In front of Shamhevo, Dolohov was in the same way to watch the ro; to know at what distance there were other French troops. With tl transport there was supposed to be fifteen hundred men. Denisov hi two hundred men, and Dolohov might have as many more. But superio ity in numbers was no obstacle to Denisov. There was only one thing th; he still needed to know, and that was what troops these were; and fi that object Denisov needed to take a ‘tongue’ (that is, some man belonj ing to that column of the enemy.) The attack on the waggons in tl morning was all done with such haste that they killed all the Frenc soldiers in charge of the waggons, and captured alive only a little drun mer-boy, who had straggled away from his own regiment, and could te them nothing certain about the troops forming the column.
To make another descent upon them, Denisov thought, would be 1 risk alarming the whole column, and so he sent on ahead to Shamshe\ a peasant, Tihon Shtcherbatov, to try if he could capture at least one < the French quartermasters from the vanguard.
IV
It was a warm, rainy, autumn day. The sky and the horizon were all ( the uniform tint of muddy water. Sometimes a mist seemed to be fallin; and sometimes there was a sudden downpour of heavy, slanting rail Denisov, in a long cape and a high fur cap, both streaming with wate was riding a thin, pinched-looking, thoroughbred horse. With his hea aslant, and his ears pricked up, like his horse, he was frowning at tl driving rain, and anxiously looking before him. Flis face, which ha grown thin, and was covered with a thick, short, black beard, looke wrathful.
Beside Denisov, wearing also a long cape and a high cap, and mounte on a sleek, sturdy Don horse, rode the esaul, or hetman of the Cossacks- Denisov’s partner in his enterprises.
The esaul, Lovaisky, a third man, also in a cape, and a high cap, wa a long creature, Hat as a board, with a pale face, flaxen hair, narrow, ligt eyes, and an expression of calm self-confidence both in his face and hi attitude. Though it was impossible to say what constituted the peculiarii of horse and rider, at the first glance at the esaul and at Denisov, it wa evident that Denisov was both wet and uncomfortable; that Denisov wa a man sitting on a horse; while the esaul seemed as comfortable and calr as always, and seemed not a man sitting on a horse, but a man formin one whole with a horse—a single being enlarged by the strength of twc A little ahead of them walked a peasant-guide, soaked through an through in his grey full coat and white cap.
A little behind, on a thin, delicate Kirghiz pony, with a flowing ta and mane, and a mouth flecked with blood, rode a young officer in a blu
WAR AND PEACE 977
rench military coat. Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered rench uniform and blue cap, perched upon his horse behind him. The oy held on to the hussar with hands red with cold, and kept moving is bare feet, trying to warm them, and lifting his eyebrows, gazed about im wonderingly. This was the French drummer, who had been taken 1 the morning.
Along the narrow, muddy, cut-up forest-track there came hussars in nots of three and four at a time, and then Cossacks; some in capes, bme in French cloaks; others with horse-cloths pulled over their heads, he horses, chestnut and bay, all looked black from the soaking rain, heir necks looked strangely thin with their drenched manes, and steam rise in clouds from them. Clothes, saddles, and bridles, all were sticky nd swollen with the wet, like the earth and the fallen leaves with which .re track was strewn. The men sat huddled up, trying not to move, so as b keep warm the water that had already reached their skins, and not to fet any fresh stream of cold rain trickle in anywhere under their seat, T at their knees or necks. In the midst of the file of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses, and Cossack saddle-horses hitched on in ront, rumbled over stumps and branches, and splashed through the uts full of water.
Denisov’s horse, in avoiding a puddle in the track, knocked his rider's nee against a tree.
‘Ah, devil! ’ Denisov cried angrily; and showing his teeth, he struck his orse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his comrades w T ith nid. Denisov was out of humour, both from the rain and hunger (no one ad eaten anything since morning); and, most of all, from having no tews of Dolohov, and from no French prisoner having been caught to give lim information.
i ‘We shall never have such another chance to fall on the transport as o-day. To attack them alone would be risky, and to put it off to another lay—some one of the bigger leaders will carry the booty off from under iur noses,’ thought Denisov, continually looking ahead, and fancying he aw the messenger from Dolohov he expected.
Coming out into a clearing from which he could get a view to some distance on the right, Denisov stopped.
‘There’s some one coming,’ he said.
The esaul looked in the direction Denisov was pointing to.
