away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.
Prince Bagratión screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say, “Is it worth while noticing trifles?” He reined in his horse with the care of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of a kind no longer in general use.
Prince Andréy remembered the story of Suvórov giving his saber to Bagratión in Italy, and the recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery at which Prince Andréy had been when he examined the battlefield.
“Whose company?” asked Prince Bagratión of an artilleryman standing by the ammunition wagon.
He asked, “Whose company?” but he really meant, “Are you frightened here?” and the artilleryman understood him.
“Captain Túshin’s, your excellency!” shouted the red-haired, freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
“Yes, yes,” muttered Bagratión as if considering something, and he rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon’s mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Túshin, stumbling over