Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
loveliness--women the most beautiful in the world; and there, too,
were the young girls, whose season was to come, and the ample
dowagers, whose seasons were long since past, lying back among the
cushions, amid ermine and fur; and with all this Estelle was laughing
and cantering by my side. Then we were at the opera--another fantastic
dream--the voices of Grisi and Mario were blending there, and as its
music seemed to die away, once more we were at Craigaderyn, under its
shady woods, with the green Welsh hills, snow-capped Snowdon and
Carneydd Llewellyn, in the distance, and voices and music and
laughter--some memory of Dora's fête--seemed to be about us. So while
lying there, on that ghastly field of Inkermann, between sleeping and
waking, I dreamed of her who was so far away--of the sweet
companionship that might never come again; of the secret tie that
bound us; of the soft dark eyes that whilom had looked lovingly into
mine; of the sweetly-modulated voice that was now falling merrily,
perhaps, on other ears, and might fall on mine no more. And a vague
sense of happiness, mingled with the pain caused by the half-spent
shot and the wild confusion and suffering of the time, stole over me.
Waking, these memories became
"Sad as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless _fancy_ feigned
On lips that are for others--deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,
O death in life--the days that are no more!"
From all this I was thoroughly roused by a voice crying, "Up, up,
wounded--all you who are able! Cavalry are coming this way--you will
be trod to death. Arrah, get out of _that_, every man-jack of yees!"
The excited speaker was an Irish hussar, picking his way across the
field at a quick trot.
It was a false alarm; but the rumble of wheels certainly came next
day, and an ambulance-wagon passed slowly, picking up the wounded, who
groaned or screamed as their fractured limbs were handled, and their
wounds burst out afresh through the clotted blood. I waved an arm, and
the scarlet sleeve attracted attention.
"There is a wounded officer--one of the 23rd Fusileers," cried a
driver from his saddle.
"Where?" asked a mounted officer in the blue cloak and cap of the Land
Transport Corps.
"Under that dead horse, sir."
"One of the 23rd; let us see--Hardinge, by all the devils!" said
the officer, who proved to be no other than Hawkesby Guilfoyle.
"So-ho--steady, steady!" he added, while secretly touching his horse
with the spurs to make it rear and plunge in three several attempts to
tread me under its hoofs; but the terrible aspect of the dead animal
smashed by the cannon-shot so scared the one he rode, that he bore on
the curb in vain.
"Coward! coward!" I exclaimed, "if God spares me you shall hear of
this."
"The fellow is mad or tipsy," said he; "drive on."
"But, sir--sir!" urged the driver in perplexity.
"Villain! you are my evil fate," said I faintly.
"I tell you the fellow is mad--drive on, I command you, or by----,
I'll make a prisoner of you!" thundered Guilfoyle, drawing a pistol
from his holster, while his shifty green eyes grew white with
suppressed passion and malice; so the ambulance-cart was driven on,
and I was left to my fate.
Giddy and infuriated by pain and just indignation, I lay under my cold
and ghastly load, perishing of thirst, and looking vainly about for
assistance.
Scarcely were they gone, when out of the dense thick brushwood, that
grew in clumps and tufts over all the valley, there stole forth two
Russian soldiers, with their bayonets fixed, and their faces distorted
and pale with engendered fanaticism and fury at their defeat. There
was a cruel gleam in their eyes as they crept stealthily about. Either
they feared to fire or their ammunition was expended, for I saw them
deliberately pass their bayonets through the bodies of four or five
wounded men, and pin the writhing creatures to the earth. I lay very
still, expecting that my turn would soon come. The dead horse served
to conceal me for a little; but I panted rather than breathed, and my
breath came in gasps as they drew near me; for on discovering that I
was an officer, my gold wings and lace would be sure to kindle their
spirit of acquisition. I had my revolver in my right hand, and
remembered with grim joy that of its six chambers, three were yet
undischarged. Just as the first Russian came straight towards me, I
shot him through the head, and he fell backward like a log; the second
uttered a howl, and came rushing on with his butt in the air and his
bayonet pointed down. I fired both barrels. One ball took him right in
the shoulder, the other in the throat, and he fell wallowing in blood,
but not until he had hurled his musket at me. The barrel struck me
crosswise on the head, and I again became insensible. Moonlight was
stealing over the valley when consciousness returned again, and I felt
more stiff and more helpless than ever. Something was stirring near
me; I looked up, and uttered an exclamation on seeing our regimental
goat, Carneydd Llewellyn, quietly cropping some herbage among the
débris of dead bodies and weapons that lay around me. Like Caradoc, I
had made somewhat a pet of it. The poor animal knew my voice, and on
coming towards me, permitted me to stroke and pat it; and a strong
emotion of wonder and regard filled my heart as I did so, for it was a
curious coincidence that this animal, once the pet of Winifred Lloyd,
should discover me there upon the field of Inkermann.
After a little I heard a voice, in English, cry, "Here is our goat at
last, by the living Jingo!" and Dicky Roll, its custodian--from whose
tent it had escaped, when a shot from the batteries broke the
pole--came joyfully towards it.
"Roll, Dicky Roll," cried I, "for God's sake bring some of our
fellows, and have me taken from here!"
"Captain Hardinge! are you wounded, sir?" asked the little drummer,
stooping in commiseration over me.
"Badly, I fear, but cannot tell with certainty."
Dicky shouted in his shrill boyish voice, and in a few minutes some of
our pioneers and bandsmen came that way with stretchers. I was
speedily freed from my superincumbent load, and very gently and
carefully borne rearward to my tent, when it was found that a couple
of contusions on the head were all I had suffered, and that a little
rest and quiet would soon make me fit for duty again.
"You must be more than ever careful of our goat, Dicky," said I, as
the small warrior, who was not much taller than his own bearskin cap,
was about to leave me (by the bye, my poor fellow Evans had been cut
in two by a round shot). "But for Carneydd Llewellyn, I might have
lain all night on the field."
"There is a date scratched on one of his horns, sir," said Roll; "I
saw it to-day for the first time."
"A date!--what date?"
"Sunday, 21st August."
"Sunday, 21st August," I repeated; "what can that refer to?"
"I don't know, sir--_do you?_"
The drummer saluted and left the tent. I lay on my camp-bed weak and
feverish, so weak, that I could almost have wept; for now came
powerfully back to memory that episode, till then forgotten--the
Sunday ramble I had with Winifred Lloyd when we visited the goat, by
the woods of Craigaderyn, by the cavern in the glen, by the Maen Hir
or the Giant's Grave, and the rocking stone, and all that passed that
day, and how she wept when I kissed her. Poor Winifred! her pretty
white hand must have engraved the date which the little drummer
referred to--a date which was evidently dwelling more in her artless
mind than in mine.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.--THE CAMP AGAIN.
After the living were mustered next morning, and burial parties
detailed to inter the dead, Caradoc and one or two others dropped into
my tent to share some tiffin and a cigar or two with me; for, as Digby
Grand has it, "whatever people's feelings may be, they go to dine all
the same."
Poor Phil looked as pale and weary, if not more so, than I did. He was
on the sick-list also, and had his head tied up by a bloody bandage,
necessitated by a pretty trenchant sword-cut, dealt, as we afterwards
discovered on comparing notes, by Volhonski just before his recapture.
"I was first knocked over by Cathcart's riderless horse--"
"Poor old Cathcart--a Waterloo man!" said Gwynne, parenthetically.
"Well, Phil?"
"It was wounded and mad with terror," continued Caradoc; "then the
splinter of a shell struck me on the left leg. Still I limped to the
front, keeping the men together and close to the colours, till that
fellow you call Volhonski cut me across the head; even my bearskin
failed to protect me from his sabre. Then, but not till _then_, when
blood blinded me, I threw up the sponge and went to the rear."
"What news of our friends in the 19th?" I asked.
"O, the old story, many killed and wounded."
"Little Tom Clavell?"
"Untouched. Had the staff of the Queen's colours smashed in his hands
by a grape shot. Tom is now a bigger man than ever," said Charley
Gwynne. "By the way, he was talking of Miss Dora Lloyd last night in
my bunk between the gabions, wondering what she and the girls in
England think of all this sort of thing."
"Thank God, they know nothing about it!" said Caradoc, lighting a
fresh cigar with a twisted cartridge paper; "the hearts of some of
them would break, could they see but yonder valley."
"Poor Hugh Price!" observed Charley, with a sigh and a grimace, for he
had a bayonet prod in the right arm; "he was fairly murdered in cold
blood by one of those Kazan fellows--brained clean by the heel of a
musket, ere our bandsmen could carry him off to the hospital tents;
but I am thankful the assassin did not escape."
"How?"
"He too was finished the next moment by Evan Rhuddlan."
Other instances of assassination, especially by a Russian major, were
mentioned, and execrations both loud and deep were muttered by us all
at these atrocities, which ultimately caused Lord Raglan to send a
firm remonstrance on the subject to Sebastopol.
"Is it true, Charley, that the Duke of Cambridge has gone on board
ship, sick and exhausted?" asked I.
"I believe so."
"And that Marshal Canrobert was wounded yesterday?"
"Yes, and had his horse shot under him, too."
"The poor Coldstreamers were fearfully cut up in the redoubt!"
"I saw eight of their officers interred in one grave this morning, and
three of the Grenadier Guards in another."
"Poor fellows!" sighed Caradoc; "so full of life but a few hours ago."
For a time the conversation, being of this nature, languished; it was
the reverse of lively, so we smoked in silence. We were all in rather
low spirits. This was simply caused by reaction after the fierce
excitement of yesterday, and to regret for the friends who had
fallen--the brave and true-hearted fellows we had lost for ever.
Victorious though we were, we experienced but little exultation; and
from my tent door, we saw the burial parties, British and French, hard
at work in their shirt sleeves, interring the slain in great trenches,
where they were flung over each other in rows, with all their gory
clothing and accoutrements, just as they were found; and there they
lay in ghastly ranks, their pallid faces turned to heaven, the hope of
many a heart and household that were far away from that horrible
valley; their joys, their sorrows, their histories, and their passing
agonies all ended now, with no tears on their cheek save those with
which the hand of God bedews the dead face of the poor soldier.
A ring or a watch, or it might be a lock of hair, taken, or perhaps
hastily shorn by a friendly hand from the head of a dead officer as he
was borne away to these pits--the head that some one loved so well,