the battery.

So they departed, leaving us more forlorn than before We sat down on
the stretchers: Anna Petrovna, fat, heavy, phlegmatic, silent; Marie
Ivanovna silent too but with a look now of expectation in her eyes as
though she knew that something was coming for her very shortly;
Trenchard near her, trying to be cheerful, but conscious of the dead
soldier under the tree from whom he seemed unable to remove his eyes.
There was, in the open space near us, a _kipiatilnik_, that is, a
large boiler on wheels in which tea is made. To this the soldiers were
crowding with their tin cans; the cuckoo, far away now, continued his
cry....

At long intervals, out of the forest, a wounded soldier would appear.
He seemed to be always the same figure, sometimes wounded in the head,
sometimes in the leg, sometimes in the stomach, sometimes in the
hand--but always the same, with a look in his eyes of mild protest
because this had happened to him, also a look of dumb confidence that
some one somewhere would make things right for him. He came either to
us or to the Red Cross building across the road, according to his
company. One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his
thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The
others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off
when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on the stretchers,
still with that look of wonder and trust in their eyes.

And how glad we were when there was any work to do! The sun rose high
in the sky, the morning advanced, Semyonov and Andrey Vassilievitch
did not return. For the greater part of the time we did not speak, nor
move. I was conscious of an increasing rage against the battery. I
felt that if it was to cease I might observe, be interested, feel
excitement--as it was, it kept everything from me. It kept everything
from me because it insistently demanded my attention, like a vulgar
garrulous neighbour who persists in his tiresome story. Its perpetual
hammering had soon its physical effect. A sick headache crept upon me,
seized me, held me. I might look at the soldiers, sleeping now like
dead men in the trench, I might look at the Red Cross flag lazily
flapping in the breeze across the road, I might look at the corpse
with the soiled marble feet under the tree, I might look at Trenchard
and Marie Ivanovna silent and unhappy on the stretchers, on Anna
Petrovna comfortably slumbering with an open