Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were
and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"--that is, a man from
the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons had been made so
hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a
little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he
could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.

Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon Shcherbaty, a
peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at least one of the
French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.

CHAPTER IV

It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then
suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.

Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down
was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse,
which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving
rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick
black beard looked angry.

Beside Denisov rode an esaul, * Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.

* A captain of Cossacks.

Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one
with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.

A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.

A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an enormous
tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue
French overcoat.

Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and
blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the
hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebr