A colonel of the 1st Rifles (European) rides up to our little group. He is a stout, tired, flabby man, the ghastly pallor of whose face is rather heightened than otherwise by a thick coating of dust. He speaks French, has had severe contusion, sits down heavily near us on the roadside. The talk runs on contusions until something shrieks past and bursts with a bang somewhere close by but out of sight. Then the Volinsky colonel observes cheerfully that you never hear the whizz of the shell that kills you. As if to contradict his theory, a shell whose augmenting whizz we had been listening to not without anxiety for a second or two, bursts in the immediate neighbourhood. It does no damage to anything except to the colonel's theory, for it might just as well have alighted on top of us. And here, let me remark, parenthetically, that there is something peculiarly angry, vicious, abrupt, vehement and impolite about a shell that bursts close to you. It annoys and displeases. If it were human you would cut it dead ever after for giving you such a devil of a start. The angry bark of an unexpected dog within a few feet of your calves is like a maidens sigh in comparison.
Rikacheff tries, in his ingenuous way, to get some information about the troops, but the colonel is very cautious and reticent. The conversation flags, and we turn our attention to the landscape. It is the same brown bare country, with the same long melancholy lines of men advancing over it. Sometimes they run. Dozens of little fleecy clouds of shrapnel hang over the distant villages.
Suddenly a small excited man rides towards us. When he dismounts, we see that he is a lieutenant, a plump man on the shady side of thirty, with a weak, babyish face, and round protruding eyes. His clothes are very good, his trousers fit tightly on plump legs, he is provided with brandy-flask, binoculars, compass, all complete. He is also in a state of awful, undisguised "funk." Terror is writ large on his face, and in. every movement of his body. His unfortunate condition is in great contrast to his warlike and fashionable equipment. He points to little clouds of shrapnel north and north-east.
" They're getting round us," he blubbers, his fat face working like the face of a baby that is going to cry, "and the Cossacks tell me they have gone along the west bank of the Hun and are now near Mukden."
The Volinsky colonel is very reasonable and calm. It seems so odd to find him so, for one generally associates personal uncleanness and disorder with drink and incoherence.
" Impossible! " he says. " I know the exact position...." (I could only catch fragments of the conversation; the Volinsky colonel is very cautious). "The ioth Corps and 16th Corps are on the other side of the Hun River south of Sifontai.... Japanese will be caught between two fires... heard to-day seven attacks Baitapu... three days fight... demonstration left, right, centre, but real attack from direction of Tsinmintun... yes, Kaulbars has got command of the army between Tsinmintun and Mukden. The Japs wanted to cut the Mukden- Tsinmintun road. Rifles? General Staff sent the Rifles to strengthen the centre... the 17th and 19th Rifles are with Kaulbars.... What? Over there? Yes, the 14th Division is over there on the west bank of the Hun, the 15th is on this side. Yes, Jentan was taken this morning, but we're going to retake it to-night." *