The other lay on his face, his head resting on his bent arm, and he looked as if he were asleep. Beyond the dead men was a stunted tree with a single withered branch, which pointed ominously north. In the dust and mist it seemed to me like the gaunt figure of a prophet. In the background was a mass of dark, storm-driven clouds, behind which faded, like the hopes of Russia, the last faint light of day.
In the south, Mukden was now invisible, but, afar off, I could see the smoke of its burning. To the south-west, where there had been fierce fighting the day before, I could see a series of little fires. They were not burning villages, for all the villages had been already burned. No, they were the fires which the Japanese had lighted to consume their dead, and they twinkled in the distance like death-lights, like the ghostly flames which the Russian " mujik " sometimes sees glimmering above graves.
Once we got across the railway, our old colonel addressed his men in the usual sing-song style of the Russian leaders, calling them " molodtszi " (brave fellows), and telling them that they would win and crush the Japanese; but, instead of the long, measured shout with which the Russian soldiers are taught to reply to any speech of their commander, there was an absolute and ominous silence. The poor devils had heard that sort of talk too often.
Even the subordinate officers had no hope of success. " We are surrounded,'* said one young lieutenant to me, gloomily; "we shall be taken prisoners."
This was the refrain of every conversation. One continually heard the private soldier saying otryezalee (" cut off"), propalee (" lost "), and nu bratszi shabash! (" now, brothers, we're done for"). There was something poetical and at the same time disquieting in the way they always referred, vaguely, to the Japanese as
" he " (on'), as if we were pursued, not by human beings, but by some monstrous beast.
For miles we seemed to be treading on nothing but rifles and cartridges, which some preceding column had thrown away. We also came across many of this columns wounded. One man, blinded in both eyes by a shot, rushed after us calling on us for God's sake (radee Boga) not to leave him. I halted till he came up, and spoke to him. He stumbled forwards with arms widely outspread so as not to miss me. At last one of his hands touched my holster, and he clutched it feverishly. " Thou art mounted, O brother, O little angel! " he said.
I did not know what to do with this poor fellow until a Chinese cart, driven by a soldier, came along and I tried to get him put inside; but as it was already choke-full of wounded, the soldier in charge of it suggested, with the gruffness of a man who is afraid that he is going to sob like a child, that my protegS had better walk behind this cart, holding on to the end of it; and, as this arrangement seemed to suit the blind man, it was adopted. A few minutes later, this vehicle with its load of wounded had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed it. It was the same with nearly everything else that I came in contact with throughout this evening and throughout the awful night which followed. I got acquainted with officers, baggage-carts, Cossacks, cannon, only to lose them again immediately, completely and for ever. A young lieutenant would come and speak to me in French. We would then walk side by side for a moment in silence, and when I would resume the conversation, lo! I would find that my youthful companion had suddenly become transformed into an elderly captain, sour and hirsute, speaking only Russian. The young lieutenant I would never meet again, It was a phantasmagoria, a wild jumble of transformation scenes, a feverish dream wherein all sorts of shapes and figures flit through the heated brain to disappear for ever. And, withal, it was a faithful epitome of life.
As I was riding along I nearly passed over another man, wounded in the leg, and unable to walk. Dismounting, I helped him into my saddle and got a soldier to lead the horse. I did this not so much from pity for the man as from the conviction that I myself would go to my Last Account that night. For some hours I had been vainly trying to recall any good that I had done since my birth, and, in a panic, I had resolved to lead a better life. Accordingly I gave the wounded men to drink from my water-bottle until the water was exhausted, and in every case they crossed themselves before tasting it, and thanked God and me. As Gogol say: " Pity for a fallen human creature is a strong Russian trait," and I think that if we had not spent so much time assisting the wounded, we might have escaped. I saw more acts of heroism that night than I had seen in twenty years of civil life. It was a mixture of the Millennium and Hell.