Finally I burrowed in the snow with my rifle-butt and dug myself a hole, sat down and tried not to fall asleep: once you fall asleep in that temperature you're done for.
Towards morning I couldn't hold out any longer - I was beginning to doze off.
D'you know what saved me?
Machine-gun fire.
I heard it start up at dawn, about a mile or two away.
And, believe it or not, I found I just didn't want to stand up.
Then a field-gun started booming away.
I got up, feeling as if each leg weighed a ton and I thought:
"This is it, Petlyura's turned up."
We closed in and shortened the line so that we were near enough to shout to each other, and we decided that if anything happened we would form up into a tight group, shoot our way out and withdraw back into town.
If they overran us - too bad, they overran us.
At least we'd be together.
Then, imagine - the firing stopped.
Later in the morning we took it in turns to go to the Tavern three at a time to warm up.
When d'you think the relief finally turned up?
At two o'clock this afternoon.
Two hundred officer cadets from the ist Detachment.
And believe it or not they were all properly dressed in fur hats and felt boots and they had a machine-gun squad.
Colonel Nai-Turs was in command of them.'
'Ah!
He's one of ours!' cried Nikolka.
'Wait a minute, isn't he in the Belgrade Hussars?' asked Alexei.
'Yes, that's right, he's a hussar . . . well, you can imagine, they were appalled when they saw us:
"We thought you were at least two companies with a machine-gun - how the hell did you stand it?"
Apparently that machine-gun fire at dawn was an attack on Serebryanka by a horde of about a thousand men.
It was lucky they didn't know that our sector was defended by that thin line, otherwise that mob might have broken into the City.
It was lucky, too that our people at Serebryanka had a telephone line to Post-Volynsk. They signalled that they were under attack, so some battery was able to give the enemy a dose of shrapnel. Well, you can imagine that soon cooled their enthusiasm, they broke off the attack and vanished into thin air.'
'But who were they?
Surely they weren't Petlyura's men?
It's impossible.'
'God knows who they were.
I think they were some local peasants - Dostoyevsky's "holy Russia" in revolt. Ugh - motherfuckers . . .'
'God almighty!'
'Well,' Myshlaevsky croaked, sucking at a cigarette, 'thank God we were relieved in the end.
We counted up and there were thirty-eight of us left.
We were lucky - only two of us had died of frostbite.
Done for.
And two more were carried away. They'll have to have their legs amputated . . .'
'What - two were frozen to death?'
'What d'you expect?
One cadet and one officer.
But the best part was what happened at Popelukho, that's the village near the Tavern.
Lieutenant Krasin and I went there to try and find a sledge to carry away the men who'd been frostbitten.
The village was completely dead - not a soul to be seen.
We hunted around, then finally out crawled some old man in a sheepskin coat, walking with a crutch.
He was overjoyed when he saw us, believe it or not.
I felt at once that something was wrong.
What's up, I wondered?
Then that miserable old bastard started shouting:
"Hullo there, lads . . ."