“What, is that a friend of yours you’re bowing to?” they said to him. Velenchuk also, usually quite indifferent to danger, was now excited: he was evidently vexed that we did not fire case-shot in the direction whence the bullets came. He repeated several times in a discontented tone, “Why is he allowed to go for us and gets nothing in return? If we turned a gun that way and gave them a taste of case-shot they’d hold their noise, no
It was true that it was time to do this, so I ordered to fire a last bomb and then to load with case-shot.
“Case-shot!” Antonov called out briskly as he went through the thick of the smoke to sponge out the gun as soon as it was discharged.
At that moment I heard, just behind me, the rapid whiz of a bullet suddenly stopped with a dull thud by something. My heart stopped beating.
“Someone of the men has been hit,” I thought, while a sad presentiment made me afraid to turn round.
And, really, that sound was followed by the heavy fall of a body, and the heartrending “Oh-o-oh” of someone who had been wounded.
“I’m hit, lads!” a voice I knew exclaimed with an effort. It was Velenchuk.
- He was lying on his back between the limbers and a cannon.
- The cartridge-bag he had been carrying was thrown to one side.
- His forehead was covered with blood, and a thick red stream was running down over his right eye and nose.
He was wounded in the stomach but hardly bled at all there; his forehead he had hurt against a log in falling.