Men were calling to one another, swearing hoarsely, breaking out into wild laughter. There was quite a crowd around the flames, which were fed by a heap of blazing sleepers.
The smell of bread came to the nostrils of Ivan Ilyich —all these grime-covered people were munching.
In a cart piled with loaves, drawn up not far from the fire, stood a gaunt woman in a white head kerchief, ladling out water.
After drinking his fill and accepting a slice of bread, Ivan Ilyich stood leaning against the cart, eating and looking up at the stars.
The people round the fire seemed to have quieted down, and many were asleep.
But those who had only just arrived from the field were still seething with rage.
Swearing, they uttered threats in the dark, although nobody paid any attention to them.
The nurse kept on serving out slices of bread and mugs of water.
A black-bearded man, stripped to the waist, dragged up his prisoner, and knocked him down beside the fire.
"Here he is, the son-of-a-bitch, the parasite.... Question him, boys."
He kicked at the prostrate form, and stepped back, hitching up his trousers, his hollow chest heaving.
Ivan Ilyich recognized Chertogonov—and turned away.
Several people rushed up to the man on the ground, bending over him.
"He volunteered...." (They tore off his shoulder straps' and threw them on the flames.)
"Just a kid, and as vicious as a viper!"
"Went out to fight for his dad's capital.... He's one of the rich, you can see that...."
"Look how his eyes gleam, the swine!"
"What's the good of staring at him, let me get at him...."
"Wait a minute! He may have papers on him.... Take him to headquarters...."
"Lug him to headquarters...."
"No, you don't!" shouted Chertogonov, rushing up.
"He was lying there wounded, so I went up to him—look at those boots! And he shot at me twice, I'm not going to give him up!" And in a still more ferocious voice he shouted to the prisoner: "Take off your boots!"
Ivan Ilyich cast a sidelong glance at the group.
The prisoner's round, youthful, shaven head gleamed in the firelight.
He was showing his teeth in a snarl, his large eyes darting from side to side, his small nose puckered up.
At first he lay there as if distraught, but suddenly he leaped to his feet.
His left arm hung lifeless in the torn, bloodstained sleeve.
A low hissing came from between his teeth, and he thrust out his chin horribly.... Chertogonov retreated a step—so terrible was this living spectre of hatred....
"Aha!" came a deep voice from out of the crowd.
"I know him—I worked in his dad's tobacco factory—he's the son of Onoli, the Rostov factory owner...."
There was a hum of voices: "We know him! We know him!"
Valerian Onoli scowled, moving his lowered head from side to side and shouting, in a kind of hoarse scream:
"Beasts! Scum! Red swine!
I'll bash your mugs in, d'you hear, you swine!
Haven't enough of you been thrashed and hung, you curs?
Haven't you had enough yet?
We'll string you all up, sons-of-bitches!"
Beside himself with rage, he seized Chertogonov's tousled beard and began kicking him in his bare stomach.
Ivan Ilyich quickly moved away from the cart.
There was an ominous buzz of voices, their swelling fury suddenly cut across by a shrill shriek.
The sprawling body of Valerian Onoli rose, kicking out violently, above the heads of the crowd, flew into the air and fell.... A pillar of fine sparks rose above the flames....
In the chill which comes before dawn in the steppe, isolated shots resounded like the cracking of whips, amidst the solemn booming of the guns.
The firing came from the columns of Drozdovsky and Borovsky, once more moving to the attack from the other side of the Kirpeli, in a desperate effort to turn their luck.
That very night an order came from the Central Executive Committee at Ekaterinodar, in permanent session all this time, appointing Commander in Chief Sorokin Supreme Commander of all Red forces in the North Caucasus.
The news was brought to him by Chief of Staff Belyakov, who rushed straight to the new Supreme Commander's carriage, holding the strip of telegraph tape, pushed his legs off the seat, and read him the order by the flame of a cigarette lighter.
Sorokin, unable to rouse himself, fell back on his hot pillow, blinking helplessly.
Belyakov began shaking him by the shoulder.
"Wake up, Your Excellency, Comrade Supreme Commander. You're the master of the Caucasus!... Do you hear me?
You're the tsar and God almighty all in one— do you hear me?"
Only then did Sorokin realize the significance of the news, and that it was his own wonderful destiny that was stamped out in dots and dashes on the narrow strip of paper curling around the fingers of his Chief of Staff.