. Nothing but a row of officers strung out at intervals of two hundred yards - is that what you call a defensive line? It was only by the grace of God that we weren't slaughtered like chickens!'

   'Just a minute', Turbin interrupted, his head reeling under the flow of abuse. 'Who was with you at the Tavern?'

   'Huh!' Myshlaevsky gestured angrily. 'You've no idea what it was like! How many of us d'you think there were at the Tavern? For-ty men. Then that scoundrel Colonel Shchetkin drove up and said (here Myshlaevsky twisted his expression in an attempt to imitate the features of the detested Colonel Shchetkin and he began talking in a thin, grating lisp): "Gentlemen, you are the City's last hope. It is your duty to live up to the trust placed in you by the Mother of Russian Cities and if the enemy appears - attack, God is with us! I shall send a detachment to relieve you after six hours. But I beg you to conserve your ammunition . . ." (Myshlaevsky spoke in his ordinary voice again) - and then he and his aide vanished in their car. Dark - it was like being up the devil's arsehole! And the frost - needles all over your face.'

   'But why were you there, for God's sake? Surely Petlyura can't be at Red Tavern?'

   'Christ knows. By morning we were nearly out of our minds. By midnight we were still there, waiting for the relief. Not a sign of them. No relief. For obvious reasons we couldn't light fires, the nearest village was a mile and a half away, the Tavern half a mile. At night you start seeing things-the fields seem to be moving. You think it's the enemy crawling up on you . . . Well, I thought, what shall we do if they really do come? Would I throw down my rifle, I wondered - would I shoot or not? It was a temptation. We stood there, howling like wolves. When you shouted someone along the line would answer. Finally I burrowed in the snow with my rifle-butt and dug myself a hole, sat down and tried not to fall asleep: once you fall asleep in that temperature you're done for. Towards morning I couldn't hold out any longer - I was beginning to doze off. D'you know what saved me? Machine-gun fire. I heard it start up at dawn, about a mile or two away. And, believe it or not, I found I just didn't want to stand up. Then a field-gun started booming away. I got up, feeling as if each leg weighed a ton and I thought: "This is it, Petlyura's turned up." We closed in and shortened the line so that we were near enough to shout to each other, and we decided that if anything happened we would form up into a tight group, shoot our way out and withdraw back into town. If they overran us - too bad, they overran us.