Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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time. He was afraid of falling behind the
hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand
trembled as he gave his horse into an orderlys charge, and he felt
the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him,
leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the
hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their
sabers clattering.
"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,
stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy
and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the
front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing
Rostov, shouted to him:
"Whos that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right!
Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,
showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.
"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning
in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were
standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then
at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side--the
blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as
artillery.
"Will they burn the bridge or not? Wholl get there first? Will they
get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within
grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each
man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily
asked himself with a sinking heart--watching the bridge and the
hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from
the other side with their bayonets and guns.
"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
grapeshot range now."
"He shouldnt have taken so many men," said the officer of the
suite.
"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have
done the job just as well."
"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the
hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency!
How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,
the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.
Our Bogdanich knows how things are done."
"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "thats grapeshot."
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being
detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at
the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.
"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
fallen!"
"Two, I think."
"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning
away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but
at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening
there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had
succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now
firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were
trained and there was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the
hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot
went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of
hussars and knocked three of them over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on
the bridge not
War And Peace page 82 War And Peace page 84
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