From his squatting position he turned, looked up at Nikolka and roared in fury:
'Are you deaf?
Run!'
Nikolka felt a strange wave of drunken ecstasy surge up from his stomach and for a moment his mouth went dry.
' I don't want to, colonel', he replied in a blurred voice, squatted down, picked up the ammunition belt and began to feed it into the machine-gun.
Far away, from where the remnants of Nai-Turs' squad had mine running, several mounted men pranced into view.
Their horses seemed to be dancing beneath them as though playing some game, and the gray blades of their sabres could just be seen.
Nai-Turs cocked the bolt, the machine-gun spat out a few rounds, stopped, spat again and then gave a long burst.
Instantly bullets whined and ricocheted off the roofs of houses to right and left down the street.
A few more mounted figures joined the first ones, but suddenly one of them was thrown sideways towards the window of a house, another's horse reared on its hind legs to an astonishing height, almost to the level of the second-floor windows, and several more riders disappeared altogether.
Then all the others vanished as though they had been swallowed up by the earth.
Nai-Turs dismantled the breech-block, and as he shook his fist at the sky his eyes blazed and he shouted:
'Those swine at headquarters - run away and leave children to light . . . !'
He turned to Nikolka and cried in a voice that struck Nikolka like the sound of a muted cavalry trumpet:
'Run for it, you stupid boy!
Run for it, I say!'
He looked behind him to make sure that all the cadets had already disappeared, then peered down the road from the intersection to the distant street running parallel to Brest-Litovsk Street and shouted in pain and anger:
'Ah, hell!'
Nikolka followed his glance and saw that far away on Kadetskaya Street, among the bare snow-covered trees of the avenue, lines of gray-clad men had begun to materialise and were dropping to the ground.
Then a sign above Nai-Turs and Nikolka's heads on the corner house of Fonarny Street, reading:
Berta Yakovlevna Printz Dental Surgeon swung with a clang and a window-pane shattered somewhere in the courtyard of the same house.
Nikolka noticed some lumps of plaster bouncing and jumping on the sidewalk.
Nikolka looked questioningly at Colonel Nai-Turs for an explanation of these lines of gray men and the fragments of plaster.
Colonel Nai-Turs' response was very strange.
He hopped up on one leg, waved the other as though executing a waltz step, and an inappropriate grimace, like a dancer's fixed smile, twisted his features.
The next moment Colonel Nai-Turs was lying at Nikolka's feet.
A black fog settled on Nikolka's brain. He squatted down and with a dry, tearless sob tried to lift the colonel by the shoulders.
In doing so he noticed that blood was seeping through the colonel's left sleeve and his eyes were staring up into the sky.
'Colonel, sir. . . .'
'Corporal', said Nai-Turs. As he spoke blood trickled from his mouth on to his chin and his voice came in droplets, thinning and weakening at each word. 'Stop playing the hero, I'm dying. . . .
Make for Malo-Provalnaya Street. . . .'
Having said all that he wanted to say, his lower jaw began to shake.
It twitched convulsively three times as though Nai-Turs was being strangled, then stopped, and the colonel suddenly became as heavy as a sack of flour.
'Is this how people die?' thought Nikolka. 'It can't be.
He was alive only a moment ago.
Dying in battle isn't so terrible.
I wonder why they haven't hit me. . . .'
Dent . . . Surg . . . tattled and swung above his head a second time and somewhere another pane of glass broke.
'Perhaps he's just fainted?' thought Nikolka stupidly and started to drag the colonel away.
But he could not lift him.
'Am I frightened?' Nikolka asked himself, and knew that he was terrified.
'Why?
Why?' Nikolka wondered and realised at once that he was frightened because he was alone and helpless and that if Colonel Nai-Turs had been on his feet at that moment there would have been nothing to fear . . .
But Colonel Nai-Turs was completely motionless, was no longer issuing orders, was oblivious to the fact that a large red puddle was spreading alongside his sleeve, that broken and pulverised stucco was lying scattered in a crazy pattern along the nearby wall.
Nikolka was frightened because he was utterly alone. . . .
And loneliness drove Nikolka from the crossroads. He crawled away on his stomach, pulling himself along first with his hands, then with his right elbow as his left hand was grasping Nai-Turs' revolver.
Real fear overcame him when he was a mere two paces away from the street corner.
If they hit me in the leg now, he thought, I won't be able to crawl any further, Petlyura's men will come riding up and hack me to bits with their sabres.
How terrible to be lying helpless as they slash at you . . . I'll fire at them, provided there's any ammunition left in this revolver . . .
Just another step away . . . pull myself, pull . . . again . . . and Nikolka was around the corner and in Fonarny Street.