We arrested about a dozen officers, put them ashore, and let the boat go on.
The old colonel stood on the bank crying, and begging us to spare his life—he even mentioned his military services.
'Why should we hurt him?' we thought. 'He hasn't long to live anyhow.'
So we released him in a fit of magnanimity, and he made for the woods...."
Peals of joyous laughter came from the top bunk.
The one-eyed man waited for them to subside, and went on with his story.
"The other one—he was a staff officer—made a good impression on us, answering our questions readily, and appearing to be quite at his ease, so we let him go, too.... The rest we took into the woods. We shot them for refusing to answer questions...."
Dasha stared at the one-eyed man with bated breath.
His face, with its grim wrinkles, was perfectly calm.
The solitary eye, shrewd, murky-grey, the pupil a mere slit, thoughtfully followed the pine trees as they flew past.
He soon took up his tale again:
"We couldn't stay long on the banks of the Desna. The Germans turned our flank, and we retreated to the Drozdov woods.
We distributed our booty among the peasants. We did have a mug of wine each, but all the rest we sent to the hospital.
Krapivyansky was operating on our left with a large detachment, and Marunya was fighting on the right.
Our joint task was to break through to Chernigov, and take it by storm.
If only there had been proper communications between the detachments... but we had no real contacts, and we got there too late.
The Germans sent troops, artillery, and cavalry against us day after day.
Our very existence was a thorn in their flesh.
For as soon as they left a village, a Revolutionary Committee would be set up, and a couple of kulaks would be strung up on an ash tree. One day I was sent to Marunya's detachment to get some money—we needed money badly. We had to pay cash for everything we got from the population, and looting was forbidden under pain of death.
So I got a cart and drove to the Koshelev woods.
Marunya and I discussed things, he gave me a thousand Kerensky rubles, and I started back.... I had hardly entered the valley just outside the village of Zhukovka, when two horsemen, scouts from the Zhukovka Revolutionary Committee, dashed up to me.
'Where are you going—the Germans are there!'
'Where?'
'Why, they've almost got to Zhukovka!'
Back I go... drove into a thicket, and got off the cart. We began discussing what ' we should do.
There could be no question of mass resistance to the Germans.
A whole column of them was moving up, and they had artillery...."
"Three against a column—the odds were too heavy," said the soldier.
"That's just it!
So we thought we'd just try to give them a fright.
We crawled forward under cover of the rye.
We could see Zhukovka, and the column coming out of the woods—about two hundred men, two guns and some baggage carts, and a little way in front, a mounted patrol.
The fame of our partisans must have made a great noise if they actually sent artillery against us.
We dropped flat on our faces in some vegetable plots.
Our morale was excellent—we were looking forward to a good laugh.
When the patrol was within fifty paces of us I gave the order:
'Battalion, fire!'
We fired a couple of volleys.... One horse went over backward, and the German fell into the nettles.
We fired again.
We rattled our rifle bolts, made as much noise as we could...."
The eyes of the face on the top bunk fairly popped, and their owner, as if fearing to miss a single word, clapped his hand over his mouth to repress a whinny of laughter.
The soldier gave a satisfied chuckle.
"The patrol galloped back to the column, and the Germans turned right about, closed up their ranks and went to the attack in proper style.
They had their guns oft" the carts in a trice, and three-inch shells began booming over the vegetable plots, where the women were hoeing potatoes.... A shell burst, sending up the earth in showers.
Our women...." (Here the one-eyed man pushed his hat over his ear with one finger, no longer able to repress his mirth, and the man on the top shelf guffawed.) "Our women scuttled out of the potato patch like hens.... And the Germans advanced on the village, at the double. Then I said:
'We've had our fun, lads—now let's get the hell out of here!'
We crawled back through the rye to the gully, I got on to my cart, and drove to the Drozdov woods without any more adventures.
The Zhukovka people told us afterwards what happened: The Germans got as far as the vegetable plots, right up to the fence, and yelled out: "Hurrah!" And there wasn't anyone behind the fence.
The villagers nearly split their sides with laughing.'
The Germans occupied Zhukovka, and found there neither revolutionary committee nor guerrilla fighters, but they declared martial law in the village just the same.