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By Root 3731 0

hussars; but the cannonballs, with a rapid, steady whistling, kept flying over the hussars’ heads and hitting somewhere behind them. The hussars did not look back, but with each sound of a flying cannonball, the whole squadron, as if on command, with all their similarly dissimilar faces, holding their breath while the cannonball flew over, rose in their stirrups, then lowered themselves again. Without turning their heads, the soldiers looked sideways at each other, curious to spy out a comrade’s impressions. On each face, from Denisov’s down to the bugler’s, there appeared around the lips and chin one common trait of a struggle between irritation and excitement. The sergeant major frowned, looking the soldiers over as if threatening them with punishment. Junker Mironov ducked down each time a cannonball flew by. Rostov, standing on the left flank, on his slightly lame but imposing Little Rook, had the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large public at an examination in which he is sure he will distinguish himself. He looked around at them all serenely and brightly, as if asking them to pay attention to how calmly he stood under fire. But on his face, too, that same trait of something new and stern appeared, against his will, around the mouth.

“Who’s that bowing there? Junker Mironov! Not right, look at me!” shouted Denisov, who could not stay still and fidgeted on his horse in front of the squadron.

Vaska Denisov’s pug-nosed and black-haired face, and his whole small, compact figure with his sinewy hand (the short fingers covered with hair), in which he gripped the hilt of his bared saber, was the same as ever, especially towards evening, after drinking a couple of bottles. Only he was more red than usual and, throwing his shaggy head back, the way birds do when they drink, and mercilessly digging the spurs on his small feet into the sides of the good Bedouin, he galloped off, as if falling backwards, to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice that they should inspect their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain, on his broad and sedate mare, rode slowly to meet Denisov. The staff captain, with his long mustaches, was as serious as ever, only his eyes shone more than usual.

“Well, what?” he said to Denisov. “It won’t come to a fight. You’ll see, we’ll withdraw.”

“Devil knows what they’re up to!” Denisov grumbled. “Ah! Rostov!” he cried to the junker, noticing his cheerful face. “Well, you’re done waiting!”

And he smiled approvingly, obviously glad for the junker. Rostov felt himself perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge. Denisov galloped towards him.

“Your Excellency! allow us to attack! I’ll crush them!”

“Attack, indeed!” the colonel said in a bored voice, wincing as if a fly was pestering him. “And why are you standing here? You can see the flanks are retreating. Bring the squadron back across.”

The squadron crossed the bridge and moved out of the range of fire without losing a single man. After them the second squadron, forming a line, also crossed, and the last Cossacks cleared off from that side.

Having crossed the bridge, the two squadrons of the Pavlogradsky hussars went back up the hill one after the other. The regimental commander, Karl Bogdanovich Schubert, rode over to Denisov’s squadron and fell in step with them not far from Rostov, paying no attention to him, though this was the first time they had seen each other since their confrontation over Telyanin. Rostov, feeling himself at the front and in the power of a man before whom he now considered himself guilty, fixed his eyes on the athletic back, blond nape, and red neck of the regimental commander. At first it seemed to Rostov that Bogdanych was only pretending to be inattentive and that his whole goal now consisted in testing the junker’s courage, and he sat up straight and looked around cheerfully. Then it seemed to him that Bogdanych was deliberately riding close to him in order to show Rostov his own courage. Then he thought that his enemy would now deliberately send the squadron