Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13 8. CHAPTER VIII (continued)

"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.

"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man, noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a fellow you are for dancing!"

The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw it on the fire.

"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out his feet toward the fire.

"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"

"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it seems," said one sergeant major.

"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.

"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."

"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."

"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can he walk?"

"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.

"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.

"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden resolution turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."