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Beyond Shmshevo, Dlokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Densov had two hundred, and Dlokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not deter Densov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a “tongue”—that is, a man from the enemy column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.
Densov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tkhon Shcherbty, a peasant of his party, to Shmshevo to try and seize at least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.
It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
Densov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.
Beside Densov rode an esaul, * Densov’s fellow worker, also in felt cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.
* A captain of Cossacks.
Esaul Lovyski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow, pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first glance at the esaul and Densov one saw that the latter was wet and uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghz mount with an enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the water that lay in the ruts.
Densov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped his rider’s knee against a tree.
“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Densov angrily, and showing his teeth he struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his comrades with mud.
Densov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he still had no news from Dlokhov and the man sent to capture a “tongue” had not returned.
“There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today. It’s too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey from under our noses,” thought Densov, continually peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dlokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the right, Densov stopped.
“There’s someone coming,” said he.
The esaul looked in the direction Densov indicated.
“There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,” said the esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.
The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him, standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Densov and handed him a sodden envelope.
“From the general,” said the officer. “Please excuse its not being quite dry.”
Densov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
“There, they kept telling us: ‘It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous,’” said the officer, addressing the esaul while Densov was reading the dispatch. “But Komarv and I”—he pointed to the Cossack—“were prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what’s this?” he asked, noticing the French drummer boy. “A prisoner? You’ve already been in action? May I speak to him?”
“Wostv! Ptya!” exclaimed Densov, having run through the dispatch. “Why didn’t you say who you were?” and turning with a smile he held out his hand to the lad.
The officer was Ptya Rostv.
All the way Ptya had been preparing himself to behave with Densov as befitted a grown-up man and an officer—without hinting at their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Densov smiled at him Ptya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already been in a battle near Vyzma and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself there.
