and that the soldiers had heard it too; for now round a fire a group of
them were listening to the song of one of their comrades, a man from the
south, who was singing of the quiet waters of the Don, and of a Cossack
who had come back to his native land after many days and found his true
love wedded to another. I felt it was the flute of Chang Liang which had
prompted the southerner to sing, and without doubt the men saw before
them the great moon shining over the broad village street in the dark
July and August nights, and heard the noise of dancing and song and the
cheerful rhythmic accompaniment of the concertina. Or (if they came from
the south) they saw the smiling thatched farms, whitewashed, or painted
in light green distemper, with vines growing on their walls; or again,
they felt the smell of the beanfields in June, and saw in their minds'
eye the panorama of the melting snows, when at a fairy touch the long
winter is defeated, the meadows are flooded, and the trees seem to float
about in the shining water like shapes invoked by a wizard. They saw
these things and yearned towards them with all their hearts, here in
this uncouth country where they were to fight a strange people for some
unaccountable reason. But Chang Liang had played his flute to them in
vain. It was in vain that he had tried to lure them back to their homes,
and in vain that he had melted their hearts with the memories of their
childhood. For the battle began at dawn the next morning, and when the
enemy attacked they found an army there to meet them; and the battle
lasted for two days on this very spot; and many of the men to whom Chang
Liang had brought back through his flute the sights and the sounds of
their childhood, were fated never to hear again those familiar sounds,
nor to see the land and the faces which they loved.