Before five minutes were over fires were crackling and smoking in all directions. The soldiers dispersed, blew the fires and stirred them with hands and feet, dragged logs and branches; while the forest resounded with the unceasing noise of hundreds of axes and the crashing of falling trees.
The artillery, with a certain rivalry of the infantry, heaped their pile high, and though it was already burning so that one could hardly come within two paces of it, and thick black smoke was rising through the frozen branches (from which drops fell sizzling into the flames) which the soldiers pressed down into the fire, and though the charcoal was glowing beneath and the grass was scorched all around, the soldiers were not satisfied, but kept throwing great logs on to the pile, feeding it with dry grass beneath, and heaping it higher and higher.
When I came up to the fire to smoke a cigarette, Velenchuk, always officious, but today feeling guilty and bustling about more than anyone, in a fit of zeal snatched a piece of charcoal from the fire with his bare hand, and, after tossing it from hand to hand a couple of times, dropped it on the ground.
“Light a twig and hold it up,” said a soldier.
“No, better get a linstock, lad,” said another.
When I had at length lit my cigarette without the aid of Velenchuk, who was again trying to take a piece of charcoal in his hand, he rubbed his burnt fingers on the skirts of his sheepskin coat, and then, probably for want of something else to do, lifted a large piece of plane-tree wood and swung it into the fire. When at last he felt free to rest a bit, he came close up to the fire, threw open his cloak which he wore like a mantle fastened by one button, spread out his legs, held out his big, black hands, and drawing his mouth a bit to one side, screwed up his eyes.