It dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes.

The wounds were horrible.

No man seemed to come into the room with an unmangled body.

The smell rose higher and higher, the bloody rags lay about the kitchen floor, torn arms, smashed legs, heads with gaping wounds, the pitiful crying and praying, the shrill voices of the delirious, Nikitin, his arms steeped in blood to the elbows, probing, cutting, digging, I myself bandaging until I did not know what my hands were doing....

Then suddenly the battle coming right back to us again, overhead now as it seemed; the cannon shaking three silly staring china dogs on the kitchen dresser, the rifle fire clattering like tumbling crockery about the walls of the cottage--and through it all the white youth, crouched like a ghost on the stove, watching without pause....
"Ah, no, your Honour....