The husky non-commissioned officer was the first among these to cease
stirring. He lay there with his face stuck in the cold mud of the
stream. A volley of bullets, still more uneven than the first answered
it, and presently single shots, interrupted by furious outcries of
pain, by groans of the wounded and rattling of the dying came from
both sides.

Pale flames flickered everywhere; the bark was being ripped from the
small birch trees; here and there were seen ghastly distorted faces
and shivering hands hurriedly fussing with the guns. The biting odour
of blood and gun-powder filled the air, and a bluish smoke rose slowly
to the sky, passing through the twigs shivering, as it were, with
fear, and under the birches there lay two groups of men, charging
their guns, shooting, slaying one another, and strewing the wet earth
with crippled, writhing, moaning bodies.

* * * * *

Suddenly the shooting ceased just as unexpectedly as it had begun.
There was no one upon the clearing except the wounded, and the dead.
The reddish soldiers hid behind the stones and the grey behind the
trees.

The fire ceased. The hearts of the men beat rapidly and painfully with
a vicious inhuman terror, but no one fired a single shot. An hour
passed and then another. The men lay silently behind the stones and
the trees, each group eyeing the enemy sharply and closely watching
their slightest movements.

"Uncle" alone, his back leaning on a trunk of a tree, was moaning
plaintively and softly like a fly caught in a spider's web. And on the
other side a young soldier was making severe attempts to lift up his
body out of the mud puddle, while the eyes of his pale youthful face
were already covered with the film of death. But no one paid the
slightest attention to either of them. Each one felt upon himself the
keen, merciless eye of the enemy and dared not budge or even stretch
out a benumbed foot. A grey soldier attempted once to change his
place, whereupon three shots thundered from the other side, and the
man only turned over and remained still. Later two men were killed,
one on each side, and again everything grew still.

The clatter of the rain alone was heard, as though, invisible to the
eye, some one wept bitterly in the forest. The hours were passing, and
the nervous tension grew intolerable, assuming the intensity of agony.
It was quite apparent that things could not go on in this way much
longer, and e