Stilled on the Spot.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 487, 9 July 1890, Page 3

Stilled on the Spot.

No sooner had Praskukhin, who had been walking beside Mikha'iloff, taken leave of i Kalugin, and, betaking himself to a some- • what safer place, had begun to recover his ' spirits somewhat, than ho caught sight of a flash of lightning behind him flaring up vividly, heard tho shout of the sentinel, ‘Mortar!’ and the words of the soldiers who were marching behind, * It’s flying straight at the bastion !’ Mikha'iloff glanced round. The brilliant point of the bomb seemed to be suspended directly over his head in such a position that it was absolutely impossible to determine its course. But this lasted only for a second. The bomb came faster and faster, nearer and nearer ; the sparks of the fuse were already visible, and the fateful whistle was audible, and it descended straight in the middle of tho battalion. ‘ Lie down !’ shouted a voice.

Mikha'iloff and Praskukhin threw themselves on the ground. Praskukhin shut his eyes, and onlyheara the bomb crash against the hard earth somewhere in the vicinity. A second passed, which seemed an hour, and the bomb had not burst. Praskukhin was alarmed : had ho felt cowardly for nothing? Perhaps the bomb had fallen at a distance, and it merely seemed to him that the fuse was hissing near him. He opened his eyes, and saw with satisfaction that Mikha'iloff was lying motionless on the earth, at his very feet, But then his eyes encountered for a moment the glowing fase of the bomb, which was twisting about at the distance of an arshin from him.

A cold horror, which excluded every other thought and feeling, took possession of-his wholo being. He covered his face with his hands.

Another second passed—cisecondin which a whole world of thoughts, feelings, hopes, and memories flashed through his mind. 4 Which will bo killed, Mikha'iloff or I? Or both together? And if it is I, where will it strike? If in the head, then all is over with me ; but if in the leg, they will cut it off, and I shall ask them to be sure to give me chloroform, and I may still remain among the living. But perhaps no one bub Mikha'iloff will bo killed ; then I will relate how we were walking along together, and how he was killed and his blood spurted over me. No, it is nearer to me ... it will kill me !’

Then he remembered the twenty rouble which ho owed Mikha'iloff, and recalled another debt in Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long ago ; the gipsy air which he had sung the previous evening recurred to him. Tho woman whom he loved appeared to his imagination in a cap with lilac ribbons ; a man who bad insulted him five years before, and whom he had not paid off for his insult, came to his mind ; though inextricably interwoven with these and with a thousand other memories the feeling of the moment—the fear of death—never desorbed him for an instant.

4 Bub perliapsitwill notburst.’he thought, and, with the decision of despair, he tried to open his eyes. Bub at that instant, through the crevice of his eyelids, his eyes were smitten with a red fire, and something struck him in the centre of his breast with a frightful crash : he ran off, ho knew nob whither, stumbled over his sword, which had got between his legs, and fell over on his side.

4 Thank God! I am only bruised,’ was his first thought, and he tried to touch his breast with his hands ; but his arms seemed fettered, and pincers were pressing his head. The soldiers flitted before his eyes, and he unconsciously counted them : 4 One, two, three soldiers ; and there is an officer, wrapped up in hi 3 cloak,’he thought. Then a flash passed before his eyes, and he thought that something had been fired off. Was it the mortars, or the cannon ? It must have been the cannon. And there was still another shot; and there were more soldiers—five, six, seven soldiers were passing by him. Then suddenly he felt afraid that they would crush him. He wanted to shout to them that he was bruised, but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clave to his palate, and he was tortured by a frightful thirst.

He felt that he was wot about the breast; this sensation of dampness reminded him of water, and he even wanted to drink this, whatever it was. ‘I must have brought the blood when I fell,’ he thought, and, beginning to give way more and more to terror, lest the soldiers who passed should crush them, he collected all his strength, and tried to cry— ‘ Take mo with you !’ but instead of this, he groaned so terribly that it frightened him bo hear himself. Then more red fires flashed in his eyes, and it seemed to him as though the soldiers were laying stones upon him ; the fires danced more and more rarely, tho stones which they piled on him oppressed him more and more.

He exerted all his strength in order to cast off the stones ; ho stretched himself out, and no longer saw or heard or thought or felt anything. He had been killed on the spot by a splinter of shell in the middle of the breast. —From Tolstoi’s 4 Siege of Sebastopol.’