Denis never knew what happened to himself. He remembered his captain being bayoneted through the folds of his cloak, and cutting down two Russians at almost one stroke of his sword; he remembered longing for a sword of his own, as his piece was wrenched from his grasp by a dead weight on the bayonet. Yellow faces hemmed him in, their little eyes dilating with rage and malice; he remembered striking one of them with all his might, seeing the man drop, being in the act of striking another.... His fists were still doubled when he opened his eyes hours later on the moonlit battle-field. A great weight lay across his legs, so stiffly that Denis thought the dead man a log until his hand came in contact with damp clothing. His own throat and mouth were full of something hard and horrible. His moustache and beard were clotted with the same substance. One side of his face felt numb and swollen; but his sight was uninjured, and the pain not worse than bad neuralgia. He got upon his hands and knees and looked about him. The day's haze had vanished with the smoke of battle; it was a still and clear night, brilliantly lighted by the moon. The Tchernaya lay like a tube of quicksilver along the peaceful plain whereon Denis had gazed before the end; he could see a light in the white farmhouse. The heights of Inkerman twinkled all over with scattered weapons, and all over were mounds more like graves than bodies waiting for the grave. The Sandbag Battery rose sharply against the moonlit sky. Denis was not near enough to see the fearful carnage there, but he remembered what it had been quite early in the day, and he had only to listen to hear the groaning of the wounded who had yet to be disentangled from the dead in the shadow of those ill-starred parapets. The night was so still that a groan, nay, a dying gasp, could be heard even further than sight could penetrate through the rays of that glorious moon; and yet it was so light that the glimmer of lanterns round about the fatal battery was not at first apparent to the eye. When Denis saw the lanterns, he got up and tried to stagger toward them, but collapsed at once, and had to lie where he fell until they came to him. "Come on, boys, I see a Rooshian!" called Linesman, holding his lantern level with his shako. "Wait a bit, here's one of our chaps," replied a voice that Denis knew. "S' help me if it ain't our old sergeant. I'd know him by his ginger nob a mile off! And him in such a stew to get at 'em this morning! It's more'n ever I was, though I'd as lief be on that job as this ... ugh!" Denis soon attracted their attention, and in a few more moments his original rear-rank man was stooping over him. "Why, you're stuck through the face!" he cried, screwing up his own behind the lantern. "But the glue seems set, and don't you go for to move and melt it. There's a wounded officer wants to see you." Denis whispered something inarticulate. It was his first attempt to speak.