The motley rabble became transformed into a compact, homogeneous mass crowned by a waving, disorderly, spiky steel-bristled brush made of bayonets.
'All officers report to me, please', came Studzinsky's voice.
In a dark passageway to the subdued clink of spurs, Studzinsky asked quietly:
'Well, gentlemen, what are your impressions?'
A rattle of spurs.
Myshlaevsky, saluting with a practised and nonchalant touch of his cap, took a pace towards the staff-captain and said:
'It's not going to be easy. There are fifteen men in my troop who have never seen a rifle in their lives.'
Gazing upwards as though inspired towards a window where the last trickle of gray light was filtering through, Studzinsky went on:
'Morale?'
Myshlaevsky spoke again.
'Er, h'umm ...
I think the students were somewhat put off by
the sight of that funeral.
It had a bad effect on them.
They watched it through the railings.'
Studzinsky turned his eager, dark eyes on to him.
'Do your best to raise their morale.'
Spurs clinked again as the officers dispersed.
'Cadet Pavlovsky!' Back in the armory, Myshlaevsky roared out like Radames in Aida.
'Pavlovsky . . . sky . . . sky!' answered the stony walls of the armory and a chorus of cadets' voices.
'Here, sir!'
'Were you at the Alexeyevsky Artillery School?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Right, let's smarten things up and have a song.
So loud that it'll make Petlyura drop dead, God rot him . . .'
One voice, high and clear, struck up beneath the stone vaults:
'I was born a little gunner-boy . . .'
Some tenors chimed in from among the forest of bayonets:
'Washed in a shell-case spent . . .'
The horde of students seemed to shudder, quickly picked up the tune by ear, and suddenly, in a mighty bass roar that echoed like gunfire, they rocked the whole armory:
'Christened with a charge of shrapnel, Swaddled in an army tent! Christened with . . .'
The sound rang in their ears, boomed among the ammunition boxes, rattled the grim windows and pounded in their heads until several long-forgotten dusty old glasses on the sloping window ledges began to rattle and shake . . .
'In my cradle made of trace-ropes The gun-crew would rock me to sleep.'
Out of the crowd of greatcoats, bayonets and machine-guns, Studzinsky selected two pink-faced ensigns and gave them a rapid, whispered order:
'Assembly hall. . . take down the drapes in front of the portrait . . . look sharp . . .'
The ensigns hurried off.
#
The empty stone box of the school building roared and shook in march time, while the rats lurked deep in their holes, cowering with terror.
'Hup, two, three, four!' came Karas' piercing voice.
'Louder!' shouted Myshlaevsky in his high, clear tenor. 'What d'you think this is - a funeral!?' #
Instead of a ragged gray mob, an orderly file bristling with bayonets now marched off steadily along the corridor, the floor groaning and bending under the crunch of feet.
Along the endless passages and up to the second floor marched the detachment straight into the gigantic assembly hall bathed in light from its glass dome, where the front ranks had already halted and were beginning to fidget restlessly.
Mounted on his pure-bred Arab charger, saddle-cloth emblazoned with the imperial monogram, the Arab executing a perfect caracole, with beaming smile and white-plumed tricorn hat cocked at a rakish angle, the balding, radiant Tsar Alexander I galloped ahead of the ranks of cadets and students.
Flashing them smile after smile redolent of insidious charm, Alexander waved his baton at the cadets to show them the serried ranks of Borodino.
Clumps of cannon-balls were strewn about the fields and the entire background of the fourteen foot canvas was covered with black slabs of massed bayonets.
#
As the gorgeous Tsar Alexander galloped onwards and upwards to heaven, the torn drapes which had shrouded him for a whole year since October 1917 lay in a heap around the hooves of his charger.
'Can't you see the Emperor Alexander?
Keep that cadence!
Left, left!