Trent chewed some bread for the man behind, who tried to swallow it, and after a while shook his head, motioning Trent to eat the rest himself. A corporal offered him a little brandy and he drank it, but when he turned around to return the flask, the corporal was lying on the ground. Alarmed, he looked at the soldier next to him, who shrugged his shoulders and opened his mouth to speak, but something struck him and he rolled over and over into the ditch below. At that moment the horse of one of the officers gave a bound and backed into the battalion, lashing out with his heels. One man was ridden down; another was kicked in the chest and hurled through the ranks. The officer sank his spurs into the horse and forced him to the front again, where he stood trembling. The cannonade seemed to draw nearer. A staff officer, riding slowly up and down the battalion suddenly collapsed in his saddle and clung to his horse’s mane. One of his boots dangled, crimsoned and dripping, from the stirrup. Then out of the mist in front, men came running. The roads, the fields, the ditches were full of them, and many of them fell. For an instant he imagined he saw horsemen riding about like ghosts in the vapors beyond, and a man behind him cursed horribly, declaring he too had seen them and that they were Uhlans; but the battalion stood inactive and the mist fell again over the meadows.
The colonel sat heavily upon his horse, his bullet-shaped head buried in the astrakan collar of his dolman, his fat legs sticking straight out in the stirrups.
The buglers clustered about him with bugles poised, and behind him a staff officer
