Page 406 of 470
The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.
“That’s not the point. I’m not going to discuss the matter. I do not wish to take it on my conscience. You say they’ll die. All wight. Only not by my fault!”
Dlokhov began laughing.
“Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if they did catch me they’d string me up to an aspen tree, and with all your chivalry just the same.” He paused. “However, we must get to work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms in it. Well, are you coming with me?” he asked Ptya.
“I? Yes, yes, certainly!” cried Ptya, blushing almost to tears and glancing at Densov.
While Dlokhov had been disputing with Densov what should be done with prisoners, Ptya had once more felt awkward and restless; but again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about. “If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and right,” thought he. “But above all Densov must not dare to imagine that I’ll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go to the French camp with Dlokhov. If he can, so can I!”
And to all Densov’s persuasions, Ptya replied that he too was accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that he never considered personal danger.
“For you’ll admit that if we don’t know for sure how many of them there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go, so don’t hinder me,” said he. “It will only make things worse....”
Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Ptya and Dlokhov rode to the clearing from which Densov had reconnoitered the French camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dlokhov told the Cossacks accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot along the road to the bridge. Ptya, his heart in his mouth with excitement, rode by his side.
“If we’re caught, I won’t be taken alive! I have a pistol,” whispered he.
“Don’t talk Russian,” said Dlokhov in a hurried whisper, and at that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: “Qui vive?” * and the click of a musket.
* “Who goes there?”
The blood rushed to Ptya’s face and he grasped his pistol.
“Lanciers du 6-me,” * replied Dlokhov, neither hastening nor slackening his horse’s pace.
* “Lancers of the 6th Regiment.”
The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.
“Mot d’ordre.” *
* “Password.”
Dlokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.
“Dites donc, le colonel Grard est ici?” * he asked.
* “Tell me, is Colonel Grard here?”
“Mot d’ordre,” repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not replying.
“Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le mot d’ordre...” cried Dlokhov suddenly flaring up and riding straight at the sentinel. “Je vous demande si le colonel est ici.” *
* “When an officer is making his round, sentinels don’t ask
him for the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is
here.”
And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped aside, Dlokhov rode up the incline at a walk.
Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dlokhov stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to Dlokhov’s horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he called the landowner’s house.
Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk could be heard around the campfires, Dlokhov turned into the courtyard of the landowner’s house. Having ridden in, he dismounted and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.
“Oh, he’s a hard nut to crack,” said one of the officers who was sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.
“He’ll make them get a move on, those fellows!” said another, laughing.
Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of Dlokhov’s and Ptya’s steps as they advanced to the fire leading their horses.
“Bonjour, messieurs!” * said Dlokhov loudly and clearly.
* “Good day, gentlemen.”
There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire, and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up to Dlokhov.
“Is that you, Clment?” he asked. “Where the devil...?” But, noticing his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dlokhov as a stranger, asking what he could do for him.
Dlokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Ptya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and Dlokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were silent.
“If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too late,” said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.
Dlokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on farther that night.
He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dlokhov and again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dlokhov, as if he had not heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far the road before them was safe from Cossacks.
“Those brigands are everywhere,” replied an officer from behind the fire.
Dlokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers such as his companion and himself, “but probably they would not dare to attack large detachments?” he added inquiringly. No one replied.
