When the army came to a small brook that had overflowed half the road, a halt was called. The soldiers, stacking their arms, plunged into the stream. The commander of the battalion sat down in the shade, on a drum, and, showing by his broad countenance the degree of his rank, made ready, in company with a few officers, to take lunch. The captain lay on the grass under the company's transport-wagon; the gallant lieutenant Rosenkranz and some other young officers, spreading out their Caucasian mantles, or _burki,_ threw themselves down, and began to carouse as was manifest by the flasks and bottles scattered around them and by the extraordinary liveliness of their singers, who, standing in a half-circle behind them, gave an accompaniment to the Caucasian dance-song sung by a Lesghian girl:--
Shamyl resolved to make a league In the years gone by, Traï-raï, rattat-taï, In the years gone by.
Among these officers was also the young ensign who had passed us in the morning. He was very entertaining: his eyes gleamed, his tongue never grew weary. He wanted to greet every one, and show his good-will to them all. Poor lad! he did not know that in acting this way he might be ridiculous, that his frankness and the gentleness which he showed to every one might win for him, not the love which he so much desired, but ridicule; he did not know this either, that when at last, thoroughly heated, he threw himself down on his _burka,_ and leaned his head on his hand, letting his thick black curls fall over, he was a very picture of beauty.
Two officers crouched under a wagon, and were playing cards on a hamper.
I listened with curiosity to the talk of the soldiers and officers, and attentively watched the expression of their faces; but, to tell the truth, in not one could I discover a shadow of that anxiety which I myself felt; jokes, laughter, anecdotes, expressed the universal carelessness, and indifference to the coming peril. How impossible to suppose that it was not fated for some never again to pass that road!
At seven o'clock in the evening, dusty and weary, we entered the wide, fortified gate of Fort N----. The sun was setting, and shed oblique rosy rays over the picturesque batteries and lofty-walled gardens that surrounded the fortress, over the fields yellow for the harvest, and over the white clouds which, gathering around the snow-capped mountains, simulated their shapes, and formed a chain no less wonderful and beauteous. A young half moon, like a translucent cloud, shone above the horizon. In the native village or _aul,_ situated near the gate, a Tatar on the roof of a hut was calling the faithful to prayer. The singers broke out with new zeal and energy.