One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
above and below almost drowned the welcome notes of the warning trumpet,
as it blew "boot and saddle"--a sound we had not heard since the day we
marched from Maidstone.
"Gentlemen, welcome to Gallipoli!" said the staff officer, as he
clattered into the cabin, with his steel scabbard and spurs, and
proceeded forthwith to regale himself with a long glass of Seltzer,
dashed with brandy, for the morning breeze was chilly as it swept across
the Hellespont.
"It's a queer-looking place, this Gallipoli," said Beverley.
"And a queer-looking place you'll find it, colonel," added the
aide-de-camp, as we gathered round him. "You will be more given to
airing your clothes than your classics, and won't be much enchanted with
your quarters in Roumania. In lack of space and cleanliness, and in the
liberal allowance of gnats and fleas, they are all up to Turkish
regulation."
"Any society here?" asked Jocelyn, with his little affected lisp, as he
caressed his incipient moustache.
The aide burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then replied--
"Plenty, and of the most varied and original character."
"And how about the ladies?"
"Is it true that the Turks still regulate their establishments of
womenkind according to the Koran?" asked the paymaster, with a grin on
his long, thin Scotch face.
"Upon the system of the 4th Veteran Battalion rather," replied the
aide-de-camp.
"Ah, and that----"
"Gave a wife to every private, and three to the adjutant."
"Good Lord deliver us!" exclaimed Studhome, as he doubled his dose of
cognac and Seltzer.
"Is it a good country for hunting hereabouts?" asked Sir Harry Scarlett.
"Can't say much for that," replied our visitor, shrugging his shoulders.
"Besides, the Earl of Lucan will probably cut out other work for you
than riding across country; but for sportsmen there are plenty of hares,
partridges, and wild duck to keep one's hand in till we see the
Russians, which I hope will not be long, for we are already all bored
and sick to death of Gallipoli."
"How long have you been here?" asked Beverley.
"A month, colonel. Another troop has just been signalled off the mouth
of the Dardanelles."
"The _Ganges_, with more of ours, perhaps.
"Likely enough; but they come in here every hour."
"Any word yet of moving to the front--of taking the field?" asked
Beverley.
"No, nothing seems decided on yet. There are a thousand idle rumours;
but we are all in the dark as to the future--French and British alike."
"A deuced bore!" exclaimed two or three together.
"Ah, you'll find it when you have been a month or so under canvas at
Gallipoli. And now, Colonel Beverley, I need not suggest to so
experienced a cavalry officer how the horses are to be got on shore, but
for the time shall take my leave. Some of the cavalry divisional staff
have established a kind of clubhouse in a deserted khan, opposite the
old palace of the Bashaw, or Capudan Pacha, where we shall be glad to
see you, till we can make other arrangements; and so adieu. Should you
look us up, ask for Captain Bolton, of the 1st Dragoon Guards."
In another minute the officer--a purpose-like fellow, in a well-worn
blue surtout, his steel scabbard and spurs already rusted--was down the
ship's side, and being rowed ashore by eight marines in a man-of-war
boat.
We experienced some difficulties in getting our horses slung up and
landed, as, to plunge them into the sea, after being so long in the
close and confined atmosphere of the hold, was not advisable; and after
they were all disembarked (with the assistance of some merry and singing
Zouaves of the 2nd Regiment, while a horde of lazy Turks of the Hadjee
Mehmet's corps looked idly on), we had to give them a cooling regimen
and gentle exercise, as the best means of restoring them to their wonted
vigour, and preparing them for the strife and service that were to come.
The vessel that was reported as being in sight, proved really to be the
_Ganges_. We were at last on foreign soil, and Studhome, by a word and
a glance, reminded me that he had not forgotten what was to take place
between me and Berkeley; but immediately after landing, that personage
was reported on the doctor's list, so we had to let the matter lie over
for a time. Troop after troop of ours arrived; and gradually Colonel
Beverley had again the whole regiment under his kindly and skilful
command.
Studhome and I, who had frequently chummed together, when in India, had
the good luck to be quartered in the quiet and snug house of Demetrius
Steriopoli, the well-known and industrious miller, at a short distance
from the town. Eighteen thousand British troops were now in Gallipoli,
which, from being a quiet little den of Oriental dirt and Oriental
indolence, Moslem filth and fatuity, became instinct with European life
and bustle, by the presence of the soldiers of the allied armies. Those
who landed with no other ideas of the Orient than such as were inspired
by the "Arabian Nights," and Byron's poetry, were somewhat disappointed
on beholding the dingy rows of queer and quaint wooden, rickety and
dilapidated booths which composed the streets of this ancient Greek
episcopal city of Gallipoli.
Narrow, dirty, and tortuous, they were scattered without order on the
slope of a round stony hill; the thoroughfares were made of large round
pebbles, from which the foot slipped ever and anon into the mud, or
those stagnant pools whence the hordes of lean and houseless
dogs--houseless, because declared unclean by the Prophet--slaked their
thirst in the sunshine. Over these brown, discoloured hovels rose the
tall white minarets of a few crumbling mosques, with cone-shaped roofs
and open galleries, where the muezzin's shrill voice summons the
faithful to prayer. A leaden-covered dome of the great bazaar, and the
old square fortress of Badjazet I., with a number of windmills on every
available eminence, were the most prominent features of the view, which
could never have been enchanting, even in its most palmy days--even when
the vaults of Justinian were teeming with wine and oil; for the Emperor
John Palaeologus consoled himself for the capture of Gallipoli by the
Turks with saying, "I have only lost a jar of wine and a nasty sty for
hogs."
But now its muddy streets of hovels were swarming with redcoats: the
Scottish bagpipe, the long Zouave trumpet, and the British bugle-horn,
rang there for parade and drill at every hour--even those when the
followers of the Prophet bent their swarthy foreheads on the mosaic
pavement of their mosques; and daily we, the light troops of the cavalry
division, were exercised by squadrons, regiments, and brigades, near
those green and grassy tumuli which lie on the southern side of the
city, and cover the remains of the ancient kings of Thrace. Now the
waters of the Hellespont were literally alive with war vessels and
transports, belonging to all the allied powers. They were of every
size, under sail or steam; and amid them, with white pinions outspread,
the swift Greek polaccas sped up or down the strait, which always
presented a lively and stirring scene, with the hills of Asia Minor,
toned down by distance, seeming faint and blue, and far away. Parade
over, it often amused me to watch the varied groups which gathered about
the doors of the bazaar, the wine and coffee-houses. There were the
grave Armenian of Turcomania, with his black fur cap, and long, flowing
robe; the black-eyed Greek, in scarlet tarboosh and ample blue breeches;
the dirty, hawk-visaged Jew, attired like a stage Shylock, waiting for
his pound of flesh; the kilted Highlander, in the "garb of old Gaul;"
the smart Irish rifleman; the well-fed English guardsman, _blase_,
sleek, and fresh from London; the half savage-like Zouave, in his short
bluejacket and scarlet knickerbockers; the bronzed Chasseur d'Afrique;
the rollicking British man-o'-war's man, in his guernsey shirt and wide
blue collar; the half-naked Nubian slave; the pretty French vivandiere,
in her short skirt and clocked stockings, looking like Jenny Lind in
"The Daughter of the Regiment," only twice as piquante and saucy; even a
Sister of Charity, sombre, pale, and placid, would appear at times,
crossing herself as she passed a howling dervish, when seeking milk or
wine for the sick; and amid all these varied costumes and nationalities
were to be seen such heedless fellows as young Rakeleigh, Jocelyn,
Scarlett, Wilford, and Berkeley, of ours, in wideawake hats, all-round
collars, with Tweed shooting suits and flyaway whiskers, hands in
pockets, and cheroot in mouth, as they quizzed and "chaffed" the great
solemn Turk of the old school, with his vast green turban and silver
beard, which steel had never profaned, or drank pale ale with his son of
the new school, in the military fez and frogged surtout, with varnished
boots and shaven chin, who, in his double capacity of a true believer
and a mulazim (or subaltern of Hadjee Mehmet's regiment), deemed himself
at full liberty to use his whip without mercy among the camel-drivers
and lazy galiondjis (or boatmen), eliciting shrieks, yells, and curses,
which Berkeley, in his languid drawl, considered to be "aw--doocid good
fun."
Many of those smart youths of ours, and other fast Oxford men, had their
constitutional and national conceit somewhat taken out of them before
the war was ended.
"There is nothing more disgusting," says a distinguished writer, with
pardonable severity, "or more intolerable, than a young Englishman
sallying forth into the world, full of his own ignorance and
John-Bullism, judging of mankind by his own petty, provincial, and
narrow notions of fitness and propriety--a mighty observer of effects
and disregarder of causes, and traversing continent and ocean, at once
blinded and shackled by the bigotry and prejudices of a limited and
imbecile intellect."
Much of this was the secret spring of our Indian mutiny, and is the
cause that we are hated and shunned on the Continent. There are, of
course, exceptions, for in the East I have seen local prejudices so far
respected that we formed an escort when the British colours of the Sepoy
infantry were marched into the _Ganges_, to consecrate them in the eyes
of the Bengalese--the same pampered ruffians who slaughtered our women
and children at Cawnpore and Delhi.
We looked in vain for pretty women, and the reader may be assured that
some of our researches were of the most elaborate description. Not a
trace of the boasted Grecian beauty was to be found in those
oddly-dressed females, whose costume seemed a mere oval bale of clothing
(the feridjee), surmounted by a white linen veil, and ending in boots of
yellow leather, as they flitted like fat ghosts about the public wells,
or the gates of the great bazaar. All were, indeed, plain even to
ugliness, save in one instance--pretty little Magdhalini, the daughter
of the miller, Steriopoli. I remember a charming vivandiere, who
belonged to the 2nd Zouaves, for I saw her frequently under
circumstances that could never be forgotten--in fact, under fire, at the
head of the regiment. She was a smart little Parisienne, possessed of
great beauty, with eyes that sparkled like the diamonds in her ears.
She wore a pretty blue Zouave jacket, braided with red, over a pretty
chemisette, and had her black hair smoothly braided under a scarlet
kepi, which bore the regimental number. The first time I saw Sophie she
was simply maintaining a flirtation with one of the corps, to whom she
gave a mouthful of brandy from her barrel, as he stood on sentry under
my window, and their banter rather interfered with the composition of a
letter which I was writing to my cousin Cora.
"Ah, Mademoiselle Sophie," said the Zouave, in his most dulcet tone,