the
manoeuvres?

I cannot lift a single pud (I myself only weigh two pud and thirty
pounds), and if I walk three versts, my feet hurt, and my heart beats so
violently that I think it's going to burst my side.

At the manoeuvres I should have to carry as much as fifty pounds'
weight, and perhaps more: a rifle, a cloak, a knapsack with linen,
boots, a uniform, a tent, bread, and onions, and a few other little
things, and should have to walk perhaps thirty to forty versts a day.

But when the day and the hour arrived, and the command was given
"Forward, march!" when the band struck up, and two thousand men set
their feet in motion, something seemed to draw me forward, and I went.
At the beginning I found it hard, I felt weighted to the earth, my left
shoulder hurt me so, I nearly fainted. But afterwards I got very hot, I
began to breathe rapidly and deeply, my eyes were starting out of my
head like two cupping-glasses, and I not only walked, I ran, so as not
to fall behind--and so I ended by marching along with the rest, forty
versts a day.

Only I did not sing on the march like the others. First, because I did
not feel so very cheerful, and second, because I could not breathe
properly, let alone sing.

At times I felt burning hot, but immediately afterwards I would grow
light, and the marching was easy, I seemed to be carried along rather
than to tread the earth, and it appeared to me as though another were
marching in my place, only that my left shoulder ached, and I was hot.

I remember that once it rained a whole night long, it came down like a
deluge, our tents were soaked through, and grew heavy. The mud was
thick. At three o'clock in the morning an alarm was sounded, we were
ordered to fold up our tents and take to the road again. So off we went.

It was dark and slippery. It poured with rain. I was continually
stepping into a puddle, and getting my boot full of water. I shivered
and shook, and my teeth chattered with cold. That is, I was cold one
minute and hot the next. But the marching was no difficulty to me, I
scarcely felt that I was on the march, and thought very little about it.
Indeed, I don't know what I _was_ thinking about, my mind was a blank.

We marched, turned back, and marched again. Then we halted for half an
hour, and turned back again.

And this went on a whole night and a whole day.

Then it turned out that there had been a mistake: it was not we who
ought to have marched, but anothe