“ Perforatio pectoris. ⁠ ⁠… Sebastian Séreda, Private⁠ ⁠… what regiment? But you need not write that: moritur . Carry him away,” said the doctor, leaving the soldier, whose eyes turned up while the death-rattle still sounded in his throat.

About forty soldiers, stretcher-bearers, stood at the door waiting to carry the bandaged to the wards and the dead to the chapel. They looked on in silence, broken only now and then by a heavy sigh, at the scene before them.

On his way to the bastion Kaloúgin met many wounded; but knowing by experience that, in action, such sights have a bad effect on a man’s spirits, he did not stop to question them, but, on the contrary, tried not to notice them. At the foot of the hill he met an orderly-officer galloping fast from the bastion.

“Zóbkin! Zóbkin! wait a bit.”