One of the Six Hundred: A Novel

the woods between Belbeck and Khutor-Mackenzie, where, as all the world knows, a sharp engagement took place with them soon after, and where they were driven back with the loss of baggage and ammunition for more than twenty-five thousand men. Among the former were a great quantity of watches, jewellery, and gay hussar jackets, in which the artillery and Highlanders masqueraded for a time. After making his report to Lord Raglan and General Airey, Travers rode to Colonel Beverley, who occupied a Tartar's cottage near the river side. There he found several of ours, including Fred Wilford, old M'Goldrick, the paymaster, and Studhome, making a hearty repast on some well-cooked wild boar, with caviare, biscuits, and plenty of champagne, which had been found in the broken-down carriage of General Kiriakoff, whose crest and initials were painted on the lid of his canteen, which contained a tiny dinner service for four, but all of Dresden china. "Gentlemen," exclaimed Beverley, starting to his feet, as Travers, Berkeley, and young Scarlett entered, "I am sorry to see you return alone. Where is our friend Norcliff?" "Gone to the--aw--devil by the down train, probably," muttered Berkeley, whose teeth chattered as he drained a glass of champagne. "He has fallen into the enemy's hands," said Captain Travers; "a rescue was impossible, as we knew not the extent of the ambush into which we fell. I saw him riding after us, with Berkeley----" "Aw--yes, colonel--we were covering the rear of the squadron, in fact," interrupted that personage. "Suddenly there was heard a single shot, and on looking back, I saw Berkeley galloping on alone----" "Alone!" "And poor Norcliff in the hands of the Russians, who were cutting him to pieces apparently." "His horse had been shot under him?" said the colonel. "Yes--but--aw--not by the Russians," said Berkeley. "By whom, then?" asked the colonel, sharply. "By himself," was the unhesitating response. "Himself?" "Absurd!" "Impossible!" exclaimed his hearers, in succession. "It is neither absurd nor impossible. The horse was killed by a pistol-shot, and he fell into the power of the Russians." "Do you mean to say," asked the colonel, slowly, after a very ominous and unpleasant pause, during which Berkeley's paleness increased, and he tugged his moustache with his effeminate, girlish-like fingers, feeling evidently the loss of a toothpick, with which, like other fops, he soothed his leisure moments; "do you mean to say that this event was not accident, but design?" "Can't tell, 'pon my life--aw--haw--would rather not say anything about it--it was doocid odd, anyway," drawled Berkeley, applying himself to the champagne again. "Mr. Berkeley, I must insist upon your explaining." "Can't say, I repeat--his pistol exploded--the bullet went through his horse's head----" "Killing it on the spot?" "Of course--aw--of course." "What could be his reason----" "Perhaps he thought--aw--it safer work to fall quietly into the hands of the Russians thus than to ride back under their fusilade." "Are you aware, Mr. Berkeley," said the colonel, with increasing gravity, while all present exchanged some very peculiar glances, "that this is tantamount to branding our friend with cowardice?" "I shall--aw--aw--answer that question, Colonel Beverley, when the time comes, and he returns," replied Berkeley; "but I don't think those Russian riflemen were in the mood to show much mercy or quarter to-day." "And Norcliff was not such a muff as to surrender quietly," said M'Goldrick. "You will answer the colonel's question when Norcliff returns say you?" exclaimed Studhome, starting forward, pale with passion; "answer it you shall, and now, to me!" "Studhome!" said the colonel, interposing angrily, "this is some mistake--some wretched misconception. We all know that Captain Norcliff was incapable of committing the act you, Mr. Berkeley, impute to him." "I have seen him lead his troop under fire ere now," growled Studhome; "and lead it when Mr. Berkeley might have thought it unpleasant work to follow him." "Aw--haw--well, disprove it if you can," said Berkeley, with one of his old insufferable smiles, as he stuck his glass in his eye, and lounged out of the cottage, near which my poor fellow, Willie Pitblado, was lingering to pick up some certain information about me from the colonel's servants. "Eh, me! this will be sair news for the folk at Calderwood Glen," he sighed, as he and Lanty O'Regan turned away together. As Berkeley and I had been in the rear, none save myself could be cognisant of his foul act of treachery. He never doubted that I had been bayoneted by the Russians, and, confident that I should never return, he thus crowned his villany by attempting to destroy my honour. Ere long we shall see what this availed him. *CHAPTER XLIV.* Yes, thou art gone, sweet friend, my own, We miss thee every day, And I, yet more than all, alone, Can only weep and pray. Pray to be rendered meet for heaven, And agonize in prayer, That if we meet no more below, Our meeting may be there. The first halting-place of my escort was in a wood of wild pear trees, among some of those ancient burial mounds or green tumuli which stud all the Crimea, but more particularly the peninsula of Kertch, where one still marks the tomb of Mithridates. In that solitude we heard only the voices of the birds, the lark, the tomtit, and the wren, as they twittered among the caper bushes. The Cossacks hobbled their horses, and proceeded to seat themselves on the green sward that covered the bones of the classic warriors of other times. In their havresacks they had some black bread and salt, with a flask of quass. These they shared freely with me; and with such coarse fare I was forced to be content. The corporal had a Russian poodle, red-eyed, fox-headed, and white as snow, which he pretentiously named Olga, after the Grand Duchess, and with this cur, to which he was much attached, he freely shared his repast, and that piece of felt which serves the Cossack alike for cloak, tent, and bed. I could not be prevailed upon to join them in partaking of some wild horseradish, which Corporal Pugacheff discovered, and unearthed with his sabre, exhibiting a root as thick as his arm. After they had smoked for nearly an hour, during which I was left to my own unpleasant reflections, the march was once more resumed--leisurely, because I was afoot--towards the east, as the sun informed me, and that was all I could learn about it. The uniforms of these Cossacks were richer than any I had yet seen. Each had a blue jacket, edged with yellow lace, hooked over a scarlet silk vest; loose blue trousers, fastened high above the waist; busbies of black shining wool, terminating in a crimson sack, with a scarlet sash, cartridge-box, and sabre, completed their costume. Like ourselves, they rode with the lance slung, and resting on the right toe. That night we halted at a Tartar village. The inhabitants of the cottage to which we proceeded were somewhat over-awed by the three Cossacks--a race at all times rather unscrupulous--but were disposed to view me with a commiseration that made me begin to conceive hopes of escape. Escorted by Corporal Pugacheff and his poodle, I was conducted to the humble apartment used by the males of the family. A wooden basin, filled with clear water, and a napkin, were presented to me by the master of the house--a venerable Tartar of the old nomadic race--that I might lave my face and hands; a pipe of the cherrywood tree, which grows in the mountains, was then given me to smoke, while a repast--not of horseflesh, happily--but of goat's milk, poached eggs, and cheese, was prepared; and these we ate with our fingers, seated on mats on the earthen floor, around the little stool on which the supper-tray was placed, for, in their household and habits, the poor Tartars are nearly as primitive as their forefathers were in the days of the valiant Batu Khan, the destroyer of Moscow. A dish of sour milk and water--the veritable yaourt of the Osmanlis--was passed round; the master of the house returned thanks without uncovering his shaven head, the Cossacks resumed their pipes, the repast was over, and the day was closing in. The hope of escape was growing stronger in my heart; but the corporal crushed it, as if he had divined my thoughts, by quietly securing my right hand to his left, with the small steel bridle of his horse, before we lay down to take our repose, and the escort, with their pistols loaded, slept side by side across the only doorway. In addition to all these precautions, if I ventured to move, almost to wink, the poodle, Olga, was on the alert, with cocked ears and bristling hair, barking furiously. How I hated that dog! Though weary in mind and body, I could not sleep, even if the deep bass snoring that issued from the snub noses of my three keepers would have permitted me to doze. Berkeley's infamous treachery made my heart glow like a furnace! How deeply I repented now that, instead of succouring and remounting him, I had not left him, as his prior conduct deserved, to the chances of war and fate, and to take the place now occupied by me! How long might I be a prisoner! Of this war with the greatest empire in the world none could foresee or calculate the end. Years, perhaps, might pass, and find me still a captive. By the troops of General Canrobert, some men had been discovered who had been lost by the French on their fatal retreat from Moscow in 1813, and who had, from youth to age, been slaves in the Tartar fortresses or the Siberian mines. My blood ran cold with this idea. Oh, if such were to be my fate! If Berkeley returned to England after all, and married Louisa! And then, if this wretched Brassy Wheedleton succeeded in marrying Cora, while I was industriously quarrying for copper and assafoetida in the vicinity of that pleasant city, Tobolsk by name! But what was Cora to me? She was my cousin, and, of course, my cousin must not throw herself away and make an unequal marriage. "There are men in this world," says a female writer, "who are quite capable of being in love with two women at once." This was not at all my case; but I fear that Louisa's cold and cutting neglect was causing me to think more than I used to do of Cora Calderwood, who I knew loved me well, and I remembered the strange episode of the spell, or mesmeric riddle, wrought by the _hakim_ Abd-el-Rasig, the surgeon of the 10th Egyptian Infantry. But to be a prisoner--the prisoner of these filthy wretches--and to be conveyed by them, like a helpless Polish exile, I knew not whither! If in boyhood, and even in infancy, I had ever a horror of study and restraint; if in later years, even regimental discipline sometimes galled me by its monotonous trammels, the reader may imagine how I writhed, how my soul revolted, at the idea of being a Russian captive, and how I longed for vengeance on Berkeley. I swore to horsewhip him in front of the line, and pistol him after! There was no extravagant length in punishment to which my fancy did not resort and my fury indulge in. No MacGregor with the dirk at his lips, swearing vengeance for Alaster of Glenstrae; no Corsican De Franchi, vowing a dreadful _vendetta_ on his foe, could harbour feelings more bitter than I did in those moments of futile anger in that poor Tartar cottage. I talked to myself wrathfully and incoherently. I dozed at last; but my slumber was haunted by dreams and nightmares, like those of a fevered patient. I saw Louisa Loftus, with her pale and