A] The candles twinkled in
the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree
celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as
children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the
effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn
ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the
sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall
under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path
stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn
stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in
the dark shadows of the forest.

[Footnote A: It must be remembered that this account is
Trenchard's--taken from his diary. In my own experience I
have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least
like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of
this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are
many statements for which I have only his authority.--P.D.]

A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin
spoke to them.

"Here, _golubchik_ ... tell me! what _polk_?"

"Moskovsky, your Honour."

"And the Vengerovsky ... they're to the right, are they?"

"Yes, your Honour. By the high road, when it comes into the
forest."

"What? There where the road turns?"

"_Tak totchno._"

"How are things down there just now? Wounded, do you think?"

"_Ne mogoo znat._ I'm unable to say, your Honour ... but
there's been an attack there an hour ago."

"Are those ours?"--listening to a battery across the fields.

"Ours, your Honour."

"Well, we'll go on and see."

I had listened to this conversation with the sensation of a
man who has stopped himself on the very edge of a precipice.
I thought in those few moments with a marvellous and
penetrating clarity. I had, after all, been always until now
at the battle of S----, or when I had gone with the wagons
to Nijnieff, on the outskirts of the thing. I knew that
to-night, in another ten minutes, I would be in the
middle--the "very middle." As I waited there I recalled the
pages of the diary of some officer, a diary that had been
shown me quite casually by its owner. It had been a miracle
of laconic brevity: "6.30 A. M., down to the battery. All
quiet. 8.0, three of their shells. One of ours kil