Lukich gives elaborate instructions for the night's scouting. Pavel Pavlovich, whose turn it is to go, is a splendidly built man with a great head and big brown eyes: "an ideal fighting man," I am told. He is down with a very bad chill, and reports himself quite unfit. Lukich says that he always has to send out sick scouts. "Don't laugh," says Pavel Pavlovich; "I can hardly keep on my legs." However, without further words he gets ready for his night's job. Half-an-hour later he appears in a long white dressing-gown which hangs carelessly over his huge figure, and with him are thirty picked men--for there are always plenty of volunteers for this work--drawn from different companies. All are clad in white, and when first I stumbled on them in the darkness, though I knew they were there, I took them for a row of posts. Lukich made them a little speech, telling them that some one from their English allies had come to see them and that he hoped they would do well. Their job was to crawl some one thousand yards, to overhear the conversation in the enemy's trenches and judge of the numbers there, to catch a sentry if possible, to cut through some of the wire entanglements, and, above all, to throw some hand-grenades into the Austrian lines. Each man had a definite task; the bomb-throwers were trained men, and several carried huge scissors for cutting wire. As the Austrians sometimes pass an electric current through the wires, these scissors often have wooden handles. The men passed at once into the darkness, and we waited on the line of our trenches. Nothing happened for some time. Various figures appeared from the neutral ground: sentries and patrols, who gave the impression that all this ground was Russian. At last, at the request of a soldier, we took cover (the soldiers are always trying to put their officers in greater safety than themselves), and directly afterwards there was a big thud, and flash went the first bomb. The next moment the Austrians were shooting wildly in all directions; but very soon after the firing had died down the second bomb went up, followed by another excited discharge from the enemy. This showed that our scouts had stayed close outside the Austrian lines; and among those around us, too, there was a sort of buoyant audacity. "They'll come away now?" I asked. "Oh no; they've several more bombs with them;" and soon after the calm of night had returned up went No. 3. We waited till six bombs had been lodged in this way, and each time there was the same nervous discharge of musketry, bullets flying everywhere, but no one being hit.