Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
reliefs for outpost and the trenches, proceeded; but these without
sound of trumpet or drum, as men detailed for such duties do
everything silently; neither do their sentries take any complimentary
notice of officers passing near their posts. Ere long a thousand white
puffs, spirting up from the broken ground between us and the city,
would indicate the rifle-pits, where the skirmishers lay _en perdue_,
taking quiet pot-shots at each other from behind stones, caper-bushes,
sand-bags, and sap-rollers; and shimmering through haze and smoke--the
blue smoke of the "villainous saltpetre"--rose the city itself, with
its green spires and domes, white mansions, and bristling batteries.
And so I saw it through the tent-door as the morning drew on, and the
golden sunshine began to stream down the long valley of Inkermann,
"the city of caverns;" while our foragers were on the alert, and
Turkish horses laden with hay, and strings of low four-wheeled arabas,
driven by Tartars in fur skull-caps, brown jackets, and loose white
trousers, would vary the many costumes of the camp. And the morning
sunshine fell on other things which were less lively,--the long mounds
of fresh earth where the dead lay, many of them covered with white
lime dust to insure speedy decay. And then began that daily cannonade
against the city--the cannonade that was to last till we _alone_
expended more than one hundred thousand barrels of gunpowder, and
heaven alone knows how many tons of shot and shell.
Often I lay in that tent, with the roar of the guns in my ears,
pondering over the comfort of stone walls, of English sea-coal fires,
and oftener still of her who was so far away, she so nobly born and
rich, surrounded, as I knew she must always be, by all that wealth and
luxury, rank and station could confer; and I thought longingly, "O for
aunt Margaret's mirror, or Surrey's magic glass, or for the far-seeing
telescope of the nursery tale, that I might see her once again!"
Estelle's promises of writing to me had not been fulfilled as yet, or
her answers to my loving and earnest letters from Malta and the Crimea
had miscarried.
"Welcome, Caradoc! welcome, Gwynne!" cried I, springing off the
camp-bed as my two friends entered the tent, of which I was the sole
occupant, as my lieutenant was on board the Hydaspes ill with fever,
and my ensign, a poor boy fresh from Westminster school, was under one
of the horrid mounds in the shot-strewn valley.
"Harry, old fellow, how are you?--how goes it? Missed the Alma, eh?"
said they cheerfully, as we warmly shook hands.
"All the better, perhaps," said Mostyn, who now joined us, while Price
and Clavell soon after dropped in also; so two had to sit on the
camp-bed, while the rest squatted on chests or buckets, and as for a
table, we never missed it.
"And you were hit, Caradoc?"
"In the calf of the left leg, Harry, prodded by the rusty bayonet of a
fellow who lay wounded on the ground, and who continued to fire
_after_ us when we had left him in the rear, till one of ours gave him
the _coup de grâce_ with the butt-end of his musket. Would you believe
it?--the goat went up hill with us, and I couldn't, even while the
bullets fell like hail about us, resist caressing it, for the sake of
the donor."
"Poor Winny Lloyd!"
"Why poor?" asked Phil.
"Well, pretty, then. I saw her just before I left Southampton."
"This goat seems to be the peculiar care of Caradoc," said Gwynne; "he
rivals its keeper, little Dicky Roll the drummer, in his anxiety to
procure leaves, and buds of spurge, birch, and bird-cherry for it."
Phil Caradoc laughed, and muttered something about being "fond of
animals;" but a soft expression was in his handsome brown eyes, and I
knew he was thinking of sweet Winifred Lloyd, of his bootless suit,
and the pleasant woods of Craigaderyn.
"And you, Charley, were hit, too? Saw your name in the _Gazette_,"
said I.
"A ball right through the left fore-arm, clean as a whistle; but it is
almost well."
"And now to breakfast. Look sharp, Evans, there's a good fellow! A
morning walk from Balaclava to the front gives one an appetite," said
I.
"Yes, that one may not often have, like us, the wherewith to satisfy.
An appetite is the most troublesome thing one can have in the vicinity
of Sebastopol," replied Phil.
A strange-looking group we were when contrasted with our appearance
when last we met.
Probably not one of us had enjoyed the luxury of a complete wash for a
week, and the use of the razor having long been relinquished, our
beards rivalled that of Carneydd Llewellyn in size, if not in hue. The
scarlet uniforms, with lace and wings[3] of gold, in which we had
landed, we had marched and fought and slept in for weeks, were purple,
covered with discolorations, and patched with any stuff that came to
hand. Our trousers had turned from Oxford gray to something of a red
hue, with Crimean mud. Each of us had a revolver in his sash (which we
then wore round the waist), and a canvas haversack or well-worn
courier-bag slung over his shoulder, to contain whatever he might pick
up, beg, borrow, or buy (some were less particular) in the shape of
biscuits, eggs, fowls, or potatoes. Caradoc carried a dead duck by the
legs as he entered, and Charley Gwynne had a loaf of Russian bread
hung by a cord over his left shoulder, like a pilgrim at La Scala
Santa; while Price had actually secured a lump of cheese from the wife
of a Tartar, a fair one, with whom the universal lover had found
favour when foraging in the lovely Baidar Valley. We were already too
miserable to laugh at each other's appearance, and our tatters had
ceased to be a matter of novelty. If such was the condition of our
officers, that of the privates was fully worse; and thanks to our
wretched commissariat and ambulance arrangements, the splendid
_physique_ of our men had begun to disappear; but their pluck was
undying as ever.
On this morning we six were to have a breakfast such as rarely fell to
our lot in the Crimea; for Evans, my Welsh factotum and _fidus
Achates_, was a clever fellow, and speedily had prepared for us, at a
fire improvised under the shelter of a rock, a large kettle of
steaming coffee, which, sans milk, we drank from tin canteens,
tumblers, or anything suitable, and Gwynne's loaf was shared
fraternally among us, together with a brace of fowls found by him in a
Tartar cottage. "Lineal descendants of the cock that crew to Mahomet,
no doubt," said he; "and now, thanks to Evans, there they are, brown,
savoury, appetising, gizzard under one wing, liver under the
other--done to a turn, and on an old ramrod."
And while discussing them, the events of the siege were also
discussed, as coolly as we were wont to do the most ordinary field
man[oe]uvres at home.
"The deuce!" said I, "how the breeze comes under the wall of this
wretched tent!"
"Don't abuse the tent, Harry," said Caradoc; "I am thankful to find
myself in one, after being on board the Hydaspes. It must be a
veritable luxury to be able to sleep, even on a camp-bed and alone,
after being in a hospital, with one sufferer on your right, another on
your left, dead or dying, groaning and in agony. May God kindly keep
us all from the 'bloody hospital of Scutari,' after all I have heard
of it!"
"You were with us last night in the trenches, Mostyn?" said I.
"Yes, putting Gwynne's Hythe theories into practice from a rifle pit.
I am certain that I potted at least three of the Ruskies as coolly as
ever I did grouse in Scotland. All squeamishness has left me now,
though I could not help shuddering when first I saw a man's heels in
the air, after firing at him. You will never guess what happened on
our left. A stout vivandière of the 3rd Zouaves, while in the act of
giving me a _petit verre_ from her little keg, was taken--"
"By the enemy?" exclaimed Price.
"Not at all--with the pains of maternity; and actually while the shot
and shell were flying over our heads."
"And what were the trench casualties?" asked Gwynne.
"About a hundred and twenty of all ranks, killed, wounded, and
missing. A piece more of the fowl--thanks."
"A guardsman was killed last night, I have heard," said Hugh Price.
"Yes; poor Evelyn of the Coldstreams; he was first blinded by dust and
earth blown into his eyes by the ricochetting of a 36-pound shot, and
as he was groping about in an exposed place between the gabions, he
fell close by me."
"Wounded?"
"Mortally--hit in the head; he' was just able to whisper some woman's
name, and then expired. He purchased all his steps up to the majority,
so there's a pot of money gone. I think I could enjoy a quiet weed
now; but, Clavell, there was surely an awful shindy in your quarter
last night?"
"Yes," replied Tom, who, since he had been under fire, seemed to have
grown an inch taller; "a sortie."
"A sortie?" said two or three, laughing.
"Well, something deuced like it," said Tom, testily, as he stroked the
place where his moustache was to be. "I was asleep between the gabions
about twelve at night, when all at once a terrible uproar awoke me.
'Stand to your arms, men, stand to your arms!' cried our adjutant;
'the Russians are scouring the trenches!' I sprang up, and tumbled
against a bulky brute in a spike-helmet and long coat, with a smoking
revolver in his hand, just as a sergeant of ours shot him. It was all
confusion--I can tell you nothing about it; but we will see it all in
the _Times_ by and by. 'Sound for the reserves!' cried one. 'By God,
they have taken the second parallel!' cried another. 'Fire!' 'Don't
fire yet!' But our recruits began to blaze away at random. The
Russians, however, fell back; it might have been only a reconnoitring
party; but, anyhow, they have levanted with the major of the 93rd
Highlanders."
"The deuce they have!" we exclaimed. And this episode of the major's
capture was to have more interest for me than I could then foresee.
"These cigars, five in number," continued Tom, "were given to me by a
poor dying Zouave, who had lost his way and fallen among us. I gave
him a mouthful of brandy from my canteen, after which he said, Take
these, monsieur l'officier; they are all I have in the world now, and,
as you smoke them, think of poor Paul Ferrière of the 3rd Zouaves,
once a jolly student of the Ecole de Médecine, dying now, like a
beggar's dog!' he added, bitterly. 'Nay,' said I, 'like a brave
soldier.' 'Monsieur is right,' said he, with a smile. Our surgeons
could do nothing for him, and so he expired quite easily, while
watching his own blood gradually filling up a hole in the earth near
him!"
"Well, the Crimea, bad as it is," said Caradoc, as he prepared and lit
one of the Frenchman's cigars, "is better than serving in India, I
think; 'that union of well-born paupers,' as some fellow has it, 'a
penal servitude for those convicted of being younger sons.'"
"By Jove, I can't agree with you," said Mostyn, who had served in
India, and was also a younger son; "but glory is a fine thing, no
doubt."
"Glory be hanged!" said Gwynne, testily; "a little bit of it goes a
long way with me."
"See, there go some of the Naval Brigade to have a little ball
practice with a big Lancaster!" cried Tom Clavell, starting to the
tent-door.
"Getting another gun into position apparently," added Raymond Mostyn.
As they spoke, a party of seamen, whiskered and bronzed, armed with
cutlasses and pistols, their officers with swords drawn, swept past
the tent-door at a swinging trot, all singing cheerily a forecastle
song, of which the monotonous burden seemed to be,
"O that I had her, _O_ that I had her,
Seated on my knee!
O that I had her, _O_ that I had her,
A black girl though she be!"
tallying on the while to the drag-ropes of a great Lancaster gun,