work were separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and as it were family feeling of animation.
The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.
A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.
“Sir,” he said, “permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be here.”
The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him, gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made kindly fun of him among themselves.
A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.
“And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?” a red-faced, broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set of sound, white teeth.
“Are you afraid, then?” said Pierre.
“What else do you expect?” answered the soldier. “She has no mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can't help being afraid,” he said laughing. '
Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre. They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the discovery that he did so delighted them.
“It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's wonderful! There's a gentleman for you!”
“To your places!” cried the young officer to the men gathered round Pierre.
The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with great precision and formality.
The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more intense over the whole field, especially to the left where Bagratión's flèches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole attention was engrossed by watching the family circle—separated from all else—formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield was now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around him.
By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from the battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around. But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices and jokes were heard on all sides.
“A live one!” shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.
“Not this way! To the infantry!” added another with loud laughter, seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.
“Are you bowing to a friend, eh?” remarked another, chaffing a peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.
Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see what was happening in front.
“They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired,” said they, pointing over the earthwork.
“Mind your own business,” an old sergeant shouted at them. “If they've retired it's because there's work for them to do farther back.”
And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.
“To the fifth gun, wheel it up!” came shouts from one side.
“Now then, all together, like bargees!” rose the merry voices of those who were moving the gun.
“Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!” cried the red-faced humorist, showing his teeth and chaffing Pierre. “Awkward baggage!”
