bird
whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell dropped
with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and close to the
battalion commander's horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it
was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing the
major, and galloped aside. The horse's terror infected the men.

"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.

Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between him
and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the field and
the meadow.

"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite new,
envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke
that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not wish
to die. I love life--I love this grass, this earth, this air...." He
thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were looking
at him.

"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."

He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the sound of
an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking window frame,
a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started to one side,
raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several officers ran up to him.
From the right side of his abdomen, blood was welling out making a large
stain on the grass.

The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
breathing heavily and noisily.

"What are you waiting for? Come along!"

The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but he
moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.

"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.

They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.

"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My
God!"--voices among the officers were heard saying.

"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant.

The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started
hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing station.

"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by
their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly and
jolting the stretcher.

"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.

"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully,