In front of them was a smaller group—leaning on their rifles. These were officers.
They were gazing with brooding hatred at the prisoners.
Both groups remained silent and expectant.
Suddenly Captain Von Mecke (Roshchin recognized him as the man with the sleep-dulled, murderer's eyes) came rapidly towards them with a skipping gait.
"All of them," he shouted gaily. "The order's for all.... Ten of you come here, gentlemen...."
Before the ten officers, rattling the locks of their guns, had time to step forward, there was a movement among the prisoners.
One, tall and broad-chested, pulled his cloth tunic off, over his head.
Another, a civilian, consumptive-looking, toothless, with a straight black moustache, cried in a breaking voice :
"Drink the blood of the workers, parasites!"
Two embraced closely.
A hoarse voice intoned un-melodiously:
"Arise, ye prisoners...." The ten officers settled their rifles against their shoulders.
Roshchin suddenly felt that someone was looking fixedly at him.
He looked up. (He was sitting on a box, taking off his boots.) A pair of eyes (he did not notice the face) was gazing at him with a dying reproach, with lofty significance.
"Grey eyes—oh, God! Eyes that were so near, so dear!"
"Fire!"
The shots rang out hastily, one after another.
Groans and cries were heard, Roshchin bent low, bandaging his leg, which had been grazed by a bullet during the fighting, with a dirty strip of rag.
Like the first, the second day did not bring victory to the Volunteers.
True, on the right flank the artillery barracks had been occupied, but they did not advance a step in the centre, and on that sector the Kornilov Regiment lost in battle its commander—Colonel Nezhentsev, the General's favourite.
On the left flank Erdeli's cavalry was retreating.
The Reds were displaying unprecedented resistance, though there were wounded in almost every house in Ekaterinodar.
Women and children in great numbers were killed near the trenches and in the streets.
If, instead of Avtonomov, there had been an able commander to organize a general attack by the Red troops, the battered Volunteer Army, its units in hopeless disorder, must inevitably have been overrun and destroyed.
On the third day the Volunteer regiments, their ranks more or less inadequately replenished, were once more sent to the attack and once more hurled back to their point of departure.
Many of them, throwing down their rifles, sought refuge in their rear, among the baggage trains.
The generals lost heart.
Alexeyev came to inspect the positions, shook his grey head, and departed.
But nobody had the courage to go and tell the Commander in Chief that the game was already up, and that, even if by some miracle they should break through to Ekaterinodar, they could now never hold the city.
Kornilov, after he had pressed his lips to the cold brow of his favourite, Nezhentsev, whose body was brought on a cart up to his window in the farm, never opened his mouth, and spoke to no one.
When, however, some shrapnel burst close to the house and a bullet from it, flying through the window, lodged itself in the ceiling, he pointed to it gloomily with his leathery finger, and for some reason or other said to the aide-de-camp Khadzhiev:
"Keep that, Khan!"
On the night of the fourth day the Commander in Chief's order was transmitted over all field telephones:
"Continue the assault,"
By now, however, it was clear to all that the tempo of the advance had been greatly decreased.
General Kutepov, who had taken the post of the fallen Nezhentsev, was unable to induce the Kornilov Regiment (the best in the army) to leave the vegetable plots in which they were lying.
The troops fought languidly.
Erdeli's cavalry continued to retreat.
Markov, who had strained his voice by shouting and swearing, kept falling asleep on the way, his officers could not move a step beyond the barracks.
In the middle of the day a military council was called in Kornilov's room, attended by generals Alexeyev, Romanovsky, Markov, Bogayevsky, Filimonov and Denikin.
Kornilov, his small silvery head shrinking into his shoulders, listened to Romanovsky's report:
"No shells, no cartridges.
The Cossack volunteers going back to their villages.
All regiments in disorder.
Morale low.
Many unwounded leaving the battlefield for the rear..." and so on, and so on.
The generals listened with lowered eyes.
Markov, his head reposing against somebody's shoulder, slept.
In the dusk (the window was curtained), Kornilov's high cheek-boned face was like that of a shrivelled mummy.
He spoke in a muffled voice: