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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 every one knew that whoever would lift his head would be killed on the spot. Lord only knows the odd and horrible thoughts that were passing in these terror-stricken, muddled minds.
Hershel Mak felt very keenly that he was eager to live; that like the rest of these men, he had a father and mother and also his own little desires, remote from this place and sacred to him alone. He was also sorry for "uncle" and for that dying German, who lay in the puddle, and who had been killed, perhaps by a bullet from "uncle's" rifle.
The hours were passing and the unbearable nervous horror grew, and the inner tension, terrible and so taut that it seemed to be ready to snap every second, was beginning to turn into a sort of nightmare, which makes one shiver all over, which dims one's eyes with red mist, which banishes all fear of death and suffering and turns all that is human into an elemental, savage fury.
At the very moment, when the tension reached its highest point and the nightmare was about to pass in a ruthless engagement, Hershel Mak, unable to control his strained nerves any longer began to pray plaintively in the tongue of his forefathers. "Shma Isroel! Shma Isroel!" ... His comrades did not understand him and glanced at him in terror, as at a madman, but from the opposite side another frightened and plaintive voice answered him in Jewish: "A Jew!... A Jew!..."
Hershel Mak's heart fell within him. The mad joy that took hold of him is indescribable. It was undefiled human joy that filled him to the brim, when from the place whence he expected only death and hatred there came familiar human words. Forgetting the deathly peril, he sprang to his knees, threw up his arms and cried out, as if responding to a voice heard in the desert.
"I!... I!..."
A shot crashed; but it was only Mak's cap, that jumped up and landed in the mud puddle. From beyond the stream and the trees a typical head with ears projecting from under the varnished helmet looked straight at him.
"Don't shoot!... Don't shoot!" yelled Hershel Mak in Russian, German and Jewish all at once, waving his hands frantically. And the other Jew, in a long light-grey cloak was also yelling something to his fellow-soldiers. Now not one but about ten pairs of eyes looked at Hershel Mak, with astonishment and sudden joy. A vague, faint hope was seen in these frightened human eyes, which suddenly became simple and sympathetic. Then Hershel Mak and the Jew in the light-grey cloak rushed to the clearing and, splashing in the water, trustingly ran to each other.
They met between the two ranks of still hostile gun-barrels and embraced each other in a fit of unreasoning human gladness.
"Are you a Jew?" asked the grey soldier. They kept looking at each other like two old friends who met where they least expected to find each other.
In the twilight, after the soldiers gathered up their dead and wounded, they went each their own way along the ravine, now blue with the evening fog. Those in the rear kept looking back at the enemy, suspiciously eyeing them, and nervously clutching with their hands the cold muzzles of their guns.
Only Hershel Mak and the Jew in the light-grey cloak walked calmly. Hershel chattered like a monkey, joining now one now another of the soldiers. He was saying something about his joy, about the great mission of Judaism. But no one listened to him, and one of the soldiers said good-naturedly: "Go to the devil, you dirty Jew."
THE END
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"BORZOI" stands for the best in literature in all its branches—drama and fiction, poetry and art. "BORZOI" also stands for unusually pleasing book-making.
BORZOI Books are good books and there is one for every taste worthy of the name. A few are briefly described on the next page. Mr. Knopf will be glad to see that you are notified regularly of new and forthcoming BORZOI Books if you will send him your name and address for that purpose. He will also see that your local dealer is supplied.
ADDRESS THE BORZOI 220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET NEW YORK
THE BORZOI RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS
The following volumes in this admirable series are now ready. Additional works have been arranged for and are in preparation. One or two will be issued each season. The books are attractively bound in cloth, stamped in gold with coloured tops. They are uniform in style but the work of each author is bound in a distinctive colour.
I TARAS BULBA: A Tale of the Cossacks by Nicolay V. Gogol. A great prose romance. Second edition. $1.35
II THE SIGNAL: Presenting for the first time the work of a very important Russian, W.M. Garshin. Third ed. $1.50
III CHELKASH: By Maxim Gorky. A selection of the best of all of Gorky's short stories. Third edition. $1.25
IV THE LITTLE ANGEL: By Leonid Andreyev. The fifth edition, now ready, contains an additional story. $1.35
V THE PRECIPICE: A Novel from the Russian of Ivan Goncharov. A picture of country life in the old leisurely Russia of the first half of the nineteenth century. $1.50
VI A HERO OF OUR TIME: A Novel from the Russian of M.Y. Lermontov. A great romantic story. $1.50
VII THE OLD HOUSE: From the Russian of Feodor Sologub. A novelette and ten striking stories. Second edition. $1.50
VIII THE LITTLE DEMON: A Novel from the Russian of Feodor Sologub. The authorized English version, with a special preface, of this writer's most famous book. $1.50
IX THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN: From the Russian of Vikenty Veressayev. A work (non-fiction) known the world over, which has placed its author in the first rank of Russian writers. It is of great importance to-day to any one who ever has to do in any way with doctors. $1.50
X THE CRUSHED FLOWER: From the Russian of Leonid Andreyev. Three novelettes and some great short stories by this most popular of contemporary Russians. $1.50
XI THE CONFESSIONS OF A LITTLE MAN DURING GREAT DAYS: By Leonid Andreyev. Andreyev's latest book; this tells about Russia in war time. $1.35
XII THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI: An intimate diary, never before published, that this greatest of all the Russians kept from 1895 to 1899. $2.00
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Speaking About Russia—
brings one inevitably to Borzoi Books. Here are listed some which are bound to interest you.
THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. From the Russian of Alexandre Benois, with an introduction by Christian Brinton, and thirty-two full page plates. The only survey in English. An unusually beautiful book. $5.00
MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY. From the Russian of Alexander Kornilov. The only work in English that comes right down to the present day, and the most complete history of modern Russia in any language but Russian. Two volumes with maps, boxed, per set. $5.00
THE SHIELD. Edited by Gorky, Sologub, and Andreyev. Issued in Russia by the Society for the Study of Jewish Life (to which only pure blooded Russians are allowed membership), this book is a remarkable plea for the abrogation of the Jewish disabilities. Russia's best writers, scientists and publicists have contributed to it. Foreword by William English Walling. $1.25
GREAT RUSSIA. By Charles Sarolea, author of "The Anglo-German Problem," etc. A brilliant and sympathetic survey of the country and its people. With maps. $1.25
IDEALS AND REALITIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By P. Kropotkin. Generally considered the best history of Russian literature available in English. Third edition. $2.00
RUSSIA'S GIFT TO THE WORLD. By J.W. Mackail, Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. A concise and informing survey of just what Russia has contributed to the art, science and culture of the world. 50c.
IN THE RUSSIAN RANKS. By John Morse (Englishman.) Ten months fighting in Poland. "The most notable piece of war literature the war has yet produced."—The London Times. $1.50
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE. By William English Walling. A new, revised and cheaper edition of the only book in English that tells the truth about the Russian peasant and explains the recent Revolution. With over twenty hitherto unpublished illustrations. $1.50
All prices are net.
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher 220 West Forty-Second Street NEW YORK
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Typographical errors corrected in text: Page 44: translantic replaced with transatlantic Page 124: Vyacheslav Invanovich Ivanov replaced with Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov Page 128: pecular replaced with peculiar Page 154: Vladimir Serggyevich Solovyov replaced with Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov
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