed for the following day to cut timber, and having received and given the proper orders on that very evening, I repaired earlier than usual to my tent ; as I did not have the bad habit of warming it up with burning coal, I lay down in my clothes on my bed, which was constructed of paling, drew my lambskin cap down to my eyes, wrapped myself in a fur coat, and fell into that peculiar, profound, and heavy sleep which one sleeps in moments of alarm and agitation before an imminent peril. The expectancy of the engagement of the following day had induced that condition in me.
At three o'clock in the morning, while it was still very dark, somebody pulled the warm fur coat from me, and the purple light of a candle disagreeably startled my sleepy eyes.
" Please get up ! " said somebody's voice. I closed my eyes, unconsciously pulled the fur coat over me, and again fell asleep. " Please get up ! " repeated Dmitri, pitilessly shaking me by the shoulder. " The infantry is starting." I suddenly recalled the actuality, shuddered, and sprang to my feet. Having swallowed in a hurry a glass of tea and washed myself with ice-crusted water, I went out of the tent and walked over to the park (the place where the ordnance is stationed).
It was dark, misty, and cold. The night fires, which glimmered here and there in the camp, lighting up the figures of the drowsy soldiers who were lying about them, only intensified the darkness by their purple glamour. Near by one could hear the even, calm snoring of men ; in the distance there was the motion, talking, and clanking of the infantry's weapons, getting ready for the march ; there was an odor of smoke, dung, slow-matches, and mist ; a morning chill ran down one's back, and one's teeth involuntarily clattered against each other.
By the snorting and occasional stamping alone could one make out, in this impenetrable darkness, where the hitched-up limbers and caissons were standing, and only by the burning dots of the linstocks could one tell where the ordnance was. With the words, " God be with you ! " the first gun began to clatter, then the caisson rattled, and the platoon was on the move. We took off our hats and made the sign of the cross. Having taken up its position among the infantry, the platoon stopped, and for about fifteen minutes awaited the drawing up of the whole column and the arrival of the commander.
" We lack one soldier, Nikolay Petrovich ! " said, approaching me, a black figure, which I recognized by the voice only as being that of the platoon gun-sergeant, Maksim о v.
" Who is it ? "
" Velenchiik is not here. As we were hitching up, he was here, and I saw him, but now he is gone."
As there was no reason to suppose that the column would march at once, we decided to send Lance Corporal Antonov to find Velenchiik. Soon after, several horsemen galloped past us in the darkness : that was the commander with his suite ; immediately there was a stir, the van of the column started, and then we began to march, — but Antonov and Velenchiik were not with us. We had scarcely taken one hundred steps, when both soldiers caught up with us.
" Where was he ? " I asked of Antonov.
" Asleep in the park."
" Is he drunk ? "
" No, sir."
" Why, then, did he go to sleep ? "
" I can't tell you."
For something like three hours we moved slowly in the same silence and darkness over unplowed, snowless fields and low bushes, which crackled under the wheels of the ordnance. Finally, after fording a shallow, but extremely rapid torrent, we halted, and in the van could be heard intermittent volleys of musketry. These sounds, as always, had an awakening effect upon all. The detachment seemed to have wakened from slumber : in the ranks could be heard conversation, animation, and laughter. Some soldiers were wrestling with their comrades ; others leaped now on one foot, now on another; others again were munching their hardtack, or, to pass the time, pretended to stand sentry or keep time walking. In the meantime the mist was becoming perceptibly white in the east, the dampness grew more penetrating, and the surrounding objects emerged more and more from the darkness. I could discern the green gun-carriages and caissons, the brass of the ordnance, covered by a misty dampness, the familiar forms of my soldiers, and the bay horses, which I had involuntarily learned to know down to their minutest details, and the rows of the infantry, with their sparkling bayonets, knapsacks, wad-hooks, and kettles over their backs.
Shortly afterwards we were again put in motion, taken a couple of hundred steps across the field, and had a place pointed out to us. On the right could be seen the steep bank of a winding brook and tall wooden posts of a Tartar cemetery ; on the left and in front of us shimmered a black streak, through the mist. The platoon came down from the limbers. The eighth company, which was flanking us, stacked arms, and a battalion of soldiers went into the woods with guns and axes.
Less than five minutes had elapsed when on all sides crackled and burned camp-fires ; the soldiers scattered about them, fanning the fire with their hands and feet, carrying boughs and logs, and in the forest resounded without interruption hundreds of axes and falling trees.
The artillerists, vying with the infantrymen, had made a fire of their own, and though it was burning so well that it was impossible to come within two paces of it, and a dense smoke was passing through the ice-crusted branches, from which drops fell sizzling into the fire, and which the soldiers kept pressing down with their feet, and though coal had formed underneath the fire, and the grass was burnt white all around it, — the soldiers were not yet satisfied ; they dragged up whole logs, threw steppe-grass upon it, and fanned it more and more.
As I went up to the camp-fire to light a cigarette, Velenchuk, who was always officious, but who now, having failed in his duty, was unduly busy about the fire, in an attack of zeal pulled out with his naked hand a burning coal from the very middle, and, vaulting it a couple of times from one hand to another, threw it down on the ground.
" You had better light a stick and hand it," said some one.
" Hand him the linstock, boys ! " cried another.
When I finally lighted my cigarette without Velenchuk's aid, who was again ready to pick up the coal with his hands, he wiped his singed fingers against the hind skirts of his fur coat, and, evidently anxious to be doing something, lifted a large plane-tree log and flung it into the fire with all his might. When, at last, it seemed to him that it was time to rest himself, he went up as near as he could to the burning wood, spread his over- coat, which he wore like a mantle on the back button, extended in front of him his large black hands, and, distorting his mouth a little, blinked with his eyes.
" Ah, I have forgotten my pipe. That's bad, brothers ! " he said, after a moment's silence, and addressing no one in particular.