The storm cloud was swooping closer; and more brightly than ever glowed in every face that fire which Pierre was watching. He was standing near the senior officer. The little officer-boy ran up, his hand to his shako, saluting his superior officer.
‘I have the honour to inform you, colonel, only eight charges are left; do you command to continue firing?’ he asked.
‘Grapeshot!’ the senior officer shouted, looking away over the earthwork.
Suddenly something happened; the boy-officer groaned, and whirling round sat down on the ground, like a bird shot on the wing. All seemed strange, indistinct, and darkened before Pierre’s eyes.
One after another the cannon balls came whistling, striking the breastwork, the soldiers, the cannons. Pierre, who had scarcely heard those sounds before, now could hear nothing else. On the right side of the battery, soldiers, with shouts of ‘hurrah,’ were running, not forward, it seemed to Pierre, but back.
A cannon ball struck the very edge of the earthwork, before which Pierre was sitting, and sent the earth flying; a dark, round mass flashed just before his eyes, and at the same instant flew with a thud into something. The militiamen, who had been coming into the battery, ran back.
‘All with grapeshot!’ shouted the officer.
The sergeant ran up to the officer, and in a frightened whisper (just as at a dinner the butler will sometimes tell the host that there is no more of some wine asked for) said that there were no more charges.
‘The scoundrels, what are they about?’ shouted the officer, turning to Pierre. The senior officer’s face was red and perspiring, his piercing eyes glittered. ‘Run to the reserves, bring the ammunition-boxes!’ he shouted angrily, avoiding Pierre with his eyes, and addressing the soldier.
‘I’ll go,’ said Pierre. The officer, making no reply, strode across to the other side.
‘Cease firing . . . Wait!’ he shouted.
The soldier who had been commanded to go for the ammunition ran against Pierre.
‘Ah, sir, it’s no place for you here,’ he said, as he ran away.
Pierre ran after the soldier, avoiding the spot where the boy-officer was sitting.
One cannon ball, a second and a third flew over him, hitting the ground in front, on each side, behind Pierre as he ran down. ‘Where am I going?’ he suddenly wondered, just as he ran up to the green ammunition-boxes. He stopped short in uncertainty whether to go back or forward. Suddenly a fearful shock sent him flying backwards on to the ground. At the same instant a flash of flame dazed his eyes, and a roar, a hiss, and a crash set his ears ringing.
When he recovered his senses, Pierre found himself sitting on the
752 WAR AND 'PEACE
ground leaning on his hands. The ammunition-box, near which he had been, had gone; there were a few charred green boards and rags tying scattered about on the scorched grass. A horse was galloping away with broken fragments of the shafts clattering after it; while another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering a prolonged, piercing scream.
XXXII
Pterre, beside himself with terror, jumped up and ran back to the bat- : tery as the one refuge from the horrors encompassing him.
Just as Pierre ran up to the redoubt, he noticed that there was no sound of firing from the battery, but that there were men there doing something or other. He had not time to make out what men they were. He caught sight of the senior officer tying with his back towards him on the earth wall, as though gazing intently at something below; and he noticed one soldier, who, tearing himself away from the men who were holding him, shouted ‘Mates!’ and he saw something else that was strange.
But before he had time to grasp that the colonel had been killed, that the soldier shouting ‘Mates!’ was a prisoner, another soldier was stabbed in the back by a bayonet before his eyes. He had hardly run up into the redoubt when a thin man with a yellow, perspiring face, in a blue uniform, ran up to him with a sword in his hand, shouting something. Pierre, instinctively defending himself, as they came full tilt against each other, put out his hands and clutched the man (it was a French officer) by the shoulder and the throat. The officer, dropping his sword, seized Pierre by the collar.
For several seconds both gazed with frightened eyes at each other’s unfamiliar-looking faces, and both were bewildered, not knowing what j they were doing or what they were to do. ‘Am I taken prisoner or am I taking him prisoner?’ each of them was wondering. But the French officer < was undoubtedly more disposed to believe he was taken prisoner, because Pierre’s powerful hand, moved by instinctive terror, was tightening its grip on his throat. The Frenchman tried to speak, when suddenly a cannon ball flew with a fearful whiz close over their heads, and it seemed to Pierre that the Frenchman’s head had been carried off by it, so swiftly had he ducked it.
