Biek-Agamalov smiled in approbation, and with more than his usual generosity showed his whole row of gleaming white teeth. “Hark you, Viätkin, you ought really to take some interest in this sabre-cutting. With us at our home in the Caucasus we practise it from childhood – on bundles of wattles, on water-spouts, the bodies of sheep.”
“And men’s bodies,” remarked Lbov.
“And on men’s bodies,” repeated Agamalov with unruffled calm. “And such strokes, too! In a twinkling they cleave a fellow from his shoulder to the hip.”
“Biek, can you perform a test of strength like that?”
Biek-Agamalov sighed regretfully.
“No, alas! A sheep, or a calf; I can say I could cleave to the neck by a single stroke, but to cut a full-grown man down to the waist is beyond my power. To my father it would be a trifle.”
“Come, gentlemen, and let us try our strength and sabres on that scarecrow,” said Lbov, in a determined tone and with flashing eyes. “Biek, my dear boy, come with us.”
The officers went up to the clay figure that had been erected a little way off. Viätkin was the first to attack it. After endeavouring to impart to his innocent, prosaic face an expression of wild-beast ferocity, he struck the clay man with all his might and with an unnecessarily big flourish of his sabre. At the same time he uttered the characteristic sound “Khryass!” which a butcher makes when he is cutting up beef. The weapon entered about a quarter of an inch into the clay, and Viätkin had some trouble to extricate his brave sabre.
“Wretchedly done,” exclaimed Agamalov, shaking his head. “Now, Romashov, it’s your turn.”
Romashov drew his sabre from its sheath, and adjusted his eyeglass with a hesitating movement. He was of medium height, lean, and fairly strong in proportion to his build, but through constitutional timidity and lack of interest not much accustomed to handling the weapon. Even as a pupil at the Military Academy he was a bad swordsman, and after a year and a half’s service in the regiment he had almost completely forgotten the art.
He raised his sabre high above his head, but stretched out, simultaneously and instinctively, his left arm and hand.
“Mind your hand!” shouted Agamalov.
But it was too late then. The point of the sabre only made a slight scratch on the clay, and Romashov, to his astonishment, who had mis-reckoned on a strong resistance to the steel entering the clay, lost his balance and stumbled forward, whereupon the blade of the sabre caught his outstretched hand and tore off a portion of skin at the lower part of his little finger, so that the blood oozed.
“There! See what you’ve done!” cried Biek angrily as he dismounted from his charger. “How can any one handle a sabre so badly? You very nearly cut off your hand, you know. Well, that wound is a mere trifle, but you’d better bind it up with your handkerchief. Ensign, hold my horse. And now, gentlemen, bear this in mind. The force or effect of a stroke is not generated either in the shoulder or the elbow, but here, in the wrist.” He made, as quick as lightning, a few rotary movements of his right hand, whereupon the point of his sabre described a scintillating circle above his head. “Now look, I put my left hand behind my back. When the stroke itself is to be delivered it must not be done by a violent and clumsily directed blow, but by a vigorous cut, in which the arm and sabre are jerked slightly backwards. Do you understand? Moreover, it is absolutely necessary that the plane of the sabre exactly coincides with the direction of the stroke. Look, here goes!”
Biek took two steps backwards from the manikin, to which he seemed, as it were, to fasten himself tightly by a sharp, penetrating glance. Suddenly the sabre flashed in the air, and a fearful stroke, delivered with a rapidity that the eye could not follow, struck like lightning the clay figure, the upper part of which rolled, softly but heavily, down to the ground. The cut made by the sabre was as smooth and even as if it had been polished.
“The deuce, that was something like a cut!” cried the enthusiastic Lbov in wild delight. “Biek, my dear fellow, of your charity do that over again.”
“Yes, do, Biek,” chimed in Viätkin.
But Agamalov, who was evidently afraid of destroying the effect he had produced, smiled as he replaced the sabre in its scabbard. He breathed heavily, and at that moment, by his bloodthirsty, wildly staring eyes, his hawk’s nose, and set mouth, he put one in mind of a proud, cruel, malignant bird of prey.
“That was really nothing remarkable,” he exclaimed in a tone of assumed contempt. “At home in the Caucasus my old father, although he is over sixty-six, could cut off a horse’s head in a trice. You see, my children, everything can be acquired by practice and perseverance. At my home we practise on bundles of fagots tightly twisted together, or we try to cut through a water-spout without the least splash being noticeable. Well, Lbov, it’s your turn now.”
At that very moment, however, Bobuilev, the “non-com.,” rushed up to Viätkin, with terror depicted on every feature.
“Your Honour! The Commander of the regiment is here.”
“Attention!” cried Captain Sliva’s sharp voice from the other side of the parade-ground. The officers hastily made their way to their respective detachments.
A large open carriage slowly approached the avenue and stopped at the parade-ground. Out of it stepped the Commander with great trouble and agony amidst a loud moaning and groaning from the side of the poor carriage. The Commander was followed by his Adjutant, Staff-Captain Federovski, a tall, slim officer of smart appearance.
“Good day, 7th Company,” was his greeting in a careless, indistinct voice. An ear-splitting chorus of soldiers, dispersed over the whole extent of the ground, replied instantly: “God preserve your Excellency!”
The officers touched their caps.
“Proceed with the drill,” ordered the Commander, as he went up to the nearest platoon.
Colonel Shulgovich was evidently not in a good humour. He wandered about the platoons, growling and swearing, all the while repeatedly trying to worry the life out of the unhappy recruits by catch-questions from the “Military Regulations.” Time after time he was heard to reel out the most awful strings of insults and threats, and in this he displayed an inventive power and mastery that could hardly be surpassed. The soldiers stood before him, transfixed with terror, stiff, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe, and, as it were, hypnotized by the incessant, steadfast glances, as hard as marble, from those senile, colourless, severe eyes. Colonel Shulgovich, although much troubled with fatness and advanced in years, nevertheless still contrived to carry his huge, imposing figure. His broad, fleshy face, with its bloated cheeks and deeply receding forehead, was surrounded below by a thick, silvery, pointed beard, whereby the great head came very closely to resemble an awe-inspiring rhomboid. The eyebrows were grey, bushy, and threatening. He always spoke in a subdued tone, but his powerful voice – to which alone he owed his comparatively rapid promotion – was heard all the same as far as the most distant point of the parade-ground, nay! even out on the highroad.
“Who are you?” asked the Colonel, suddenly halting in front of a young soldier named Sharafutdinov, who was on sentry duty near the gymnastic apparatus.
“Recruit in the 6th Company, Sharafutdinov, your Excellency,” the Tartar answered in a strained and hoarse voice.
“Fool! I mean, of course, what post are you supposed to occupy?”
The soldier, who was frightened by his Commander’s angry tone, was silent: he could only produce one or two nervous twitchings of the eyebrows.
“Well?” Shulgovich raised his voice.
“I – am – standing – on guard,” the Tartar at last spluttered out, chancing it. “I cannot – understand, your Excellency,” he went on to say, but he relapsed into silence again, and stood motionless.
The Colonel’s face assumed a dark brick colour, a shade with a touch of blue about it, and his bushy eyebrows began to pucker