IN AUGUST 1855
Towards the end of August, between Douvanka[46] and Bahtchisaray, through the hot, thick dust of the rocky and hilly highway, an officer’s trap was slowly toiling towards Sevastopol (that peculiar kind of trap you never meet anywhere else, something between a Jewish brítchka, a Russian cart, and a basket).
In the front of the trap, pulling at the reins, squatted an orderly in a nankeen coat and wearing a cap that had once belonged to an officer but was now quite limp: behind, on bundles and bales covered with a soldier’s cloak, sat an infantry officer in a summer cloak. The officer, as far as one could judge while he was sitting, was not tall, but was very broad and massive, not so much across the shoulders as from back to chest. His neck and the back of his head were much
