Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/542

504 repeated several times, in a discontented voice: "Why do we let him shoot at us for nothing? If we trained our gun upon him, and treated him to a canister-shot, he probably would stop."

It was indeed time to do so. I ordered the last shell let out, and a canister-shot loaded.

"Canister-shot!" cried Antónov, lustily, before the smoke had dispersed, and walking up with the sponge to the gun the moment the shell had been discharged.

Just then I suddenly heard a short distance behind me the ping of a whizzing bullet striking against something. My heart was compressed. "It seems to me it has struck somebody," I thought, but at the same time I was afraid to turn around, under the influence of a heavy presentiment. Indeed, immediately following upon this sound was heard the heavy fall of a body, and "Oh, oh, oh!" the piercing cry of a wounded man. "It has struck me, brothers!" uttered with difficulty a voice which I recognized. It was Velenchúk. He lay fiat on his back between the limber and the gun. The cartridge-box which he carried was thrown to one side. His forehead was blood-stained, and down his right eye and nose ran the thick red blood. The wound was in the abdomen, but he had hurt his forehead in his fall.

All this I found out much later; in the first moment I saw only an indistinct mass, and a terrible lot of blood, as I thought.

Not one of the soldiers, who were loading the gun, said a word, only the recruit mumbled something like, "I say, all bloody," and Antónov, scowling, angrily cleared his throat; but it was manifest that the thought of death had passed through the mind of each. Everybody went to work with a vim. The gun was loaded in a twinkle, and the cannoneer, in bringing the shot, made a couple of steps around the place on which the wounded man lay groaning.