‘Come on, men, let ’em ’ave it!’ he never stopped saying, and he was not averse to heaving at the cannon wheels and working the screws himself. In all the smoke, deafened by the incessant banging of the cannons that made him jump at every shot, Tushin ran from one cannon to the next, his stubby pipe never out of his mouth, taking aim, checking the charges, arranging for killed and wounded horses to be unharnessed and replaced, and shouting to everyone in his unimpressive shrill little voice. His face became more and more animated, although when someone got killed or wounded he would frown, turn away from him and shout angrily at the men who were always dilatory in picking up a wounded soldier or a dead body. Every one of the soldiers, for the most part handsome, strapping boys, head and shoulders taller than their officer and twice as broad in the chest (inevitable in the artillery), looked at their commanding officer as do children in trouble, and whatever expression they found on his face was invariably reflected on their own.
With all the fearful clamour and banging, and the need to concentrate and keep busy, Tushin never felt the slightest nasty touch of fear, and the idea that he might be killed or badly wounded never entered his head. Quite the reverse, he felt more and more buoyant. The moment he had first seen the enemy and fired his first shot now seemed a long, long time ago – yesterday maybe – and that little plot of earth where he now stood was a familiar place and he felt at home in it. He missed nothing, thought of every last detail and did everything as well as the finest officer could have done in his situation, but nevertheless he was always in a state of mind not far from feverish delirium or the abandonment of a drunk.
The devastating sound of his own guns around him, the whoosh and bang of enemy shells, the sight of his gunners, red-faced and sweating as they rushed around the cannons, the sight of blood from men and horses, and the puffs of smoke from the enemy across the hillside, inevitably followed by a cannonball soaring across and hitting the earth, a man, a horse or a gun – all of this created for him a fantastic world of his own, which for the moment gave him immense pleasure. He imagined the enemy guns not as guns but pipes from which an invisible smoker blew puffs of smoke every so often.
‘There he goes, puffing away again,’ Tushin would murmur to himself as another smoke cloud rose from the hillside to be wafted away by the wind to the left in a single streak. ‘Here comes the ball – we’ve got to hit it back.’
‘What was that, sir?’ asked a gunner standing near by who had heard him muttering.
‘Never mind, it’s just a grenade . . .’ came the answer. ‘Right, Matthew’s girl,’ he would sometimes say to himself. ‘Matthew’s girl’ was the name his fancy gave to the huge cannon, an old-fashioned casting, that stood at one end. The French swarming around their big guns he saw as ants. Also in his dream-world that handsome soldier who liked a drink or two, his number one gunner on the second cannon, was known as ‘Uncle’; Tushin looked at him more than anyone else and revelled in his every movement. The sound of musket-fire at the bottom of the hill dying away and building up again seemed to him like somebody breathing. He listened for the rise and fall of these sounds.
‘There she goes, another breath,’ he would say to himself. He imagined himself as a great Herculean figure lobbing cannonballs at the French with both hands.
‘Come on, Matthew’s girl. Come on, old lady, don’t let us down!’ he was saying, moving away from the cannon, when a strange unknown voice called over his head, ‘Captain Tushin! Captain!’
Tushin whipped round in some panic. There stood the same staff officer who had sent him out of the tent at Grunth. Getting his breath back, he shouted to him, ‘What’s all this? You must be mad. Twice ordered to retreat, and here you are . . .’
‘Why are they getting at me?’ Tushin wondered, looking in alarm at his superior officer.
‘I . . . er . . . can’t . . .’ he began, raising two fingers to his cap. ‘I . . .’ But the staff officer didn’t get any more out. A cannonball zoomed over near by and made him duck down on his horse. He paused, and just as he was about to say something else, another cannonball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped away.
‘Retreat, everybody! Retreat!’ he shouted from a long way off.
