THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF JOSEPH CONRAD. Джозеф Конрад
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white moving far off between the trees. The shirt of his adversary. He stepped out at once between the trunks exposing himself freely, then quick as lightning leaped back. It had been a risky move, but it succeeded in its object. Almost simultaneously with the pop of a shot a small piece of bark chipped off by the bullet stung his ear painfully.
And now General Feraud, with one shot expended, was getting cautious. Peeping round his sheltering tree, General D'Hubert could not see him at all. This ignorance of his adversary's whereabouts carried with it a sense of insecurity. General D'Hubert felt himself exposed on his flanks and rear. Again something white fluttered in his sight. Ha! The enemy was still on his front then. He had feared a turning movement. But, apparently, General Feraud was not thinking of it. General D'Hubert saw him pass without special haste from one tree to another in the straight line of approach. With great firmness of mind General D'Hubert stayed his hand. Too far yet. He knew he was no marksman. His must be a waiting game—to kill.
He sank down to the ground wishing to take advantage of the greater thickness of the trunk. Extended at full length, head on to his enemy, he kept his person completely protected. Exposing himself would not do now because the other was too near by this time. A conviction that Feraud would presently do something rash was like balm to General D'Hubert's soul. But to keep his chin raised off the ground was irksome, and not much use either. He peeped round, exposing a fraction of his head, with dread but really with little risk. His enemy, as a matter of fact, did not expect to see anything of him so low down as that. General D'Hubert caught a fleeting view of General Feraud shifting trees again with deliberate caution. "He despises my shooting," he thought, with that insight into the mind of his antagonist which is of such great help in winning battles. It confirmed him in his tactics of immobility. "Ah! if I only could watch my rear as well as my front!" he thought, longing for the impossible.
It required some fortitude to lay his pistols down. But on a sudden impulse General D'Hubert did this very gently—one on each side. He had been always looked upon as a bit of a dandy, because he used to shave and put on a clean shirt on the days of battle. As a matter of fact he had been always very careful of his personal appearance. In a man of nearly forty, in love with a young and charming girl, this praiseworthy self-respect may run to such little weaknesses as, for instance, being provided with an elegant leather folding case containing a small ivory comb and fitted with a piece of looking-glass on the outside. General D'Hubert, his hands being free, felt in his breeches pockets for that implement of innocent vanity, excusable in the possessor of long silky moustaches. He drew it out, and then, with the utmost coolness and promptitude, turned himself over on his back. In this new attitude, his head raised a little, holding the looking-glass in one hand just clear of his tree, he squinted into it with one eye while the other kept a direct watch on the rear of his position. Thus was proved Napoleon's saying, that for a French soldier the word impossible does not exist. He had the right tree nearly filling the field of his little mirror.
"If he moves from there," he said to himself exultingly, "I am bound to see his legs. And in any case he can't come upon me unawares."
And sure enough he saw the boots of General Feraud flash in and out, eclipsing for an instant everything else reflected in the little mirror. He shifted its position accordingly. But having to form his judgment of the change from that indirect view, he did not realise that his own feet and a portion of his legs were now in plain and startling view of General Feraud.
General Feraud had been getting gradually impressed by the amazing closeness with which his enemy had been keeping cover. He had spotted the right tree with bloodthirsty precision. He was absolutely certain of it. And yet he had not been able to sight as much as the tip of an ear. As he had been looking for it at the level of about five feet ten inches it was no great wonder—but it seemed very wonderful to General Feraud.
The first view of these feet and legs determined a rush of blood to his head. He literally staggered behind his tree, and had to steady himself with his hand. The other was lying on the ground—on the ground! Perfectly still, too! Exposed! What did it mean?... The notion that he had knocked his adversary over at the first shot then entered General Feraud's head. Once there, it grew with every second of attentive gazing, overshadowing every other supposition—irresistible—triumphant—ferocious.
"What an ass I was to think I could have missed him!" he said to himself. "He was exposed en plein—the fool—for quite a couple of seconds."
And the general gazed at the motionless limbs, the last vestiges of surprise fading before an unbounded admiration of his skill.
"Turned up his toes! By the god of war that was a shot!" he continued mentally. "Got it through the head just where I aimed, staggered behind that tree, rolled over on his back and died."
And he stared. He stared, forgetting to move, almost awed, almost sorry. But for nothing in the world would he have had it undone. Such a shot! Such a shot! Rolled over on his back, and died!
For it was this helpless position, lying on the back, that shouted its sinister evidence at General Feraud. He could not possibly imagine that it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It was inconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was no possibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said that General D'Hubert's turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraud expanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but from what he felt to be an excessive scrupulousness, refrained for a while.
"I will just go and see first whether he breathes yet," he mumbled to himself, stepping out from behind his tree. This was immediately perceived by the resourceful General D'Hubert. He concluded it to be another shift. When he lost the boots out of the field of the mirror, he became uneasy. General Feraud had only stepped a little out of the line, but his adversary could not possibly have supposed him walking up with perfect unconcern. General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder where the other had dodged to, was come upon so suddenly that the first warning he had of his danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of his enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard a footfall on the soft ground between the trees!
It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up instinctively, leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of most people (unless totally paralysed by discomfiture) would have been to stoop—exposing themselves to the risk of being shot down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing, whether in reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not affected by the customary mode of thought. Years ago, in his young days, Armand D'Hubert, the reflective promising officer, had emitted the opinion that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of a mistake." This idea afterward restated, defended, developed in many discussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain, became a part of his mental individuality. And whether it had gone so inconceivably deep as to affect the dictates of his instinct, or simply because, as he himself declared, he was "too scared to remember the confounded pistols," the fact is that General D'Hubert never attempted to stoop for them. Instead of going back on his mistake, he seized the rough trunk with both hands and swung himself behind it with such impetuosity that going right round in the very flash and report of a pistol shot, he reappeared on the other side of the tree face to face with General Feraud, who, completely unstrung by such a show of agility on the part of a dead man, was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke hung before his face which had an extraordinary aspect as if the lower jaw had come unhinged.
"Not missed!" he croaked hoarsely from the depths of a dry throat.
This sinister sound loosened the spell which had fallen on General D'Hubert's senses.
"Yes, missed—a bout portant" he heard himself saying exultingly almost before he had recovered the full command of his faculties. The revulsion of feeling was accompanied by a gust of homicidal fury resuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of a lifetime. For years General D'Hubert had been exasperated and humiliated by an atrocious absurdity imposed upon him by that man's savage caprice. Besides, General D'Hubert had been in this last instance too unwilling to confront death for the reaction of his anguish not to take the shape of a desire to kill.
"And I have my two shots to fire yet," he added