36 
LAND & WATER 
March 29, 1917 
{Conlinurrf from pagt 32.) 
SO as to get some shelter for our horses. However, the 
boisterous north wind had dropped as quickly as it had 
sprung up. and the great winter stillness lay on the land 
from the Baltic to the Black sea. One could almost feel its 
cold lifeless immensity reaching up to the stars. 
" Our men had lighted several fires for their officers and 
had cleared the snow around them. There were logs of 
wood for seats. It was a very tolerable bivouac upon the 
whole, even without the exultation of victory. That we were 
to feel later, but at present we felt it but a stern and arduous 
task. 
" There were three of us round my fire. The third one 
was the adjutant. He was perhaps a well-meaning chap 
but not so nice as he might have been had he been less rough 
in manner and less crude in his perceptions. He would reason 
about people's conduct as though a man were as simple a 
figure, as, say, two sticks laid across each other ; whereas 
a man's much more hke the sea, whose movements are too 
complicated to explain and whose depths may bring up God 
only knows what at any time. 
We talked a httle about that charge. Not much. That 
sort of thing does not lend itself to conversation. Tomassov 
muttered a few words about ' a mere butchery.' I had 
nothing to say. As you know I had very soon let my sword 
hang idle at my wrist. That helpless crowd had not even 
tried to defend itself. Just a few shots. We had two men 
wounded. Two ! And we had charged the main column 
of Napoleon's Grand Army ! 
" Tomassov muttered wearily : ' What was the good of 
it ? ' I did not wish to argue so I only just mumbled : 
' Ah ! well ' but the adjutant struck in unpleasantly. 
" • Why ! It warmed the men a bit. That's something. 
It has made me warm. A good enough reason. But our 
Tomassov is so humane ! And besides he has been in love 
with a Frenchwoman and thick as thieves with a lot of French- 
men, so he's sorry for them. Never mind, my boy, we are on 
the Paris road now, and you shall soon see her.' 
" We let that pass for one of his foolish speeches. None 
of us but believed that getting to Paris would be a matter of 
years — of years. And lo ! Less than eighteen months 
afterwards I was rooked of a lot of money in a gambling hell 
in the Palais Royal. 
" Truth, being often the most senseless thing in the world, 
is sometimes revealed to fools. I don't think that adjutant 
of ours believed in his own words. He wanted just to tease 
Tomassov from habit. Purely from habit. We of course 
said nothing, and so he took his head in his hands and fell 
into a doze as he sat on a log on the other side of the fire. 
" Our cavalry was on the extreme right wing of the army, 
and I must confess that we guarded it very badly. We had 
lost all sense of insecurity by this time. But still we did 
keep up a pretence of doing it, in a way. Presently a trooper 
rode u > leading a horse and Tomassov mounted stiffly and 
went oif on a round of the outposts. Of the perfectly useless 
outposts. 
" The night was still. The bivouac was still, except 
for the crackUng of the fires. The raging wind had lifted 
above the earth and not the faintest breath of it could be 
heard. Only the full moon swam out with a rush into the 
sky and suddenly hung high and motionless overhead. I 
remember raising my hairy face to it for a moment. Then I 
verily believe, I dozed off too, bent double on my log with my 
head towards the fierce ablaze. 
" It could not have been for long ; you know what an 
impermanent thing such slumber is. One moment you drop 
into an abyss and the next you are back again in the world 
out of an oblivion that you would think too deep for any noise 
but the trumpet of the Last Judgment. And then off you go 
again. Your very soul seems to drop out of you into a bottom- 
less black pit. "Then up once more into a startled, slippery 
consciousness. A mere plaything of cruel sleep, one is then. 
Tormented both ways. 
" However, when my orderly apf>eared before me with some 
porridge repeating ' Won't your Honour be pleased to 
eat . . Won't your Honour be pleased to eat,' I 
managed to keep my hold of it . . . I mean that 
sUppery consciousness. He was holding out to me a sooty 
pot containing some grain boiled in water with a pinch of 
salt. A woo .ed spoon was stuck in it. 
" At that time these were the only rations we were getting 
regularly. Mere chicken food, confound it. But the Russian 
soldier is wonderful. Well, my fellow waited till I had 
feasted and then went away carrying off the empty pot. 
" I was no longer sleepy. Indeed I had becoms specially 
awake with a full mental consciousness of existence extending 
beyond my immediate surroundings. Those are but ex- 
ceptional moments with mankind, I am glad to say. 
" Casting my eye round I liad the sense of the earth in 
all its enormous expanse lapped in snow with notliin;j;sliowini< 
on it but the forest of pines in their straight stalk-like trunks 
with their funereal verdure ; and in this aspect of general 
mourning I seemed to hear the sighs of mankind falling to die 
in the midst of a nature without life. 
•" They were Frenchmen. We didn't hate them ; they did 
not hate us. We had existed far apart — and sudtl.nly the\ 
had come rolling in with arms in their hands, without fear of 
God, carrying with them other nations, and all to pL'dsh to- 
gether in a long, long, trail of frozen corpses. I had a 
sort of vision of that trail. A pathetic multitude of small 
dark mounds stretching away under the moonlight in a clear, 
still and pitiless atmosphere — a sort of horrible peace. 
" But what other peace could there be for them ? What 
else did they deserve ? I don't know by what connection of 
emotions there came into my head the thought that the earth 
was a pagan planet and not a fit abode for Christian virtues. 
" You may be surprised that I should remember all this 
so well. What is a passing emotion or a half-formed thought 
to last in the memory for so many years of a man's chang ng 
inconsequential life ? But what fixed the emotions of that 
evening in my recollection so that the slightest shadows 
remain indelible, is an event of strange finality, an event not 
hkely to be forgotten in a life-time as you shall see. 
" I don't suppose I had been entertaining those thoughts 
more than five minutes when something induced me to look 
over my shoulder. I don't suppose it was a noise ; the snow 
deadened all the sounds. Something it must have been, 
some sort of signal reaching my consciousness. Anyway I 
turned my head, and there was the event approacliing me. 
Not that I knew it or had the slightest premonition. What 
I saw in the histance were two figures approaching in the 
moonlight. One of them was our Tomassov. A dark mass 
behind him moved across my sight ; the horses which his 
orderly was leading away. 
" Of course I had recognised Tomassov instantly. A very 
familiar appearance in long boots, tall and ending in a pointed 
hood. But by his side advanced another figure. And it 
was amazing ! I mistrusted my eyes at first. It had a 
shining crested helmet on its head and was muffled up in a 
white cloak. The cloak was not as white as snow. Nothing 
in the world is. It was wliite more like mist. And the whole 
aspect was ghostly and martial to an extraordinary degree. 
It was as if Tomassov had captured the god of war himself. 
I perceived at once that he was holding this resplendent 
vision by the arm. Then I saw that he was holding it up. 
" While I stared and stared, they crept on — for indeed ' 
they were creeping — and at last they crept into the light of 
our bivouac fire and passed beyond the log I was sitting on. 
The blaze played on the helmet. It was extremely battered 
and the face under it was wrapped in bits of mangy fir. 
No god of war this, but a Frenchman. The great white 
cuirassier's clo k was scorched, burnt full of holes. The man's 
feet were wrapped up in old sheepskins, over rags or remnants 
of boots. They were monstrous and he tottered on them, 
sustained by Tomassov who most carefully lowered him on to 
the log on which I sat. 
" My amazement knew no bounds. 
You have brought in a prisoner,' I said to Tomassov, 
as if I could not believe my eyes. 
" You must understand that unless they surrendered in 
bodies we made no prisoners. But what was the good. Our 
Cossacks either killed the stragglers or else let them alone, 
just as it happened. And it came really to the same thing 
in the end. 
" Tomassov turned to me with a very troubled look. 
" ' He sprang up from the ground somewhere, as I was 
leaving the outpost. I believe he was making for it, but he 
walked blindly into my horse. He got hold of my leg and of 
course none of our chaps dared touch him then.' 
" ' He had a narrow escape,' I said. 
"'He didn't appreciate it,' returned Tomassov, looking, 
even more troubled than before. ' He came along holding on 
to my leg. That's what made me so late. He told me he is 
a staff officer. And then talking in a voice such, I suppose, as 
the damned alone use, a croaking of rage and pain, he said he 
had a favour to beg of me. A supreme favour. ' Do you 
understand me,' he says in a sort of fiendish whisper. 
" ' Of course I told him I did. I said : ' Oui ! Je vous 
comprend<;.' 
Then,' says he — ' do it. Now 1 At once — at once— 
in the pity of your heart.' 
" Tomassov ceased and stared queerly at me above the 
head of the prisoner. 
" I said, ' What did he mean ? ' 
That's what I asked him,' answered Tomassov in a 
dazed tone. ' He wanted me to do him the favour to blow 
his brains out. As a fellow soldier he said. As a man of 
feeling — as — as — a humane man.' 
" Between us two tlic prisoner sat like an awful black 
(Continued on parjt 38.) 
