The General smiled his satisfaction, and soon could not refrain from a
“Well done, my lads”—the first words of approval he uttered during the whole time.
When, however, the ominous pretended charge was to be met, Stelikovski literally took the old General by storm.
The General himself started the exercise by suddenly shouting to the commander of the company:
“Cavalry from the right, eight hundred paces.” Stelikovski formed, without a second’s hesitation and with the greatest calm and precision, his company to meet the supposed enemy, which seemed to approach at a furious gallop. With compactly closed ranks—the fore-rank in a kneeling position—the troops fired two or three rounds, immediately after which was heard the fateful command:
“Quick fire!”
“Thanks, my children,” cried the old General joyously—“that’s the way it should be done. Thanks, thanks.”
After the oral examination the company was drawn up in open file; but the General delayed his final dismissal. It was as if it seemed hard to him to say good-bye to this company.
Passing as slowly as possible along the front, he observed every soldier with particular and deep interest, and a very delighted smile gleamed through the pince-nez from the clever eyes beneath the heavy, prominent eyebrows.
Suddenly he stopped his charger, turned round on his saddle to the head of his staff, and exclaimed—
“No; come here and look, Colonel, what muzzles the rascals have.
What do you feed them on, Captain? Pies?
Hi, you thick nose” (he pointed to a young soldier in the ranks), “your name’s Koval?”
“Mikhail Borichuk, your Excellency,” boldly replied the young recruit with a frank, happy smile.
“Oh, you scamp, I thought you were called Koval.
Well, this time I was out of my reckoning,” said the General in fun, “but there’s no harm done; better luck next time,” he added, with the same good-humour.
At these words the soldier’s countenance puckered in a broad grin.
“No, your Excellency, you are not wrong at all,” shouted the soldier in a raised voice.
“At home, in the village, I am employed as a farrier, and, therefore, they call me Koval.”
The General nodded in delight, and he was evidently very proud of his memory.
“Well, Captain, is he a good soldier?”
“Very good, General.
All my soldiers are good,” replied Stelikovski in his usual confident tone.
The General’s eyebrows were knitted, but his lips kept smiling, and the crabbed old face gradually resumed its light and friendly expression.
“Well, well, Captain; we will see about that. How is the punishment-list?”
“Your Excellency, for five years not a single man in my company has been punished.”
The General bent forward heavily and held out to Stelikovski his hairy hand in the white, unbuttoned glove that had slipped down to the knuckles.
“I heartily thank you, my friend,” he replied in a trembling voice, and tears glistened in his eyes.
The General, like many old warriors, liked, now and then, to shed a slight tear.
“Again my thanks for having given an old man pleasure.
And you, too, my brave boys, accept my thanks,” he shouted in a loud and vigorous voice to the soldiers.
Thanks to the good impression left behind from Stelikovski’s inspection, the review of the 6th Company also went off nearly satisfactorily; the General did certainly not bestow praise, but neither were any reproaches heard.
At the bayonet attack on the straw mannikin this company even went astray.
“Not that way, not that way, not that way!” screamed the General, shaking with wrath in the saddle.
“Hold, stop! that’s damnable. You go to work as if you were making a hole in soft bread. Listen, boys. That’s not the way to deal with an enemy. The bayonet should be driven in forcibly and furiously right in the waist up to the muzzle of your rifle. Don’t forget.”
The remaining companies made, one after the other, a hopeless “hash” of everything.
At last the General’s outburst of anger ceased. Tired and listless, he watched the miserable spectacle with gloomy looks, and, without uttering a word, he entirely excused himself from inspecting the 15th and 16th Companies, exclaiming with a gesture of disgust—
“Enough, enough of such abortions.”
There still remained the grand march past, and the parade.
The whole regiment was formed into columns with half companies in front, and reduced gaps.
Again the everlasting markers were ordered out to set the line of march by their ropes.
The heat was now almost unbearable, and the soldiers could hardly bear any longer the fearful stench that exuded from their own freely perspiring bodies.
But for the forthcoming “solemn” march past, the men now made a final effort to pull themselves together.
The officers almost besought their subordinates to strain every nerve for this final proof of their endurance and discipline.
“Brothers, for the honour of the regiment, do your best. Save yourselves and us from disgracing ourselves before the General.”
In this humble recourse on the part of the officers to their subordinates there lay—besides much else that was little edifying—too, an indirect recognition of their own faults and shortcomings.
The wrath aroused in such a great personage as the General of the regiment was felt to be equally painful and oppressive to officers and troops alike, and it had, to some extent, a levelling effect, so that all were, in an equally high degree, dispirited, nervous, and apathetic.
“Attention! The band in front!” ordered Colonel Shulgovich, in the far distance.
And all these fifteen hundred human beings for a second suppressed their faint inward murmurings; all muscles were once more strained, and again they stood in nervous, painful expectation.
Shulgovich could not be detected by any eye, but his tremendous voice again rang across the field—