Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/517

Rh As there was no reason to suppose that the column would march at once, we decided to send Lance Corporal Antónov to find Velenchúk. 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 Antónov and Velenchúk were not with us. We had scarcely taken one hundred steps, when both soldiers caught up with us.

"Where was he?" I asked of Antónov.

"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 unploughed, 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,