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Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of. It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished disappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.
The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening their saddle girths.
But why have you been hiding yourself away? "That is to say, you would have seen merchant Likhachev losing a pile of money at play. My word, you would have laughed! A fellow with me named Perependev said: 'Would that Chichikov had been here!
In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it. "Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he, sniffing its nostrils and kissing it. "Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a wagon. "No, ah... Likhachev isn't that your name? Do you know I have only just come back!
"Of course I can." Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon. "I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya. "Some are, and some aren't like us." "Well, and that boy?" "Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage.
Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew nor waited to know anything of all this.
"And here's the commander," said Likhachev. Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya, gave orders to get ready. The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood by the watchman's hut giving final orders.
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