One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
lovely features distorted by fear, her black hair floating all
dishevelled about her white shoulders. She was clinging to the verge of
a lofty rock, towards which an angry tide was advancing, while I,
chained, withheld by some mysterious power, was unable to succour or to
save her. My voice was gone, and my agonies were unbelieved, as she
only beheld them with proud smiles of scorn and derision.
The scene changed. Now she had married, or was about to marry the
Marquis of Slubber, believing me dead--that I had perished in the East.
I heard her say so, distinctly and tearlessly, with a calm sympathetic
smile, which my Lady Chillingham, with an impatient motion of her fan
rebuked. Still I was deprived of all power of volition, and a spell tied
up my utterance, till Berkeley--I saw him to the life, in his lancer
uniform, hovering about her, to the evident annoyance of the senile
marquis--told her, in his drawling lisp, that he had seen me killed, and
she quite believed him. Then a painful cry escaped me, and I awoke. I
had other dreams, and these were, perhaps, the worst of all. I was
free! I had exposed and punished Berkeley. I was again among my
friends; handsome Beverley, Travers, bluff Jack Studhome, Fred Wilford,
and the others were around me. The lancers were on parade, I heard the
neighing of the chargers; and saw the long line of glittering lances,
the plumes and banperoles waving in the sunshine; I heard the music of
our band; we were laughing, talking, smoking; we were in the mess or
billiard-room, and I could hear the bells of Canterbury ringing in the
cathedral towers.
At other times I was in Calderwood Glen, under the old, old trees that
had echoed to the hunting-horn of many a kingly Stuart; or I was on the
heather muirs, gun in hand, with old Sir Nigel, knocking over the
whirring partridges and the golden pheasants, the plash of the mountain
burn and the hum of the mountain bee coming together on the balmy
breeze, as I trod the green Lomond side, and saw the grassy glens of
Fife, the blue Forth, and many a village spire among the woodlands far
away.
Then to waken and find myself chained to the Cossack corporal, in that
loathly Russian den, in the wilds of Crim Tartary, was a disappointment
cruel and bitter!
The rising sun saw us once more on the road; but for what place I was
still ignorant. Before we started Corporal Pugacheff released my hand,
but pointed significantly to his pistols.
On this day, as we proceeded eastward, there rose in the distance on our
right the mountain of the Tents, the highest in the Crimea (the Tchatir
Dagh, a mass of red marble), so named from its resemblance to the
dwellings of the Nogai Tartars. Five thousand feet it towered above the
Euxine, with its summit crimsoned in the morning sun.
Through a defile, named Demir-Kapon (or the Iron Gate), we entered the
valley of the Angar, a tributary of the Salghir (which flows into the
Putrid Sea); and here, from the slopes of the mountain, the scenes we
saw were full of rural loveliness--picturesque Tartar villages, laden
orchards and blushing vineyards, and flocks and herds without end;
everywhere softness blending with sublimity. I noted every foot of the
way well, as I had but one thought--escape.
I remember that near the Tartar town of Sivritash, which lies twenty
miles north-east of Sebastopol, we passed a body of Russian recruits for
various regiments, all hastening to get into the latter place before the
Allies could invest it.
These recruits were escorted by a squadron of the hussars of the
Princess Maria Paulowna (sister of the Emperor). They were certainly
gorgeously-equipped and accoutred troopers, mounted on fine Arab horses;
but my admiration for them was not increased by a blow which one of them
dealt me, in mere wantonness, with the flat of his sabre, as I trudged
past wearily and afoot: but this insult honest Pugacheff resented by
laying his lance heavily across the shoulders of the hussar.
Many questions were asked of him by the officers of these troops, who
altogether mustered about five thousand men; and from the frequency with
which the name Kourouk occurred in his replies, as well as the direction
in which we were travelling, I surmised that we were proceeding to the
fortress at that place.
In this conjecture I was right, for on the evening of the third day
after my capture, I found myself a prisoner in the secluded Russian fort
or outpost of Kourouk, which lies on the northern slope of the mountain
of Karaba Yaila, and is distant exactly seventy miles, as a bird flies,
from Sebastopol.
No parole was offered me; I was without money, and my name and rank were
alike unknown; I was clad only in the tatters of my own regimental
finery; and I felt a deep gloom steal over me, when the little wicket
gate in the massive wooden and iron barriers of the fortress was closed
behind me. And now, cast utterly among strangers, I parted with regret
even from the snub-nosed Corporal Pugacheff, who had been my guide thus
far, and from his red-eyed poodle, Olga, too.
I was the only prisoner of war in the fortress of Kourouk.
*CHAPTER XLV.*
It was at length the same to me,
Fettered or fetterless to be,
I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
Those heavy walls to me had grown
A heritage--and all my own!
BYRON.
Situated on a rocky slope, under the shadow of the hills of Karaba
Yaila, stand the town and castle of Kourouk.
Built by the Genoese upon the ruins of a fortress erected by a khan of
the house of Zingis (under whom the Crimea became an independent
monarchy in 1441), the castle had been in its glory in the days when
Genoa the superb was mistress of the coasts of Asia, and the islands of
Cyprus, Lesbos, and Scio; but when Mohammed II. conquered
Constantinople, he destroyed all the colonies of the Genoese republic
upon the shores of the Euxine.
The defenders of the Castle of Kourouk, under a Scottish soldier of
fortune, made a gallant resistance; but were all put to the sword, and
their skulls are now built into a portion of the rampart which faces
Mecca. The rocks of red and white marble on which it stands have been
excavated, like those of its contemporary, the old Genoese Castle of
Balaclava, into magazines and stately chambers, the sides of which are
covered with coloured designs in stucco.
The two old round towers of the Genoese days were crowned by Russian
cupolas--one striped like a melon, the other cut into facets, like a
pineapple, all red and yellow alternately, and each surmounted by a
glittering cross. These, with the great white banner of St. Andrew,
with its blue saltire over all, made Kourouk look gay at a distance.
Within all was grim and sombre enough.
The garrison consisted of a four-company battalion of Russian infantry,
under a _chef-de-bataillon_, named Vladimir Dahl, a tall,
grisly-moustached old soldier, who wore on his breast the embroidered
representation of a Turkish standard, which he had taken from the
Infidels, in the days of Navarino. Each of his companies consisted of
two hundred men, and belonged to a regiment three thousand strong. Such
corps are the usual Russian formation, and are commanded by a
_pulkovnick_, or colonel.
These troops wore long, loose, dirty-grey capotes, reaching to their
ankles. On their shoulders, and in front of their flat cloth caps, was
sewn a piece of green stuff, with the regimental number, 45; and this
was all their finery.
They were on parade in line as Corporal Pugacheff conducted me into the
fortress; and I thought them a strange array of sorry-looking wretches,
so stolid in aspect, that I was reminded of the traveller, who, on
seeing a Russian and a British regiment under arms in the same square at
Naples, exclaimed--
"There is but one face in that whole regiment, while in this" (pointing
to the British) "every soldier has a face of his own."
I was treated with the greatest respect and kindness by old Vladimir
Dahl and the officers of the 45th, or Tambrov Infantry, for the outrages
of the French at Kertch, and the infamous massacre of our seamen at
Hango, had not yet occurred to impart a bitterness to the war.
Neither he nor I knew the other's language; his _capitans_,
_fiarooschicks_, and _praperchicks_ (_i.e._, lieutenants and ensigns)
were in the same condition. Thus we had no means of communication, save
by clinking our glasses, and exchanging cigarettes, nods, winks, and
grins.
An old _Times_ newspaper was given to me. It was dated months back, and
detailed the battle of Oltenitza; but its columns had been carefully
purged by the censor of everything political--an ingenious process
achieved by gutta-percha and ground glass.
The reader has, perhaps, heard of how a farrier-sergeant of the Emperor
Alexander's Dragoon Guards predicted the destruction of the grand army
of Napoleon I., on being shown a horseshoe dropped by the retreating
cavalry of France.
"What! not frosted yet," he exclaimed, professionally, "and the snow to
fall to-morrow! Holy St. Sergius! these fellows don't know Russia!"
Vladimir Dahl was the son of the farrier-sergeant who thus predicted the
downfall of the enemies of Russia; and he was more proud of his father
than if he had been, like the best of the Muscovite nobles, descended
from Ruric the Norman.
The days passed slowly away. I might as well have been dumb, having no
one to converse with. I could not pass the castle gates, as every
avenue, angle, and outlet was guarded by snub-nosed Muscovites, in grey
capotes, with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets.
Hope of escape as yet I had none!
On the morning of the fourth day, a mounted Paulowna hussar delivered at
Kourouk a letter, with a shred of the feather of the quill with which it
had been written inserted among the wax of the seal--a Russian mode of
signifying speed.
It announced the arrival of General Baur, with all his staff. Baur had
been wounded in the encounter with our troops at Khutor-Mackenzie; and I
was very well pleased when the evening of the same day saw him ride into
Kourouk, of which I was heartily weary; and I was not without hopes that
the general, on remembering how we had released him after the Alma,
might do something for me in the way of exchanging or paroling me; and
in his aide-de-camp, the gay young Captain Anitchoff, of the Maria
Paulowna Hussars, I was glad to see a face that I knew, and to meet one
with whom I could converse.
The general had been wounded by a musket shot in the bridle arm. It was
severely inflamed. Ease had been recommended, so he had come to spend a
week or so at Kourouk, which was in his own military district; and on
the very evening of his arrival, Anitchoff brought me an invitation to
dine with him.
Anitchoff was eminently a handsome Russian. His eyes were dark, and had
a latent fire in them that showed some Tartar blood; the lids were full
and white, the lashes long and dark. His nose was straight and thin,
and his ponderous moustache was as black as his close-shaven hair, or
the wolf's fur that trimmed his light blue uniform.
My costume was of the most sorry description; but a few discrepancies
were made up by Vladimir Dahl, who, among other things, presented me
with a full uniform, silver epaulettes and all, of the Tambrov infantry.
French is not so much spoken in Russia as people in Britain suppose;
yet, luckily for me, General Baur and Anitchoff could speak it fluently.
Before proceeding to the General's I asked--
"Can you inform me, Captain Anitchoff, if parole is to be accepted?"
"I cannot say, but rather think not," he replied, with hesitation.