— 24 —
At around noon two naval officers had taken up positions at the top of the Telegraph Hill on the Russian-held side of the bay, between Inkerman and the northern fortification. One of them was scanning Sebastopol through a mounted field-glass, while the other, a naval hussar on horseback accompanied by a mounted Cossack, had just ridden up to the large signal post.
The sun was shining high and brilliant above the bay, which glittered warmly and cheerfully, studded with motionless ships and moving sailboats and skiffs. A light breeze was barely rustling the withered leaves of the scrub oaks near the Telegraph, filling the sails of the small boats and raising a gentle swell. On the other side of the bay one could see Sebastopol, looking just as it always did, with its unfinished church, its column, its seafront, its green boulevard stretching along the side of the hill and its elegantly proportioned library building; with its little azure coves filled with masts, its aqueducts with their picturesque arches, and its clouds of blue powder smoke, lit up from time to time by a crimson blaze of gunfire; still the same, beautiful, festive, proud Sebastopol, surrounded on the one hand by yellow, misty hills and on the other by the bright blue sea, sparkling in the sun. Out there on the horizon, along which a smudge of black smoke from a steamship trailed, long white clouds were creeping landwards promising wind. Along the whole line of the fortifications, especially among the hills on the left, balls of dense, compressed white smoke kept suddenly materializing, several at a time, accompanied by flashes that were sometimes visible even in the midday glare—burgeoning out, assuming varied forms, and turning darker as they rose into the sky. These puffs of smoke appeared now here, now there: on the enemy batteries, among the hills, in the town and high up in the sky. The sounds of the explosions succeeded one another without a break, merging into one another and making the air vibrate . . .
By twelve o’clock the puffs of smoke had begun to appear more rarely, and the air shook less from the roar.
“The 2nd bastion’s stopped returning fire altogether now,” said the hussar on horseback. “They’ve been blown to pieces. It’s terrible!”
“Yes, and those fellows on the Malakhov have only been sending one round for every three of theirs,” replied the officer who was looking through the field-glass. “It really makes my blood boil, their not replying like that. There’s another—it’s hit the Kornilov battery, but they haven’t fired back.”
“Well, it’s as I told you: they always stop firing when it gets around to twelve,” said the other. “We might as well go and have lunch . . . they’ll be expecting us . . . there’s nothing much to see now anyway.”
“Wait, don’t distract me!” said the officer with the field-glass, which he was now training on Sebastopol with avid concentration.
“What can you see? What is it?”
“There’s movement in the trenches, dense columns of men are on the move.”
“Yes, I can see them,” said the naval officer. “They’re marching in columns. We’d better send a signal.”
“Look, look! They’ve come out of the trenches!”
Indeed, even the naked eye could now make out what looked like dark stains spreading downhill through the gully from the French batteries towards the bastions. Ahead of these stains several dark strips could be seen quite close to the Russian lines. White puffs of smoke leapt up at various points on the bastions, appearing to run along them. The wind bore across the rapid patter of rifle and musketry fire, a sound like that of rain beating on a windowpane. The black strips were moving through the smoke, drawing nearer and nearer. The sounds of the firing, growing louder and louder, merged into a continuous rolling thunder. The puffs of smoke, which were rising more and more frequently, soon spread along the lines and at last fused into a single, lilac-coloured, smoking and developing cloud in which flashes of light and black dots briefly appeared here and there.
Then, finally, all the sounds united into one earth-shattering detonation.
“It’s an assault!” said the officer, his face pale, letting the other man look through the field-glass.
Some Cossacks came charging along the road at full gallop; officers rode by, followed by the commander-in-chief in a carriage, accompanied by his suite. Gloomy excitement and an anticipation of something terrible could be read on every face.
“They can’t have taken it!” said the officer on horseback.
“My God, a flag! Look! Look!” said the other in a strangled voice, moving away from the field-glass. “The French colours are flying on the Malakhov!”
“It’s impossible!”
— 25 —
The older Kozeltsov, who in the course of the night had managed to win back all his money and then lose it again—this time even including the gold roubles he had sewn into his cuff—was still sunk in an unhealthy, heavy but deep slumber in the defended barracks of the 5th bastion when the fateful cry, repeated by various voices, went up:
“Battle alarm . . . !”
“Wake up, Mikhailo Semyonych! There’s an assault on!” he heard a voice shout.
“Must be one of those boys from training school,” he muttered, opening his eyes but not yet taking anything in.
Suddenly, however, he saw an officer running from one corner of the room to another for no apparent purpose, and with such a pale and frightened face that he took in the situation at once. The thought that he might be taken for a coward who was trying to get out of joining his company at the critical moment had a galvanizing effect on him. He ran off to join his company as fast as he could. The firing of the artillery had stopped; but the crackle of rifle fire was raging furiously. The bullets were whistling over not one by one, like the balls from carbines, but in teeming formations, the way flocks of birds fly above one’s head in autumn.
The whole of the area Kozeltsov’s battalion had occupied the day before was now shrouded in smoke, and hostile shouts and exclamations could be heard. Soldiers, wounded and unscathed alike, were coming towards him in droves. Running forwards another thirty yards or so, he glimpsed his company, pressed up against the wall, and the familiar face of one of his men, pale as death now, and marked by fear. The faces of the other men were also pale and frightened.
Kozeltsov found himself affected, in spite of himself, by the men’s sense of terror. A chill ran down his spine.
“They’ve taken the Schwartz redoubt,” said a young officer, his teeth chattering. “We’re all done for.”
“Nonsense!” Kozeltsov said angrily and, since he wanted to raise his own spirits by means of a gesture, he drew his small, blunt iron sabre and shouted: “Forward, lads! Hurra-ah!”
So loud and resonant was his voice that it produced on him the effect he desired. He raced forward along the traverse; with a shout, some fifty soldiers rushed after him. When at the far end of the traverse they emerged on to an open area, the bullets came lashing down, quite literally, like hail; two of them struck him, but where they had hit and what damage they had done—whether he had merely been contused or had in fact been wounded—he had no time to find out. In the smoke ahead of him he could make out the figures of men in blue coats and red trousers and hear cries that sounded distinctly Russian. One of the French soldiers was standing on the parapet, waving his cap and shouting something. Kozeltsov thought his last hour had come; yet this same thought emboldened him. On and on he ran. He was overtaken by a few soldiers who were running even faster; others appeared from somewhere at his side, also running. The blue-coated men kept their distance, retreating to their trenches, but he kept stepping on the bodies of dead and wounded. By the time he had run as far as the outer fosse, all these human figures mingled together in his eyes; feeling a pain in his chest, he sat down on the banquette and, looking through one of the embrasures, saw to his satisfaction that crowds of the blue-coated men were running in confusion back to their trenches, and that the entire field was strewn with motionless dead and crawling wounded, all of them in red trousers and blue coats.
; Half an hour later, lying on a stretcher outside the Nicholas Barracks, he knew that he had been wounded, but could feel hardly any pain; all he wanted was a rest and something cool to drink.
A small, fat surgeon with large black sideburns came over to him and unfastened his greatcoat. Looking down over his chin, Kozeltsov watched what the surgeon was doing to his wound, and studied the surgeons face, but felt no pain whatsoever. The surgeon pulled Kozeltsov s shirt back into place over the wound, wiped his fingers on the skirts of his coat and silently, without looking at him, went on to the next patient. Kozeltsov observed with a detached gaze all that was taking place around him. As he ran through in his mind what had taken place on the 5th bastion, he reflected with profound relief and self-satisfaction that he had discharged his duty well, that for the first time in his army career he had done the best he could have been expected to do, and had nothing to reproach himself for. The surgeon, who was now changing the dressing of another wounded officer, pointed to Kozeltsov and said something to a priest with a large, red beard, who was standing nearby holding a cross.
“What’s the matter, am I going to die?” Kozeltsov asked the priest when he came over.
The priest made no reply, but said a prayer and gave him the cross to hold. Kozeltsov felt no fear of death.
He took the cross in his enfeebled hands, pressed it to his lips and wept.
“Well, have the French been dislodged at all points?” he asked the priest in a firm tone of voice.
“Yes, victory is ours at all points,” the priest replied in a Ukrainian accent, pronouncing all his Os; in order not to cause further distress to the wounded man, he was concealing from him the fact that the French colours were already flying on the Malakhov.
“God be praised, God be praised,” said the wounded man, unaware of the tears that were flowing down his cheeks, and experiencing a sense of ecstasy as he realized he had performed a heroic deed.
For a fleeting moment he remembered his brother. “God grant him a similar happiness,” he thought.
— 26 —
But such was not the lot that awaited Volodya. As he was listening to a story Vasin was telling him, a shout of “The French are coming!” went up. For a moment, Volodya felt the blood drain from his head, and his cheeks turned cold and pale.
In that second, he remained motionless; on looking round, however, he saw that the soldiers were doing up their greatcoats in relative calm and were clambering out of the casemate one by one; one of them—he thought it looked like Melnikov—even said, jokingly: “Don’t forget the bread and salt, lads!”
Together with Vlanga, who stuck close behind him all the way, Volodya hauled himself out of the casemate and ran towards the battery. There was a complete absence of artillery fire on both sides. Volodya felt his spirits raised, less by the sight of the men’s calm than by this cadet’s pathetic, undisguised cowardice. “I’m not really like him, am I?” he thought, as he ran cheerfully towards the parapet, beside which stood his mortars. He had a clear view of the French soldiers running across the open field towards the bastion, and could see crowds of them stirring in the trenches that lay nearest, their bayonets glinting in the sun. One of them, a little broad-shouldered man in a zouave’s uniform, was running ahead of the rest, sword in hand, leaping over the shell-holes as he went. “Fire grape!” Volodya shouted, running down from the banquette; but his men had already taken the matter into their own hands, and the metallic hiss of grapeshot being fired, first from one mortar and then from the other, sounded in the air overhead. “Mortar one! Mortar two!” came Volodya’s shouted orders, as he ran through the smoke from one mortar to the other, having completely forgotten the reality of danger. From the side sounded the loud crackle of the Russian covering fire, and the men’s hasty shouts.
Suddenly a cry of despair, echoed by several voices, came from the left: “They’re getting through! They’re getting through!” Volodya looked round. Some two dozen French soldiers had appeared from behind them. One of them, a handsome black-bearded man in a red fez cap, was coming on ahead of the others, but when he was about a dozen yards from the battery he stopped, aimed his rifle, fired, and then continued to walk towards them. For a second Volodya stood still as though he had been turned to stone, unable to believe his eyes. By the time he had recovered his wits and started to look around him, the men in blue coats were up on the parapet; one of them had even climbed down again and was spiking one of the guns. There was no one left near Volodya except Melnikov, who had seized hold of a handspike[52] and was rushing forward with an expression of fury on his face, showing the whites of his eyes. “Follow me, Vladimir Semyonych! Follow me! We’re done for!” he cried in a voice of despair, brandishing the handspike in the direction of the French soldiers who were approaching from the rear. The cadet’s violent appearance had clearly taken them aback. Melnikov brought the handspike down on the head of the man in front, and the others came to a halt, uncertain of what to do next. Continuing to look about him, and shouting “Follow me, Vladimir Semyonych! Don’t stay here! Run!” Melnikov ran towards the trench from which the Russian infantry were firing at the French forces. Having jumped into the trench, he leaned out of it to see what his beloved ensign was doing. Something wrapped in a greatcoat was lying face down in the place where Volodya had been standing, and the entire area was now occupied by French soldiers, who were firing at the Russians.
— 27 —
Vlang found his battery on the second line of the defences. Of the twenty soldiers who had made up the mortar brigade, only eight had escaped with their lives.
By nine that evening Vlang and his battery were on board a steamer which was ferrying a cargo of soldiers, cannon, horses and wounded over to the North Side. There was no firing anywhere now. The stars shone brightly in the sky, just as they had done the previous night, but a strong wind was creating a swell at sea. Without warning, a series of flashes leapt along the ground between the 1st and 2nd bastions; explosions shook the air, illuminating strange black objects and flying stones. Down by the docks something was on fire, and the red flames were reflected in the water. The pontoon bridge, packed with people, was lit up by the glare from the Nicholas battery. On the distant headland where the Alexander battery was situated, a great sheet of flame seemed to be hanging above the water, illuminating the base of the smoke-cloud that had formed above it; just as they had done the night before, the calm, insolent lights of the enemy fleet gleamed far out at sea. The fresh wind chopped the surface of the bay. By the light of the glow from the various fires one could see the masts of the sunken Russian ships, which were slowly slipping deeper and deeper beneath the waves. There was no talking on deck; above the even hiss of escaping steam and keel-cut waves one could hear the horses stamping and snorting in the tow-barge, the words of command spoken by the captain, and the groans of the men who were wounded. Vlang, who had had nothing to eat all day, took a piece of bread from his pocket and began to chew it; suddenly, however, remembering Volodya, he started to weep so loudly that the soldiers near him grew curious.
“Strewth! He’s eating a bit of bread and crying at the same time, our Vlang,” said Vasin.
“That lad’s not right in the head, if you ask me,” another man said. “Christ, they’ve set fire to our barracks and all,” he continued, sighing. “Think of all the lads who’ve bought it over there; and now those Frenchies have taken it, easy as winking.”
“Well, at least we got out of there alive, thank the Lord,” said Vasin.
“It’s a shame, though.”
“What’s a shame? Do you think he’s going to have the place all to himself? Not on your life! Just you wait and see, our lads’ll take it back again. Won’t matter how many of them will have to die, you can bet your boots the Tsar will give the command and we’ll take it back again! You think we’ll just leave it to him? Never! Here you are,” he said, addressing the French now. “Here’s the bare walls, but we’ve blown up all the trenches. All right, so you’ve got y
our flag up on the Malakhov. But you’ll never dare poke your noses into the town. You wait, we’ll settle your hash, just give us time.”
“That’s right, we will,” said the other man, with conviction.
Along the whole line of the Sebastopol bastions, which for so many months now had been seething with an unusually active life, had seen heroes released one by one into the arms of death, and had aroused the fear, hatred and, latterly, the admiration of the enemy forces, there was now not a soul to be seen. The whole place was dead, laid waste, uncanny—but not quiet: the destruction was still continuing. The ground, churned up and displaced here and there by fresh explosions, was everywhere covered in twisted gun carriages with the corpses of Russian and enemy soldiers crushed beneath them, heavy cast-iron cannon which by dint of dreadful force had been buried into shell-holes and half buried under mounds of earth, shells, cannonballs, more corpses, craters, split beams, casemates, and yet more silent corpses in grey and blue greatcoats. This entire landscape frequently shuddered and gleamed in the crimson glare of the explosions that continued to make the air vibrate.