Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew lashing the air and thumped down, or a grenade burst in the midst of that dense crowd, slaying men and splashing blood on those who stood near. Dolohov, wounded in the hand, with some dozen soldiers of his company on foot (he was already an officer) and his general on horseback, were the sole representatives of a whole regiment. Carried along by the crowd, they were squeezed in the approach to the d:m and stood still, jammed in on all sides because a horse with a cannon had fallen, and the crowd were dragging it away. A cannon ball killed some one behind them, another fell in front of them and spurted the blood upon Dolohov. The crowd moved forward desperately, was jsmmed, moved a few steps and was stopped again. ‘Only to get over these hundred steps and certain safety: stay here two minutes and death to a certainty,’ each man was thinking.
Dolohov standing in the centre of the crowd, forced his way to the edge of the dam, knocking down two soldiers, and ran on tp the slippery ice that covered the millpond.
‘Turn this way!’ he shouted, bounding over the ice, which cracked under him. ‘Turn this way! ’ he kept shouting to the cannon. ‘It bears! .. .’ The ice bore him, but swayed and cracked, and it was evident that, not to speak of a cannon or a crowd of people, it would give way in a moment under him alone. Men gazed at him and pressed to the bank, unable to bring themselves to step on to the ice. The general of his regiment on horseback at the end of the dam lifted his hand and opened his mouth to speak to Dolohov. Suddenly one of the cannon balls flew so low over the heads of the crowd that all ducked. There was a wet splash, as the general fell from his horse into a pool of blood. No one glanced at the general, no one thought of picking him up.
‘On to the ice! Get on the ice! Get on! turn! don’t you hear! Get on!’ innumerable voices fell to shouting immediately after the ball had struck the general, not knowing themselves what and why they were shouting.
One of the hindmost cannons that had been got on to the dam was turned off upon the ice. Crowds of soldiers began running from the dam on to the frozen pond. The ice cracked under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped into the water. He tried to right himself and floundered up to his waist. The soldiers nearest tried to draw back, the driver of the cannon pulled up his horse, but still the shouts were heard from behind: ‘Get on to the ice, why are you stopping? go on! go on!’ And : screams of terror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers near the cannon waved at the horses, and lashed them to make them turn and go on. The horses moved from the dam’s edge. The ice that had held under the foot-soldiers broke in a huge piece, and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forwards, some backwards, drowning one another.
Still the cannon balls whizzed as regularly and thumped on to the ice, into the water, and most often into the crowd that covered the dam, the pond and the bank.
XIX
Prince Andrey Bolkonsky was lying on the hill of Pratzen, on the spot where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hands. He was losing blood, and kept moaning a soft, plaintive, childish moan, of which he himself knew nothing. Towards evening he ceased moaning and became perfectly still. He did not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he felt again that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
‘Where is it, that lofty sky that I knew not till now and saw to-day?’ was his first thought. ‘And this agony I did not know either,’ he thought. ‘Yes, I knew nothing, nothing.till now. But where am I?’
He fell to listening, and caught the sound of approaching hoofs and voices speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him was again the same lofty sky, with clouds higher than ever floating over it, and between them stretches of blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not see the men who, judging from the voices and the thud of hoofs, had ridden up to him and stopped.
They were Napoleon and two adjutants escorting him. Bonaparte, making a tour of the field of battle, had been giving his last instructions for the strengthening of the battery firing at the Augest dam, and was inspecting the dead and wounded on the field of battle.
‘Fine men!’ said Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier, who with his face thrust into the earth and blackened neck lay on his stomach, one stiff arm flung wide.
‘The field-guns have exhausted their ammunition,’ said an adjutant, arriving that moment from the battery that was firing at Augest.
‘Bring up more from the reserve,’ said Napoleon, and riding a few steps away stood still, looking at Prince Andrey, who lay on his back with the abandoned flagstaff beside him (the flag had been taken by the French as a trophy).
