CHAPTER LI.
IN WHICH CHARLES COMES TO LIFE AGAIN.
Ha! This was a life again. Better this than dawdling about at the heelsof a dandy, or sitting on a wheelbarrow in a mews! There is a scent heresweeter than that of the dunghill, or the dandy's essences--what is it?The smell of tar, and bilge water, and red herrings. There is a freshwhiff of air up this narrow street, which moves your hair, and makesyour pulse quicken. It is the free wind of the sea. At the end of thestreet are ships, from which comes the clinking of cranes; pleasantermusic sometimes than the song of nightingales.
Down the narrow street towards the wharf come the hussars. Charles isamong them. On the wharf, in the confusion, foremost, as far as he dare,to assist. He was known as the best horseman in the troop, and, as such,was put into dangerous places. He had attracted great attention amongthe officers by his fearlessness and dexterity. The captain had openlypraised him; and, when the last horse had been slung in, and the lastcheer given, and the great ship was away down the river, on her messageof wrath, and woe, and glory, Charles was looking back at Southamptonspires, a new man with a new career before him.
The few months of degradation, of brooding misery, of listlessness andhelplessness he had gone through, made this short episode in his lifeappear the most happy and most beautiful of all. The merest clod of arecruit in the regiment felt in some way ennobled and exalted: but asfor Charles, with his intensely, sensitive, romantic nature, he wasquite, as the French say, _tete montee_. The lowest menial drudgery wasexalted and glorified. Groom his horse and help clean the deck? Why not?That horse must carry him in the day of the merry meeting of heroes.Hard living, hard work, bad weather, disease, death: what were they,with his youth, health, strength, and nerve? Not to be thought of savewith a smile. Yes! this expedition of his to the Crimea was the noblest,and possibly the happiest in his life. To use a borrowed simile, it waslike the mournful, beautiful autumn sunset, before the dark night closesin. He felt like a boy at midsummer, exploring some wood, or distantvalley, watched from a distance long, and at last attained; or as onefeels when, a stranger in a new land, one first rides forth alone intothe forest on some distant expedition, and sees the new world, dreamt ofand longed for all one's life, realised in all its beauty and wonder atlast; and expanding leaf by leaf before one. In a romantic state ofmind. I can express it no better.
And really it is no wonder that a man, not sea-sick, should have been ina state of wonder, eager curiosity, kindliness, and, above all, highexcitement--which four states of mind, I take it, make up together thestate of mind called romantic, quixotic, or chivalrous; which is a verypleasant state of mind indeed. For curiosity, there was enough to makethe dullest man curious. Where were they going? Where would the blow bestruck? Where would the dogs of war first fix their teeth? Would it be acampaign in the field, or a siege, or what? For kindliness: were not hiscomrades a good set of brave, free-hearted lads, and was not he thefavourite among them? As for wonder and excitement, there was plenty ofthat, and it promised to last. Why, the ship herself was a wonder. Thebiggest in the world, carrying 500 men and horses; and every man in theship knew, before she had been five hours at sea, that thatquiet-looking commander of hers was going to race her out under steamthe whole way. Who could tire of wondering at the glimpse one got downthe iron-railed well into the machinery, at the busy cranks and leapingpistons, or, when tired of that, at the strange dim vista of swinginghorses between decks? Wonder and excitement enough here to keep twentyDon Quixotes going! Her very name too was romantic--HIMALAYA.
A north-east wind and a mountain of rustling white canvas over head.Blue water that seethed and creamed, and roared past to leeward. A calm,and the Lizard to the north, a dim grey cape. A south-west wind, andabove a mighty cobweb of sailless rigging. Top-gallant masts sent downand yards close hauled. Still, through it all, the busy clack and rattleof the untiring engine.
A dim wild sunset, and scudding prophet clouds that hurried from thewest across the crimson zenith, like witches towards a sabbath. A windthat rose and grew as the sun went down, and hummed loud in the riggingas the bows of the ship dipped into the trough of the waves, and failedalmost into silence as she raised them. A night of storm and terror: inthe morning, the tumbling broken seas of Biscay. A few fruit brigsscudding wildly here and there; and a cape on a new land. A high rounddown, showing a gleam of green among the flying mists.
Sail set again before a northerly wind, and the ship rolling before itlike a jolly drunkard. Then a dim cloud of smoke before them. Then thegreat steamer _Bussorah_, thundering forward against the wind, tearingfuriously at the leaping seas with her iron teeth. A hurried glimpse offluttering signals, and bare wet empty decks; and, before you had timeto say what a noble ship she was, and what good weather she was makingof it, only a cloud of smoke miles astern.
Now, a dark line, too faint for landsmen's eyes, far ahead, whichchanged into a loom of land, which changed into a cloud, which changedinto a dim peak towering above the sea mists, which changed into a tallcrag, with a town, and endless tiers of white fortification--Gibraltar.
Then a strong west wind for three days, carrying the ship flying beforeit with all plain sail set. And each day, at noon, a great excitement onthe quarter-deck, among the officers. On the third day much cheering andlaughter, and shaking of hands with the commander. Charles, catching anopportunity, took leave to ask his little friend the cornet, what itmeant. The _Himalaya_ had run a thousand miles in sixty-three hours.[8]
And now at sunrise an island is in sight, flat, bald, blazing yellow inthe morning sun, with a solitary, flat-topped mass of buildings just inthe centre, which the sailors say is Civita Vecchia; and, as they sweepround the southern point of it, a smooth bay opens, and there is aflat-roofed town rising in tiers from the green water--above heavierfortifications than those of Gibralter, Charles thinks, but wrongly.Right and left, two great forts, St. Elmo and St. Angelo, say thesailors; and that flight of stone steps, winding up into the town, isthe Nix Mangare stairs. A flood of historical recollections comes overCharles, and he recognises the place as one long known and very dear tohim. On those very stairs, Mr. Midshipman Easy stood and resolved thathe would take a boat and sail to Gozo. What followed on his resolutionis a matter of history. Other events have taken place at Malta, aboutwhich Charles was as well informed as the majority, but Charles did notthink of them; not even of St. Paul and the viper, or the old windydispute, in Greek Testament lecture, at Oxford, between this Melita andthe other one off the coast of Illyricum. He thought of Midshipman Easy,and felt as if he had seen the place before.
I suppose that, if I knew my business properly, I should at this pointrepresent Charles as falling down the companion-ladder and spraining hisankle, or as having over-eaten himself, or something of that sort, andso pass over the rest of the voyage by saying that he was confined tohis bunk, and saw no more of it. But I am going to do nothing of thesort, for two reasons. In the first place, because he did not doanything of the kind; and in the next, because he saw somebody atConstantinople, of whom I am sure you will be glad to hear again.
Charles had seen Tenedos golden in the east, and Lemnos purple in thewest, as the sun went down; then, after having steamed at half-speedthrough the Dardanelles, was looking the next evening at Constantinople,and at the sun going down behind the minarets, and at all that sort ofthing, which is no doubt very beautiful, but of which one seems to haveheard once or twice before. The ship was lying at anchor, with firesbanked, and it was understood that they were waiting for a Queen'smessenger.
They could see their own boat, which they had sent to wait for him atSeraglio Point. One of the sailors had lent Charles a telescope--aregular old brute of a telescope, with a crack across the object-glass.Charles was looking at the boat with it, and suddenly said, "There heis."
He saw a small grey-headed man, with moustaches, come quickly down andget into the boat, followed by some Turks with his luggage. This wasColonel Oldhoss, the Queen's messenger; but there was anothe
r man withhim, whom Charles recognised at once. He handed the telescope to the mannext him, and walked up and down the deck rapidly.
"I _should_ like to speak to him," he thought, "if it were only oneword. Dear old fellow. But then he will betray me, and they will beginpersecuting me at home, dear souls. I suppose I had better not. No. If Iam wounded and dying I will send for him. I will not speak to him now."
The Queen's messenger and his companion came on board, and the ship gotunder way and steamed through the Bosphorus out into the wild seethingwaves of the "Fena Kara degniz," and Charles turned in without havingcome near either of them. But in the chill morning, when the ship's headwas north-west, and the dawn was flushing up on the distant Thraciansierra, Charles was on deck, and, while pausing for an instant in hisduties, to look westward, and try to remember what country and whatmountains lay to the north-west of Constantinople, a voice behind himsaid quietly, "Go, find me Captain Croker, my man." He turned, and wasface to face with General Mainwaring.
It was only for an instant, but their eyes met; the general started, buthe did not recognise him. Charles's moustache had altered him so muchthat it was no great wonder. He was afraid that the general would seekhim out again, but he did not. These were busy times. They were at Varnathat night.
Men were looking sourly at one another. The French expedition had justcome in from Kustendji in a lamentable state, and the army was rottingin its inactivity. You know all about that as well as I can tell you;what is of more importance to us is, that Lieutenant Hornby had beendown with typhus, and was recovering very slowly, so that Charles'schances of meeting him were very small.
What am I to do with this three weeks or more at Varna to which I havereduced Charles, you, and myself? Say as little about it as need be, Ishould say. Charles and his company were, of course, moved up at once tothe cavalry camp at Devna, eighteen miles off, among the pleasant hillsand woodlands. Once, his little friend, the young cornet, who had takena fancy for him, made him come out shooting with him to carry his bag.And they scrambled and clambered, and they tore themselves with thorns,and they fell down steep places, and utterly forgot their socialpositions towards one another. And they tried to carry home every objectwhich was new to them, including a live turtle and a basaltic column.And they saw a green lizard, who arched his tail and galloped away likea racehorse, and a grey lizard, who let down a bag under his chin andbarked at them like a dog. And the cornet shot a quail, and a hare, anda long-tailed francolin, like a pheasant, and a wood-pigeon. And,lastly, they found out that, if you turned over the stones, there werescorpions under them, who tucked their claws under their armpits, as aman folds his arms, and sparred at them with their tails, drawing theirsting in and out, as an experienced boxer moves his left hand whenwaiting for an attack. Altogether, they had a glorious day in a newcountry, and did not remember in what relation they were to one anothertill they topped the hill above Devna by moonlight, and saw the two longlakes, stretching towards the sea, broken here and there into silverripples by the oars of the commissariat boats. A happy innocentschoolboy day--the sort of day which never comes if we prepare for itand anticipate it, but which comes without warning, and is neverforgotten.
Another day the cornet had business in Varna, and he managed thatCharles should come with him as orderly; and with him, as anotherorderly, went the young lad who spoke about his sister in the pot-houseof Windsor; for this lad was another favourite of the cornet's, being aquiet, gentlemanly lad, in fact a favourite with everybody. A veryhandsome lad, too. And the three went branking bravely down thehill-side, through the woodlands, over the streaming plain, into thewhite dirty town. And the cornet must stay and dine with the mess of the42nd, and so Charles and the other lad might go where they would. Andthey went and bathed, and then, when they had dressed, they stoodtogether under the burning white wall, looking over the wicked BlackSea, smoking. And Charles told his comrade about Ravenshoe, about thedeer, and the pheasants, and the blackcock, and about the big trout thatlay nosing up into the swift places, in the cool clear water. Andsuddenly the lad turned on him, with his handsome face livid with agonyand horror, and clutched him convulsively by both arms, and prayed him,for God Almighty's sake----
There, that will do. We need not go on. The poor lad was dead in fourhours. The cholera was very prevalent at Varna that month, and those whodawdled about in the hot sun, at the mouth of the filthy drains of thataccursed hole, found it unto their cost. We were fighting, you see, topreserve the town to those worthless dirty Turks, against the valiant,noble, but, I fear, equally dirty Russians. The provoking part of theRussian war was, that all through we respected and liked our gallantenemies far more than we did the useless rogues for whom we werefighting. Moreover, our good friends the French seem to have been morestruck by this absurdity than ourselves.
I only mentioned this sad little incident to show that this Devna lifeamong the pleasant woodlands was not all sunshine; that now and thenCharles was reminded, by some tragedy like this, that vast masses of menwere being removed from ordinary occupations and duties into an unusualand abnormal mode of life; and that Nature was revenging herself for theviolation of her laws.
You see that we have got through this three weeks more pleasantly thanthey did at Varna. Charles was sorry when the time came for breaking upthe camp among the mountain woodlands. The more so, as it had got aboutamong the men that they were only to take Sebastopol by a sudden attackin the rear, and spend the winter there. There would be no work for thecavalry, every one said.
It is just worthy of notice how, when one once begins a vagabond life,one gets attached to a place where one may chance to rest even for aweek. When one gets accustomed to a change of locality every day for along while, a week's pause gives one more familiarity with a place thana month's residence in a strange house would give if one were habituallystationary. This remark is almost a platitude, but just worth writingdown. Charles liked Devna, and had got used to it, and parted from it ashe would from a home.
This brings us up to the point where, after his death and burial, I havedescribed him as riding along the shore of the Bay of Eupatoria,watching the fleet. The 140th had very little to do. They were on theextreme left; on the seventeenth they thought they were going to havesome work, for they saw 150 of the lancers coming in, driving a lot ofcattle before them, and about 1,000 Cossacks hanging on their rear. But,when some light dragoons rode leisurely out to support them, theCossacks rode off, and the 140th were still condemned to inactivity.
Hornby had recovered, and was with the regiment. He had not recognisedCharles, of course. Even if he had come face to face with him, it wasalmost unlikely that he would have recognised him in his moustache. Theywere not to meet as yet.
In the evening of the nineteenth there was a rumble of artillery overthe hill in front of them, which died away in half an hour. Most of therest of the cavalry were further to the front of the extreme left, andwere "at it," so it was understood, with the Cossacks. But the 140thwere still idle.
On the morning of the twentieth, Charles and the rest of them, sittingin their saddles, heard the guns booming in front and on the right. Itbecame understood among the men that the fleet was attacking somebatteries. Also, it was whispered that the Russians were going to standand fight. Charles was sixth man from the right of the rear rank of thethird troop. He could see the tails of the horses immediately beforehim, and could remark that his front-rank man had a great patch of oilon the right shoulder of his uniform. He could also see Hornby in thetroop before him.
These guns went moaning on in the distance till half-past one; but stillthey sat there idle. About that time there was a new sound in the air,close on their right, which made them prick up their ears and look atone another. Even the head of the column could have seen nothing, forthey were behind the hill. But all could hear, and guess. We all knowthat sound well enough now. You hear it now, thank God, on every villagegreen in England when the cricket is over. Crack, crack! Crack, crack!The noise of advancing ski
rmishers.
And so it grew from the right towards the front, towards the left, tillthe air was filled with the shrill treble of musketry. Then, as theFrench skirmished within reach of the artillery, the deep bass roaredup, and the men, who dared not whisper before, could shout at oneanother without rebuke.
Louder again, as our artillery came into range. All the air was torturedwith concussion. Charles would have given ten years of his life to knowwhat was going on on the other side of the hill. But no. There they sat,and he had to look at the back of the man before him; and at this timehe came to the conclusion that the patch of grease on his right shoulderwas of the same shape as the map of Sweden.
A long weary two hours or more was spent like this. Charles, by lookingforward and to the right, between the two right-hand men of the troopbefore him, could see the ridge of the hill, and see the smoke risingfrom beyond it, and drifting away to the left before the sea-breeze. Hesaw an aide-de-camp come over that ridge and dismount beside the captainof Hornby's troop, loosening his girths. They laughed together; then thecaptain shouted to Hornby, and he laughed and waved his sword over hishead. After this, he was reduced to watching the back of the man beforehim, and studying the map of Sweden. It was becoming evident that themap of North America, if it existed, must be on his left shoulder, underhis hussar jacket, and that the Pacific Islands must be round in front,about his left breast, when the word was given to go forward.
They advanced to the top of the hill, and wheeled. Charles, for oneinstant, had a glimpse of the valley below, seething and roaring like avolcano. Everywhere bright flashes of flame, single, or running along inlines, or blazing out in volleys. The smoke, driven to the left by thewind, hung across the valley like a curtain. On the opposite hill a ringof smoke and fire, and in front of it a thin scarlet line disappearing.That was all. The next moment they wheeled to the right, and Charles sawonly the back of the man before him, and the patch of grease on hisshoulder.
But that night was a night of spurs for them. Hard riding for them farinto the night. The field of the Alma had been won, and they wereordered forward to harass the Cossacks, who were covering the rear ofthe Russian army. They never got near them. But ever after, when thebattle of the Alma was mentioned before him, Charles at once used tobegin thinking of the map of Sweden.