myself.  That is, I could,” he continued again after a minute’s silence, “but this is too hard work for me, a monstrous work, when I am alone.  With others, under special circumstances, when you are going into action, I am brave, j’ai fait mes epreuves, because I am vain and proud:  that is my failing, and in presence of others. . . .  Do you know, let me spend the night with you:  with us, they will play all night long; it makes no difference, anywhere, on the ground.”

While Nikita was making the bed, we got up, and once more began to walk up and down in the darkness on the battery.  Certainly Guskof’s head must have been very weak, because two glasses of liquor and two of wine made him dizzy.  As we got up and moved away from the candles, I noticed that he again thrust the ten-ruble bill into his pocket, trying to do so without my seeing it.  During all the foregoing conversation, he had held it in his hand.  He continued to reiterate how he felt that he might regain his old station if he had a man such as I were to take some interest in him.

We were just going into the tent to go to bed when suddenly a cannon-ball whistled over us, and buried itself in the ground not far from us.  So strange it was,—­that peacefully sleeping camp, our conversation, and suddenly the hostile cannon-ball which flew from God knows where, the midst of our tents,—­so strange that it was some time before I could realize what it was.  Our sentinel, Andreief, walking up and down on the battery, moved toward me.

“Ha! he’s crept up to us.  It was the fire here that he aimed at,” said he.

“We must rouse the captain,” said I, and gazed at Guskof.

He stood cowering close to the ground, and stammered, trying to say, “Th-that’s th-the ene-my’s . . . f-f-fire—­th-that’s—­hidi—.”  Further he could not say a word, and I did not see how and where he disappeared so instantaneously.

In the captain’s tent a candle gleamed; his cough, which always troubled him when he was awake, was heard; and he himself soon appeared, asking for a linstock to light his little pipe.

“What does this mean, old man?” [Footnote:  Batiushka] he asked with a smile.  “Aren’t they willing to give me a little sleep to-night?  First it’s you with your cashiered friend, and then it’s Shamyl.  What shall we do, answer him or not?  There was nothing about this in the instructions, was there?”

“Nothing at all.  There he goes again,” said I.  “Two of them!”

Indeed, in the darkness, directly in front of us, flashed two fires, like two eyes; and quickly over our heads flew one cannon-ball and one heavy shell.  It must have been meant for us, coming with a loud and penetrating hum.  From the neighboring tents the soldiers hastened.  You could hear them hawking and talking and stretching themselves.

“Hist! the fuse sings like a nightingale,” was the remark of the artillerist.