when he had got into
step.

"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin, who
had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.

Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from the
stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his eyelids
drooped.

The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to the dressing station by the
wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of
three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood.
In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating
oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and pecked the
grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among the birch
trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than five acres,
bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the wounded
stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and attentive
faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive from the
spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the soldiers stood leaning
against their stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend
the difficult problem of what was taking place before them. From the
tents came now loud angry cries and now plaintive groans. Occasionally
dressers ran out to fetch water, or to point out those who were to be
brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their turn outside the tents
groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for vodka. Some were
delirious. Prince Andrew's bearers, stepping over the wounded who had
not yet been bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up to
one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew
opened his eyes and for a long time could not make out what was going
on around him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the
whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life.
Two steps from him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and
attracting general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in the
head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his talk, a
crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.

"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we grabbed
the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that glittered
with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads, there
wo