War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [96]
“Stretcher!” someone’s voice shouted behind.
Rostov did not think of what the call for a stretcher meant; he ran on, trying only to be ahead of everyone else; but just by the bridge, not looking under his feet, he got into the slimy, trampled mud, stumbled, and fell on his hands. Others ran past him.
“On bote sides, Captain,” he heard the voice of the regimental commander, who, having ridden ahead, stood mounted near the bridge with a triumphant and merry face.
Rostov, wiping his muddy hands on his breeches, looked at his enemy and wanted to run further, supposing that the further ahead he got, the better it would be. But Bogdanych, though he neither looked at nor recognized Rostov, shouted at him.
“Who’s that running in the middle of the bridge? Keep to the right! Back, junker!” he cried out angrily and turned to Denisov, who, flaunting his courage, rode out onto the planks of the bridge.
“Vy riskiert, Captain! Better dismount,” said the colonel.
“Eh! it’ll find the one it’s meant for,” replied Denisov, turning on his saddle.
Meanwhile, Nesvitsky, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite stood together out of the range of fire and looking at this small bunch of men in yellow shakos, dark green jackets embroidered with cord, and blue breeches, pottering about by the bridge and, on the other side, at blue coats and groups with horses, which could easily be identified as artillery, approaching in the distance.
“Will they set fire to it or won’t they? Who’ll be first? Will they run and set fire to the bridge, or will the French come within canister-shot range and kill them all?” These questions were involuntarily asked with sinking heart by each man of that large mass of troops which stood above the bridge and in the bright evening light looked at the bridge and the hussars and, on the other side, at the advancing blue coats with bayonets and guns.
“Ah! the hussars are going to get it!” said Nesvitsky. “It’s close enough for canister shot now.”
“He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the suite.
“Indeed not,” said Nesvitsky. “If he’d sent two brave lads, it would be the same.”
“Ah, Your Excellency,” Zherkov mixed in, not taking his eyes from the hussars, but still with his naïve manner, which made it impossible to tell whether he was speaking seriously or not. “Ah, Your Excellency! What a way to reason! Send two men, and who’s going to give us a Vladimir with a bow?5 This way they may get beaten, but the squadron will be distinguished, and he’ll get a bow. Our Bogdanych knows the system.”
“Well,” said the officer of the suite, “there’s the canisters!”
He pointed to the French guns, which were being taken from their limbers and hurriedly deployed.
On the French side, among those groups where the guns were, a puff of smoke appeared, a second, a third almost simultaneously, and just as the sound of the first shot reached them, a fourth appeared. Two sounds one after another, and a third.
“Oh, oh!” gasped Nesvitsky, as if from burning pain, seizing the officer of the suite by the arm. “Look, he’s fallen, one of them has fallen, fallen!”
“Two of them, I believe?”
“If I were the tsar, I’d never go to war,” Nesvitsky said, turning away.
The French guns were being hurriedly reloaded. The infantry in blue coats moved towards the bridge at a run. Again puffs of smoke appeared at various intervals, and canister shot went crackling and rattling over the bridge. But this time Nesvitsky could not see what was happening on the bridge. Thick smoke rose from it. The hussars had managed to set fire to the bridge, and the French batteries were now shooting not in order to hinder them, but because the guns had been aimed and there were people to shoot at.
The French managed to fire three rounds of canister shot before the hussars got back to the horse-tenders. Two of the rounds were poorly