The guide pointed out a ford, and the cavalry vanguard, followed by the General, began crossing the stream. The water, which reached to the horses’ chests, rushed with tremendous force between the white boulders, which here and there appeared on a level with its surface, and formed foaming and gurgling ripples round the horses’ legs. The horses, surprised by the noise of the water, lifted their heads and pricked their ears, but stepped evenly and carefully, against the current, on the uneven bottom of the stream. Their riders lifted their feet and weapons. The infantry, literally in nothing but their shirts, linked arm-in-arm by twenties, and holding above the water their muskets, to which their bundles of clothing were fastened, made great efforts (as the strained expression of their faces showed) to resist the force of the current. The mounted artillerymen, with loud shouts, drove their horses at a trot into the water. The guns and the green ammunition-wagons, over which the water occasionally splashed, rang against the stony bottom, but the good little horses, churning the water, pulled at the traces in unity and, with dripping manes and tails, clambered out on the opposite bank.
As soon as the crossing was accomplished, the General’s face suddenly assumed a meditative and serious look, and he turned his horse and, followed by the cavalry, rode at a trot down a broad glade which opened out before us in the midst of the forest. A cordon of mounted Cossacks was scattered along the skirts of the forest.
In the woods we noticed a man on foot dressed in a Circassian coat and wearing a tall cap—then a second and a third. One of the officers said: “Those are Tartars.” Then a puff of smoke appeared from behind a tree, a shot, and another. … Our rapid fire drowns the enemy’s. Only now and then a bullet, with a slow sound like the buzzing of a bee’s wings, passes