"Wait a bit, you ----; we will settle accounts with you!"
Night. The bivouac had grown quiet. Clouds had covered the sky. It was dark. Albov, sitting on his bed in his narrow tent, illuminated by the stump of a candle, was writing a report to the Commander of the Regiment:
"The officers--powerless, insulted, meeting with distrust and disobedience from their subordinates--can be of no further use. I beg of you to apply for my reduction to the ranks, so that there I might fulfil my duty honestly and to the end."
He lay down on his bed. He gripped his head in his hands. A kind of uncanny, incomprehensible emptiness seized him, just as if some unseen hand had drawn out of his head all thought, out of his heart all pain. What was that? A noise was heard, the tent-pole fell down, the light went out. A number of men on the tent. Hard, cruel blows were showered on the whole of his body. A sharp, intolerable pain shot through his head and his chest. Then his whole face seemed covered with a warm, sticky veil, and soon everything became still and calm again, as if all that was terrible and hard to bear had torn itself away, had remained here, on earth, while his soul was flying away somewhere and was feeling light and joyous.
Albov awoke to feel something cold touching him: a private of his company, Goulkin, an elderly man, was sitting at the foot of his bed and wiping away the blood from his head with a wet towel. He noticed that Albov had regained consciousness.
"Look how they have mangled the man, the scum! It can have been no other than the Fifth Company--I recognised one of them. Does it hurt you much? Perhaps you would like me to go for the doctor?"
"No, my friend, it does not matter. Thank you!" and Albov pressed his hand.
"And their Commander, too, Captain Bouravin, has met with a misfortune. During the night they carried him past us on a stretcher, wounded in the abdomen; the _sanitar_ said that he would not live. He was returning from reconnoitring, and the bullet took just at our very barbed wire. Whether it was a German one or whether our own people did not recognise him--who knows?"
"What has come to the people one simply can't understand. And all this is just put on. It is not true--that which they say against the officers--we understand that ourselves. Of course, there are all sorts among you. But we know them very well. Don't we see for ourselves that you, now, are for us with all your heart. Or let us say 2nd Lieut. Yassny. Could such a one sell himself? And yet, try to say a word, to take your part--there would be no living for us. There is a great deal of hooliganism now. It is only hooligans that men listen to. My idea is that all this is taking place because men have forgotten God. Men have nothing to be afraid of."