With a flourish Nai-Turs thrust his revolver back into its holster, strode over to the machine-gun, squatted down behind it, swung its muzzle round in the direction from which he had come and adjusted the belt with his left hand. From his squatting position he turned, looked up at Nikolka and roared in fury:

'Are you deaf? Run!'

Nikolka felt a strange wave of drunken ecstasy surge up from his stomach and for a moment his mouth went dry.

' I don't want to, colonel', he replied in a blurred voice, squatted down, picked up the ammunition belt and began to feed it into the machine-gun.

Far away, from where the remnants of Nai-Turs' squad had mine running, several mounted men pranced into view. Their horses seemed to be dancing beneath them as though playing some game, and the gray blades of their sabres could just be seen. Nai-Turs cocked the bolt, the machine-gun spat out a few rounds, stopped, spat again and then gave a long burst. Instantly bullets whined and ricocheted off the roofs of houses to right and left down the street. A few more mounted figures joined the first ones, but suddenly one of them was thrown sideways towards the window of a house, another's horse reared on its hind legs to an astonishing height, almost to the level of the second-floor windows, and several more riders disappeared altogether. Then all the others vanished as though they had been swallowed up by the earth.

Nai-Turs dismantled the breech-block, and as he shook his fist at the sky his eyes blazed and he shouted:

'Those swine at headquarters - run away and leave children to light . . . !'

He turned to Nikolka and cried in a voice that struck Nikolka like the sound of a muted cavalry trumpet:

'Run for it, you stupid boy! Run for it, I say!'

He looked behind him to make sure that all the cadets had

already disappeared, then peered down the road from the intersection to the distant street running parallel to Brest-Litovsk Street and shouted in pain and anger:

'Ah, hell!'

Nikolka followed his glance and saw that far away on Kadetskaya Street, among the bare snow-covered trees of the avenue, lines of gray-clad men had begun to materialise and were dropping to the ground. Then a sign above Nai-Turs and Nikolka's heads on the corner house of Fonarny Street, reading:

Berta Yakovlevna Printz Dental Surgeon

swung with a clang and a window-pane shattered somewhere in the courtyard of the same house. Nikolka noticed some lumps of plaster bouncing and jumping on the sidewalk. Nikolka looked questioningly at Colonel Nai-Turs for an explanation of these lines of gray men and the fragments of plaster. Colonel Nai-Turs' response was very strange. He hopped up on one leg, waved the other as though executing a waltz step, and an inappropriate grimace, like a dancer's fixed smile, twisted his features. The next moment Colonel Nai-Turs was lying at Nikolka's feet. A black fog settled on Nikolka's brain. He squatted down and with a dry, tearless sob tried to lift the colonel by the shoulders. In doing so he noticed that blood was seeping through the colonel's left sleeve and his eyes were staring up into the sky.

'Colonel, sir. . . .'

'Corporal', said Nai-Turs. As he spoke blood trickled from his mouth on to his chin and his voice came in droplets, thinning and weakening at each word. 'Stop playing the hero, I'm dying. . . . Make for Malo-Provalnaya Street. . . .'

Having said all that he wanted to say, his lower jaw began to shake. It twitched convulsively three times as though Nai-Turs was being strangled, then stopped, and the colonel suddenly became as heavy as a sack of flour.

'Is this how people die?' thought Nikolka. 'It can't be. He was

alive only a moment ago. Dying in battle isn't so terrible. I wonder why they haven't hit me. . . .'

Dent . . .

Surg . . .

tattled and swung above his head a second time and somewhere another pane of glass broke. 'Perhaps he's just fainted?' thought Nikolka stupidly and started to drag the colonel away. But he could not lift him. 'Am I frightened?' Nikolka asked himself, and knew that he was terrified. 'Why? Why?' Nikolka wondered and realised at once that he was frightened because he was alone and helpless and that if Colonel Nai-Turs had been on his feet at that moment there would have been nothing to fear . . . But Colonel Nai-Turs was completely motionless, was no longer issuing orders, was oblivious to the fact that a large red puddle was spreading alongside his sleeve, that broken and pulverised stucco was lying scattered in a crazy pattern along the nearby wall. Nikolka was frightened because he was utterly alone. . . . And loneliness drove Nikolka from the crossroads. He crawled away on his stomach, pulling himself along first with his hands, then with his right elbow as his left hand was grasping Nai-Turs' revolver. Real fear overcame him when he was a mere two paces away from the street corner. If they hit me in the leg now, he thought, I won't be able to crawl any further, Petlyura's men will come riding up and hack me to bits with their sabres. How terrible to be lying helpless as they slash at you . . . I'll fire at them, provided there's any ammunition left in this revolver . . . Just another step away . . . pull myself, pull . . . again . . . and Nikolka was around the corner and in Fonarny Street.

'How amazing, absolutely amazing, that I wasn't hit. A sheer miracle. God must have worked a miracle', thought Nikolka as he stood up. 'Now I've actually seen a miracle. Notre Dame de Paris. Victor Hugo. I wonder what's happened to Elena? And Alexei? Obviously the order to tear off our shoulder-straps means disaster.'

Nikolka jumped up, smothered from head to foot in snow, thrust the revolver into his greatcoat pocket and ran off down the

street. Finding the first pair of gates on his right hand still open, Nikolka ran through the echoing gateway and found himself in a dim, squalid courtyard with sheds of red brick along its right-hand side and a pile of firewood on the left. Assuming that the back door leading to the adjoining courtyard was in the middle, he ran towards it across the slippery snow and bumped heavily into a man in a sheepskin jerkin. The man had a red beard and little eyes that were quite plainly dripping with hatred. Snub-nosed, with a sheepskin hat on his head, he was a caricature of the Emperor Nero. As though playfully the man clasped Nikolka in a hug with his left arm and with his right seized Nikolka's left arm and started to twist it behind his back. For a few seconds Nikolka was completely dazed. 'God, he's caught me and he hates me . . . He's one of Petlyura's men . . .'

'Ah, you swine!' croaked the red-bearded man, breathing hard. 'Where d'you think you're going, eh?' Then he suddenly howled: 'Got you, cadet! Think we wouldn't recognise you just because you've torn off your shoulder-straps? Now I've got you!'

Nikolka was seized with fury. He sat down backwards so hard that the half-belt at the back of his greatcoat snapped, rolled over and freed himself from red-beard's grasp with a superhuman effort. For a second he lost sight of him as they were back to back, then he swung around and saw him. The man with the red beard was not only unarmed, he was not even a soldier, merely a janitor. A pall of rage like a red blanket floated across Nikolka's eyes and immediately gave way to a sensation of complete self-confidence. Cold frosty air was sucked into Nikolka's mouth as he bared his teeth like a wolf-cub. Determined to kill the beast if only the chamber were loaded, he wrenched the revolver out of his pocket. His voice, when he spoke, was so strange and terrible that he did not recognise it.

'I'll kill you, you bastard!' Nikolka hissed as he fumbled with the Colt, realising as he did so that he had forgotten how to fire it. Seeing that Nikolka was armed the janitor fell to his knees in terror and despair and whined, changing miraculously from a Nero into a snake: