“It’s likely I should pay attention to the chatter of a Tommy!” muttered the Lieutenant, with a feeling of heaviness and apathy at heart and a certain dimness of thought, left by the sight of the convoy of wounded men, and by the words of the soldier, enforced as they were by the sounds of the cannonade.

“Funny fellow that Tommy! Now then, Nikoláyef, get on!⁠ ⁠… are you asleep?” he added rather fretfully, as he arranged the skirt of his cloak.

Nikoláyef jerked the reins, clicked his tongue, and the trap rolled on at a trot.

“We’ll only stop just to feed the horse, and then we’ll go on at once: today,” said the officer.

At the entrance to a street of remains of ruined stone Tartar houses in Douvánka, Lieutenant Kozeltsóf was stopped by a convoy of bombs and cannonballs on its way to Sevastopol, which blocked the road.