The regiment was continually changing its pace

The regiment was continually changing its pace, and the horses began to sweat. In the distance appeared the huts of a little village lying under a steep slope. On the other side of the village was a wood, its green the tops piercing the azure dome of the sky. From beyond the wood came the sound of gunfire, mingled with the frequent rattle of rifle shots. The horses pricked up their ears. The smoke of bursting shrapnel hovered in the sky a long way off; the rifle-fire came from the right of the company.
Gregor listened tensely to every sound his nerves tautened into little bundles of sensation. Zikov fidgeted in his saddle talking incessantly:
‘Gregor, those shots sound just like boys rattling sticks along railings, don’t they? ‘he remarked.
‘Shut up, magpie!’
The company entered the village. Russians soldiers were overrunning the yards. The inhabitants of the huts were packing their belongings to flee, their faces impressed with alarm and confusion. As Gregor passed he noticed that soldiers were firing the roof of a shed but its owner, a tall grey haired White Russian crashed by his sudden misfortune, went past them without paying the slightest attention. Gregor saw the man’s family loading a cart with red covered pillows and ramshackle furniture, and the man himself was carefully carrying a broken wheel rim which it was of not value to anybody, and had probably lain in the yard for years. Gregor was amazed at the stupidity of the women, who were pilling the carts with painted pots and ikons and were leaving necessary and valuable articles behind in the huts. Down the street the feathers from an feather bed blew like a miniature snowstorm
From the book ‘And quiet Flows the Don’ by Mikhail Sholokhov, translated by Stephen Garry