Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
grass; but by wandering thus deviously in such a lonely place, though
I might avoid those ubiquitous Cossacks, who were scattered
"broadcast" over all Crim Tartary, I should never reach Kokoz, or
deliver that despatch, which, if taken by the enemy, I meant to
destroy. Once or twice I came upon some Tartar huts, whose occupants
seemed to be chiefly women--the men being all probably employed as
military wagoners, in the forest or afield; but they drew close their
yashmacs and shut their doors at my approach; so midday came on, and I
was still in ignorance of the route to pursue, and in a district so
primitive that, when the simple natives saw me scrape a lucifer-match
to light a cigar, they were struck dumb with fear and wonder. Vague,
wild, and romantic dreams and hopes came into my mind, that, if I
perished and my name appeared in the _Gazette_, Estelle would weep for
me; and in my absurd, most misplaced regard, and almost boyish
enthusiasm, I felt that I should cheerfully have given up the life God
gave me, for a tear from this false girl, could I be but certain that
she would have shed it. Ay, there was the rub! Would she shed it, or
the sacrifice be worth the return?
"Bah!" thought I, as I bit my lip, and uttering something like a
malediction rode sullenly and madly on.
"Why cling thus to the dead past?" thought I, after a time. "Pshaw!
Phil Caradoc was right in all he urged upon me. Yet that past is so
sweet--it was so brilliant and tender--that memory cannot but dwell
upon it with fondness and regret, with passion and bitterness."
Pausing for nearly an hour, my whole "tiffin" being a damp cheroot, I
loosened my horse's girths for the time, and turned his quivering and
distended nostrils to the keen winter blast that blew from the Euxine,
and then I remounted. After wandering dubiously backward and forward,
and seeking to guide my motions by the sun, just as I was about to
penetrate into a narrow rocky defile, the outer end of which I hoped
would bring me to some proper roadway or place where my route could be
ascertained, the distant sound of a Cossack trumpet fairly in my
front, and responded to by another apparently but some fifty yards in
my rear, made me rein in my horse, while my heart beat wildly.
"Cossacks again!" I exclaimed, for I was evidently between two
scouting parties, and if I escaped one, was pretty certain to be
captured by the other.
Instinctively I guided my horse aside into a clump of wild pear-trees,
the now leafless stems and branches of which I greatly feared would
fail to conceal either it or me; but no nearer lurking place was nigh,
and there I waited and watched, my spirit galled and my heart swollen
with natural excitement and anxiety. Death seemed very close to me at
that moment; yet I sat in my saddle, revolver in hand, the blade of my
drawn sword in the same grasp with my reins, and ready for instant
use, as I was resolved to sell my life dearly. Preoccupied, I had been
unconscious for some time past that the cold had been increasing; that
the sun, lately so brilliant, had become obscured in sombre gray
clouds, and even that snow had begun to fall. Delicate and white as
floating swans'-down fell the flakes over all the scenery. On my
clothing and on my horse-furniture it remained white and pure; but on
the roadway I had to traverse it speedily became half-frozen mud. If I
escaped these scouting parties my horse-tracks might yet betray me,
and I thought vainly of the foresight of Robert Bruce when he fled
from London over a snow-covered country with his horse-shoes inverted.
If I escaped them! I was not left long in uncertainty of my fate in
that respect.
Riding in double file, and led by an officer who wore the usual long
coat with silver shoulder-straps and a stiff flat forage-cap, a party
of forty Cossacks issued slowly from the defile. Their leader was
either a staff-officer or a member of some other force, as his uniform
was quite different from theirs, which declared them to be
Tchernimorski Cossacks, the tribe who inhabit the peninsula of Tamar,
and all the country between the Kuban and Asof, being literally the
Cossacks of the Black Sea, and natives of the district. They carried
their cartridges ranged across their breast in rows of tin tubes, _à
la Circassienne_, and were all bronzed, bearded, and rough-looking
men, whose whole bearing spoke of Crimean and Circassian service, of
hard outpost work among the wild Caucasus, of many a bloody conflict
with Schamyl--conflicts in which quarter was neither asked nor given!
I had never been quite so near those wild warriors of the Russian
steppes before, and have no desire ever to be so again, at least under
the same dubious circumstances. They wore little squab-shaped busbies
of brown fur; sheepskin shoubahs, or cloaks, over their coarse green
uniforms; and had trusses of straw and bags of corn so secured over
the shoulders and cruppers of their small shaggy horses, that but
little more of the latter were visible than their noses and tails.
They rode with their knees high and stirrup-leathers short, their
lances slung behind them, and carbines rested on the right thigh.
Captivity or escape, life or death, were in the balance as they slowly
rode onward; but favoured by the already failing light and the falling
snow, I am now inclined to think that my figure should have escaped
even their keen and watchful eyes, had not evil fortune caused my
horse, on discovering a mare or so among their cattle, after snuffing
the air with quivering nostrils, to whinny and to neigh! At that
moment we were not more than fifty yards apart.
A shout, or rather a series of wild cries, escaped the Cossacks. I
pressed the spurs into the flanks of my gallant black horse, and he
sprang away with a wild bound; while the bullets from nearly twenty
carbines whistled past me harmlessly, thank heaven, and I rode
steadily away--away. I cared not in what direction now, so that the
more pressing danger was eluded, while cries and threats, and shot
after shot followed me; but I had no great fear of them so long as
they fired from the saddle, experience having taught me that even the
best-trained cavalry are but indifferent marksmen. Before me rose the
green ridge of Mount Yaila; the ground was somewhat open there, being
pastoral hill-slopes gradually culminating in those peaks, from
whence, in a clear day, the snow-clad summits of the Caucasus can be
discerned; and to reach a ravine or cleft in the hills before me, I
strained every effort of my horse, hoping, with the coming night, to
escape, or find some shelter by the seashore.
The idea was vague, uncertain, and wild, I know; but I had no other
alternative save to halt, wheel about, and sell my life as best I
could at terrible odds; while to prevent me eluding them, the Cossacks
had gradually opened out their files into a wide semicircle, lest I
should seek to escape by some sudden flank movement; and all kept
their horses--wiry, fiery, and active little brutes--well in hand.
Their leader was better mounted and kept far in advance of
them--unpleasantly close on my flanks, indeed--but still his nag was
no match for the noble English horse I rode; and so as the blue
shadows lengthened and deepened in the snow-coated valley, I began to
breathe more freely, and to think, or hope, there was perhaps a chance
for me after all. Perhaps some of the Cossacks began to think so, for
they dismounted, and, while the rest kept fiercely and closely in
pursuit, levelled their carbines over their saddles, over each other's
shoulders, or with left elbow firmly planted on the knee, and thus
took quiet and deliberate pot-shots at me; and two had effect on the
hind legs of my horse, tending seriously to injure his speed and
strength; and as each ball struck him he gave a snort, and shivered
with pain and terror. On and on yet up the mountain valley!
An emotion of mockery, defiance, and exultation almost filled me--the
exultation of the genuine English racing spirit--on finding that I was
leaving the most of them behind, and was already well through the
vale, or cleft, in the mountains, the slopes of which were then as
easy to traverse as if coursing on the downs of Sussex; and already I
could see, some three miles distant, the waters of the Euxine, and the
smoke of our war-steamers cruising off Yalta and Livadia. I looked
back. The Cossack leader was very close to me now, and five of his
men, all riding with lance in hand, as they had probably expended
their ammunition, were but a few horse-lengths behind him. I could
perceive that he had also armed himself with a lance, and felt assured
that in his rage at having had so long and futile a pursuit, he would
certainly not receive my sword, even if I offered it, as a prisoner of
war; so I resolved to shoot him as soon as he came within range of my
"Colt," the six chambers of which I had been too wary to discharge as
yet.
Checking my panting and bleeding horse for a second or two, to let the
galloping Russian come closer, I fired at him under my bridle arm, and
a mocking laugh informed me that my Parthian shot had gone wide of its
mark. Not venturing to fire again, I continued to spur my black horse
on still; for now the friendly twilight had descended on the mountains
and the sea, whose waves at the horizon were yet reddened by the
farewell rays of the winter sun as he sank beyond them. Suddenly the
character of the ground seemed to change--vacancy yawned before me,
and I found myself within some twenty yards of a pretty high limestone
cliff that overhung the water!
The hand of fate seemed on me now, and reining round my horse, I found
myself almost face to face with the leader of the Cossacks; and all
that passed after this occurred in shorter time than I can take to
write it. Uttering an exulting cry, he raised himself in his stirrups,
and savagely launched at me with all his force the Cossack spear. I
eluded it by swerving my body round; but it pierced deeply the off
flank of my poor horse, and hung dangling there, with the crimson
blood pouring from the wound and smoking upward from the snow. The
animal was plunging wildly and madly now, yet I fired the five
remaining pistol shots full at the Russian ere he could draw his
sword; and one at least must have taken effect somewhere, for he fell
almost beneath my horse's hoofs, and as he did so his cap flew off,
and I recognised Volhonski--whom, by a singular coincidence, I thus
again encountered--Count Volhonski, the Colonel of the Vladimir
Infantry! At the same moment I was fiercely charged by the five
advanced Cossacks, with their levelled lances, and with my horse was
literally hurled over the cliffs into the sea, the waves of which I
heard bellowing below me.
Within the pace of one pulsation--one respiration--as we fell whizzing
through the air for some sixty feet together, I seemed to live all my
past life over again; but I have no language wherewith to express the
mingled bitterness and desolation that came over my soul at that time.
Estelle lost to me; life, too, it seemed, going, for I must be drowned
or taken--taken but to die. The remembrance of all I had loved and of
all who loved me; all that I had delighted in--the regiment, which was
my pride--my friends and comrades, and all that had ever raised hope
or fancy, or excited emulation--seemed lost to me, as the waves of the
Black Sea closed over my head, and I went down to die, my fate
unknown, and even in my grave, "unhousled, disappointed, unaneled."
Even now as I write, when the danger has long since passed away, and
when the sun has shone again in all his glory on me, in my dreams I am
sometimes once more the desperate and despairing fellow I was then.
CHAPTER XLIII.--WINIFRED'S SECRET.