Pagina 508 de 3800

In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing

eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a

quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an

officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted.

Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,

crowded round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,

tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out

to him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with

reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their

mouths, and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened

expressions, licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of

their greatcoats. All their faces were as serene as if all this

were happening at home awaiting peaceful encampment, and not

within sight of the enemy before an action in which at least half

of them would be left on the field. After passing a chasseur

regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers-fine fellows

busy with similar peaceful affairs-near the shelter of the

regimental commander, higher than and different from the others,

Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of grenadiers before

whom lay a naked man.