The first line moved ahead, with Roshchin on the left flank.
And there was the mound upon which stood Markov, legs astraddle, facing the advancing regiment.
"On, on, friends!" he kept crying, and his eyes, usually narrowed, now seemed expanded... terrible....
Then Roshchin saw the dry stems of grass sticking out of the earth.
Everywhere motionless bodies in soldiers' tunics, sailors' jackets, officers' greatcoats, lay among the stalks, like sacks, some prone, some on their sides.
In front of him were a low wattle fence and leafless brambles.
A long-faced individual in a soldier's wadded vest was sitting with his back to the fence, opening and shutting his mouth.
Roshchin jumped over the fence and saw a broad road, along which columns of dust were advancing rapidly.
It was the Bolsheviks firing on the attackers from machine guns.
He stopped short, backed, drew a breath, and looked behind him.
Those who had jumped over the fence were lying down.
Roshchin did the same, pressing his cheek against the prickly earth.
He forced himself with an effort to raise his head.
The whole line was lying on the ground.
About fifty paces away, in the field, rose the mound of a ditch.
Roshchin leaped to his feet and, crouching low, ran these fifty paces.
His heart was beating furiously.
He fell into the sticky mud of the ditch.
The whole line came after him, one by one.
One or two fell down on the way.
All breathed heavily as they lay in the ditch.
The bullets flew over their heads.
But suddenly there was a change ahead of them— from somewhere or other shells began whistling past towards the barracks.
The machine-gun fire grew weaker.
With an effort the men in the ditch got up and moved ahead.
Roshchin could see his own shadow, reddish-black, slip over the uneven field.
It kept changing, now getting shorter, now shooting far away.
"Queer!" he thought. "I'm still alive—I even have a shadow."
The firing from the other side grew stronger again, but the thinning ranks now lay a hundred paces from the barracks in a deep gully.
Markov was striding up and down the grey, clayey bottom, his eyes ghastly.
"Gentlemen!" he was crying. "A breathing space... smoke, damn you! And a final effort.... It's nothing, a mere hundred paces...."
A short, bald officer next to Roshchin, looking up at the top of the gully, which was smoking from exploding bullets, repeated the same curses again and again under his breath.
Some of the men were lying down covering their faces with their hands.
One, squatting on his heels and clutching his forehead, was spitting blood.
Many were striding up and down the bottom of the gully like caged hyenas.
The command:
"Forward!" rang out.
No one seemed to hear it.
Roshchin pulled in his belt with spasmodic movements, seized the branches of a bush, and crawled upwards.
He slipped, but went on again, setting his teeth.
When he got to the top he saw Markov squatting on the crest of the gully, and shouting:
"Advance to the attack!
On!"
A few paces ahead Roshchin could see the twinkling soles of Markov's boots, and the holes in them.
A few men overtook him.
The brick wall of the barracks was suffused with the rays of the setting sun.
The fragments of glass left in the windows were crimson.
Figures were running out of the barracks over the field to some distant cottages, with little gardens in front.
A group of civilians and soldiers were standing around the broken gymnastic apparatus on the sandy yard of the artillery barracks.
Their faces were pale, strained, absorbed, their eyes lowered, their hands hung lifeless at their sides.