the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.
“Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,” cried he in a feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill-suited to his weak figure.
“Number Two!” he squeaked. “Fire, Medvédev!”
Bagratión called to him, and Túshin, raising three fingers to his cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute but like a priest’s benediction, approached the general.
Though Túshin’s guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary balls at the village of Schön Grabern visible just opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
No one had given Túshin orders where and at what to fire, but after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchénko, for whom he had great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the village.
“Very good!” said Bagratión in reply to the officer’s report, and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended before him.
The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to Bagratión a French column that was outflanking us.
To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood.
Prince Bagratión ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right