Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/226

200  together, they found themselves outside of the battle-field in a narrow loamy ravine overgrown with dwarfish trees. The ravine was deep and had washed-out clay slopes. High above it stretched a muddy, uneven strip of grey sky, which poured an unceasing rain upon the soaked red clay, upon the small wet birch trees, and the group of soldiers, who had lost their way and driven by inertia were hurrying further downward.

The soldiers, all reservists, were thick-set, bearded and pock-marked peasants from the governments of Kostroma and Novgorod and among them, was a dark little Jew, Hershel Маk, who alone thought and planned for the rest of them. All these country people taken right from the plough were unable to grasp how it all happened, and were not even sure whether anything had happened at all. They could not tell whether there was a battle or not, whether it was good or bad to be left without officers in this confounded ravine, and what would come of it all. Only Hershel Маk understood that there was a battle, that the front ranks came right under the crossfire of the machine-guns, that a panic resulted