through a narrow passage, I entered into a little room with
a large white stove. On the top of the stove, under the
roof, crouched a boy or a young man with long black hair and
a white face. This youth wore what resembled a white shirt
over baggy white trousers. His feet were bare and very
dirty. Nothing moved except his eyes. He sat there, in
exactly that position, all night.

The room was small but was the best that could be obtained.
Within the space of ten minutes it became a perfect
shambles. The wounded were brought in without pause and
under the candlelight Nikitin, two sanitars, and I worked
until the sweat ran down our backs and arms in streams. It
dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes. The
wounds were horrible. No man seemed to come into the room
with an unmangled body. The smell rose higher and higher,
the bloody rags lay about the kitchen floor, torn arms,
smashed legs, heads with gaping wounds, the pitiful crying
and praying, the shrill voices of the delirious, Nikitin,
his arms steeped in blood to the elbows, probing, cutting,
digging, I myself bandaging until I did not know what my
hands were doing.... Then suddenly the battle coming right
back to us again, overhead now as it seemed; the cannon
shaking three silly staring china dogs on the kitchen
dresser, the rifle fire clattering like tumbling crockery
about the walls of the cottage--and through it all the white
youth, crouched like a ghost on the stove, watching without
pause....

"Ah, no, your Honour.... Ah, no! ... I can't! I can't! Oh,
oh, oh, oh!" and then sobs, the man breaking down like a
child, hiding his face in his arms, his wounded leg
twitching convulsively. I paused, wiped the sweat from my
eyes, stood up. Nikitin looked at me.

"Take some fresh air!" he said. "Go out with the stretcher
for half an hour. I can manage here."

I wiped my forehead.

"Sure you can manage?" I asked.

"Quite," said Nikitin. "Here, hold his back!... No, _durak_,
his _back_. _Boje moi_, can't you get your arm under?
There--like that. _Horosho, golubchik, horosho_ ... only a
minute! There! There!"

I washed my hands and went out. The air caressed my forehead
like cold water; from the little garden at the back there
came scents of flo