Dangerous operations were entrusted to him, and he carried them out brilliantly.
The conversation with Sergei Sergeyevich had plunged him into deep meditation.
So even the light-hearted commander was a prey to unspeakable pangs.... And what about Misha Solomin ... and Chertogonov... and a host of others he had brushed against carelessly?
They all measured up to the time, huge, unkempt, disfigured by spiritual tortures.
They had no words in which to express their pain, nothing but the rifle in their hands ... some found an outlet in wild debauch, followed by wilder remorse.... There's Russia for you—there's the Revolution....
"Comrade Commander—Wake up!"
Telegin sat up in the bunk.
The golden globe of the sun, suspended over the edge of the steppe, which was now the colour of a duckling's downy feathers—was peeping into the carriage window.
The soldier, his broad, red-bearded face ruddy as the morning sun, gave Ivan Ilyich another shake.
"The Regimental Commander wants to see you at once."
In Sapozhkov's compartment the stinking oil lamp was still alight.
In it were: Gimza; Commissar Sokolovsky, a black-haired, consumptive-looking individual, his dark eyes burning from insomnia; two battalion commanders; a few company commanders, and a representative of the Soldiers' Committee, whose face wore a defiant, almost injured expression.... All were smoking.
Sergei Sergeyevich, now in a tunic, with a holster on his belt, held a strip of telegraph tape in his shaking hand:
"... the unexpected capture of the station by the enemy has cut off our troops, and placed them under a double menace...." He was reading these words in a hoarse voice as Ivan Ilyich stopped in the doorway of the compartment.
"... in the name of the Revolution, in the name of the unfortunate population, threatened by inevitable death, execution and tortures if abandoned to the tender mercies of the White bands, lose not a moment, send reinforcements!"
"What can we do without orders from the Commander in Chief?" cried Sokolovsky.
"I'll try once more to get him on the wire."
"Go on, then, try," said Gimza with ominous emphasis. (Everyone looked at him.) "I'll tell you what to do— take four men, take Telegin here, and rush to headquarters on a trolley. And don't come back without an order. Sapozhkov, write out a paper to Commander in Chief Sorokin."
A horseman stood on the crest of a grassy mound, gazing steadily from under his hand at a cloud of dust advancing along the railway track.
When the cloud was hidden by the bank of a cutting, the horseman touched his horse first with his shins and then with his spurs, the lean, chestnut stallion jerked its savage-looking head, and turned, descending the mound, at the foot of which, on either side, a platoon of officers of the Volunteer Army lay about, sheltering behind freshly heaped piles of earth.
"A trolley," said von Mecke, leaping from the saddle. And tapping the knees of his stallion with his riding crop he gave it the order to lie down.
The horse pawed the ground restively, its ears twitching, but submitted and Jet itself down with a deep sigh, its muzzle touching the ground.
Its gaunt side heaved and subsided.
Von Mecke was now squatting on the top of the mound beside Roshchin.
Just then the trolley came into sight again from the cutting and now six men in greatcoats could be made out on it.
"Reds!" said von Mecke. "I thought so!"
He turned his head to the left: "Squad!"
Turning to the right he cried: "Make ready!
Rapid fire at a moving object. Fire!"
The air around the mound was rent with a crackling sound, as of starched calico being torn.
Through the cloud of smoke a man could be seen to fall off the trolley, turn over and over and roll down the slope at the side of the tracks, tearing at the grass with his hands.
Five men fired from the fast-vanishing trolley—three from rifles, two from revolvers.
Another minute and it would be hidden by the next cutting, beyond the signal box.
Von Mecke, his riding crop swishing through the air, was in a frenzy:
"They're getting away!
You ought to be shooting crows!
Shame! Shame!"
Roshchin was considered a crack shot.
Quietly training his rifle a foot in front of the trolley, he took aim at a tall, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man—evidently the commander.
"He's just like Telegin!" he thought.
"How awful if it were he!"
Roshchin fired.
The man's cap fell off, and at that very moment the trolley plunged into the second cutting.
Von Mecke brandished his whip.
"Bastards!
A set of bastards!
You're not marksmen, gentlemen, you're a set of bastards!"
His eyes—the eyes of a sleepless murderer—bulging, he swore continuously till the officers rose to their feet, grumbling as they brushed the earth from their trousers.
"Be careful what you say, Captain, there are higher ranks than you here."
Putting in a fresh round of cartridges, Roshchin was conscious that his hands were still trembling.