Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/345

Rh is certain: there are no more swamps, overflooded rivers, and marshes on our way. Let there be furious battles ahead, with their "Marthas" and their machine-guns; they are better than tramping through the muddy roads of Galicia, sleeping in clay mire, always wet, cold, shivering.

At noon we stopped near the heights of B. for a rest on a "neck," as the soldiers call a thin strip of land separating two lakes. Towards evening, a detachment of Cossacks, numbering about fifty, appeared. Noticing us from a distance they began to sing a merry tune, although they were really half-frozen, their uniforms torn, while one of them was even bootless.

"Where have you been, boys?"

The Cossack regards an infantryman as his inferior. He does not answer at once when asked a question. Finally, our Cossack condescended a reply:

"Over at U."

"What do you mean at U.? Why, the Austrians are there."

We know that the main forces of the enemy are concentrated at the mountain pass of U., which is the gateway to Hungary. But it appeared that the half-hundred of Cossacks, sent out to reconnoiter, found itself far behind the enemy's lines, obtained a great deal of valuable information, and then made its way back despite the enemy's pickets and sentinels. ..

Kistiakov, a gigantic peasant, almost seven feet tall, with a large gold beard, feels himself the incarnation of Russia. For him this is not a formula, not an abstraction, but a concrete fact. This is why he carries one after another the fortified positions of the enemy, battering down, as with a ram, the wall of Austrian troops that guard the gateway to Hungary. By the force of his fatalistic conviction that "we'll get there," he has taken Rawa and Stry, and is now moving on, overcoming every obstacle.

There are four thousand Kistiakovs in our regiment. And in their midst are we, a handful of educated men. But Kistiakov's conviction infects us, too, and lends us new strength. We, too, feel ourselves the embodiment of Russia, the tremendous, the awkward, slow in preparing for a blow, but crushing, in her ponderous movement across the fields and forest of Galicia. ..

According to the information brought by the Cossacks, the enemy must be quite near. And this proximity is apparent. Shots are heard not very far off, heavy guns are booming at a distance, while at night the bright beams of powerful