I climbed on to the roof and sat down beside the Captain.
“There don’t seem to have been many of the enemy,” I said, wishing to know his opinion of the action that had taken place.
“The enemy?” he repeated with surprise. “The enemy was not there at all! Do you call that the enemy? … Wait till the evening, when we go back, and you will see how they will speed us on our way: what a lot of them will pour out from there,” he said, pointing to a thicket that we had passed in the morning. “What is that?” I asked anxiously, interrupting the Captain and pointing to a group of Don Cossacks, who had collected round something not far from us.
A sound of something like a child’s cry came from there, and the words “Stop … don’t hack it … they’ll see … Have you a knife, Evstigneich? … Lend a knife …”
“They are up to something, the scoundrels …” calmly replied the Captain.
But at that moment the young ensign, his bonny face flushed and frightened, came suddenly running from behind a corner, and rushed, waving his arms, towards the Cossacks.
“Don’t touch it! Don’t kill it!” he cried in a childish voice.
Seeing the officer, the Cossacks stepped apart, and released a little white kid. The young ensign was quite abashed, muttered something, and stopped before us with a confused face.
Seeing the Captain and me on the roof, he blushed still more, and ran leaping towards us.
“I thought they were going to kill a child,” he said with a bashful smile.