“Grapeshot!” the senior officer shouted, looking away over the earthwork.

Suddenly something happened; the boy-officer groaned, and whirling round sat down on the ground, like a bird shot on the wing. All seemed strange, indistinct, and darkened before Pierre’s eyes.

One after another the cannon balls came whistling, striking the breastwork, the soldiers, the cannons. Pierre, who had scarcely heard those sounds before, now could hear nothing else. On the right side of the battery, soldiers, with shouts of “hurrah,” were running, not forward, it seemed to Pierre, but back.

A cannon ball struck the very edge of the earthwork, before which Pierre was sitting, and sent the earth flying; a dark, round mass flashed just before his eyes, and at the same instant flew with a thud into something. The militiamen, who had been coming into the battery, ran back.

“All with grapeshot!” shouted the officer.

The sergeant ran up to the officer, and in a frightened whisper (just as at a dinner the butler will sometimes tell the host that there is no more of some wine asked for) said that there were no more charges.

“The scoundrels, what are they about?” shouted the officer, turning to Pierre. The senior officer’s face was red and perspiring, his piercing eyes glittered. “Run to the reserves, bring the ammunition-boxes!” he shouted angrily, avoiding Pierre with his eyes, and addressing the soldier.

“I’ll go,” said Pierre. The officer, making no reply, strode across to the other side.

“Cease firing … Wait!” he shouted.

The soldier who had been commanded to go for the ammunition ran against Pierre.

“Ah, sir, it’s no place for you here,” he said, as he ran away.

Pierre ran after the soldier, avoiding the spot where the boy-officer was sitting.

One cannon ball, a second and a third flew over him, hitting the ground in front, on each side, behind Pierre as he ran down. “Where am I going?” he suddenly wondered, just as he ran up to the green ammunition-boxes. He stopped short in uncertainty whether to go back or forward. Suddenly a fearful shock sent him flying backwards on to the ground. At the same instant a flash of flame dazed his eyes, and a roar, a hiss, and a crash set his ears ringing.

When he recovered his senses, Pierre found himself sitting on the ground leaning on his hands. The ammunition-box, near which he had been, had gone; there were a few charred green boards and rags lying scattered about on the scorched grass. A horse was galloping away with broken fragments of the shafts clattering after it; while another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering a prolonged, piercing scream.