Boris the Bear-Hunter

  CHAPTER XVI.HOME AGAIN.

  One day, early in November 1695, when the palace of the Tsar in theKremlin was thronged with officers and dignitaries awaiting audience inthe ante-chambers, and crowding one another in the halls and passages,discussing the news and transacting various matters of state business,a tall but ragged-looking figure strode in at the principal entrance ofthe palace, pushing aside the doorkeepers, and elbowed his way throughthe crowded entrance-hall. Up the wide stairs he went, taking no noticeof the protests and smothered curses of those whose toes he trod upon,or into whose sides he had insinuated his sharp elbows. Many of thosewho had turned round to see who this audaciously rough individualmight be, stopped open-mouthed when they beheld him, the protesthalf-uttered, and gazed after him with wide eyes, muttering prayers,as men who believe they see a ghost. But the ragged courtier lookedneither to the right hand nor to the left, but pursued his recklessmarch over the toes of the highest dignitaries in the realm, withoutnoticing the fact or the persons, and making straight for the privatecabinet of the Tsar as though, until he should reach that haven, therecould be no thought for anything else.

  Arrived at the ante-chamber, wherein were assembled Lefort andMenshikoff and a few others of the inner circle of favour, the newarrival paid no more heed to these august personages than he had doneto the rest, but elbowed them out of his way and went straight tothe door which led into the sanctum of the great Peter, altogetherdisregarding the exclamations of surprise and awe which were all thatthese found time to utter as he passed rapidly through the room and inat the Tsar's own door.

  Peter was sitting alone at the writing-table, busily penning lettersto foreign potentates--applications, in fact, for the loan of talentedengineer and artillery officers for the new campaign against the Turkon the Black Sea; a project upon which his mind was so fixed that hiswhole time was spent in planning and organizing it in advance. TheTsar raised his eyes as the ragged figure entered the room and stoodbefore his table. But though Peters eyes fixed themselves upon thestrange, wild object before them, the speculation in them had nothingto do with the object of their regard. Peter lowered his head again andwrote; he finished his letter, and signed it. Then, once more he raisedhis eyes, and this time those orbs were looking outwards, not inwards.Peter started, and spat on the ground; then he crossed himself, andshaded his eyes, and stared at the figure that stood before him. For amoment the strong face looked scared and bewildered; then the Tsar rosewith his big laugh, and walking round to the other side of the tablecaught the man by both shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled.

  "It is true flesh and blood," he cried, "and no ghost! Boris, my mostmiraculous of bear-hunters, whence come you, and why is this raggedbody of yours not eaten by Turkish rats? This is the best and mostwonderful thing that mortal man ever heard of." Peter drew the grimytraveller to his own broad breast and embraced him in the most approvedRussian manner, kissing both cheeks and his forehead.--"Here! Lefort,Menshikoff, all you fellows in there!" continued the Tsar, shoutingaloud, "here's Boris come back, our faithful, Streltsi-sticking,Turk-spitting Bear-eater!--Come, sit down, my Boris, quickly, and tellus all about it. Why are you alive--have you a plan of Azof--how didyou get out of the place--has that Yakooshka had his sneaking Germantongue cut out of him yet? Tell me that first of all, quick!"

  Boris replied that as far as he knew the head of Jansen was still uponhis shoulders with his tongue in it.

  "Then," said Peter, "we shall have at least the satisfaction ofremoving it ourselves instead of relinquishing the privilege to theTurk, as I had feared." Peter took two or three turns about the room,looking his blackest; then he recovered his equanimity. "Come," hesaid, "let's talk of pleasanter subjects; tell us all about youradventures."

  Boris told his plain tale amid frequent interjections from the fouror five men present. Peter roared with laughter over the account ofhow Boris with his sword had kept at bay for ten minutes any number ofTurks who chose to come on, and how he was ultimately scragged by apasha while in the very act of fainting from sheer exhaustion. "Bravo,Bear-eater," he cried, "and bravo again! Ho, if I had but five thousandbear-hunters like you, my son, I should attack Sweden to-morrow! Butthere is some good in the Turk after all; for think how easily any oneof a thousand of them might have blown your brains out with musket orpistol. Yet they preferred to see a good fight out to the end; but, ha!ha! that pasha. You shall scrag that same pasha with your own hands, myson, next summer, as sure as I am standing here. Go on!"

  "Out sprang Boris, and alighted with terrific force uponMenshikoff's back."_Page 186._ ]

  Peter's pleasant mood underwent a great change when Boris went onto tell of his interview with Jansen in prison. His face worked interrible contortions, and he rose and paced the room once more withouta word. "So you would have throttled him, would you?" he said at last."I am thankful that you did not interfere with what is my privilege.Enough about Yakooshka. Go on."

  But the Tsar fairly roared with laughter as Boris described how hehad leaped upon the back of the sentinel, a distance of fifteen feet,and stuck the poor fellow with his little broken bit of sword-end. Hemust have that little weapon, he said, as a keepsake from his goodbear-eater. But nothing would satisfy the Tsar with regard to themighty spring upon the back of the sentry but a rehearsal of the featthen and there, in that very room.

  Menshikoff said the thing was impossible; no man, he said, couldleap five yards from a cramped position upon a window ledge. Borismust have miscalculated the distance. But Menshikoff regretted thisremark a moment after he had made it; for Peter declared he believedthe bear-eater could perform the feat if no one else could, and thathe should try it at once, in order to put this sceptic to confusion.Menshikoff should act the part of sentry, and walk along while Borisjumped on him. Afterwards they would all try it. Then two tableswere piled together, and Boris was instructed to bend himself intothe original position as far as possible, and thence spring upon theunhappy Menshikoff, who paced the floor at a distance of fifteen feet.Menshikoff eyed the heavy figure of Boris, soon to be launched at him,with gloomy foreboding; but there was no help for it, Peter was inearnest. As Menshikoff reached the necessary point, out sprang Boris,and without difficulty covering the distance, alighted with terrificforce upon Menshikoff's back. Over rolled the favourite, and over wentBoris with him, amid the boisterous laughter of the Tsar and the rest,the crash making such a commotion that frightened courtiers fromthe room beneath presently rushed in to see what had happened to hisMajesty.

  Peter insisted upon attempting the feat himself, and insisted also thatLefort and Menshikoff should leap as well. The Tsar easily accomplishedthe leap; but so tremendous was the shock of his descent, that poorLefort, who was detailed to receive the ponderous imperial body afterits flight through space, was well-nigh wiped out of the land of theliving. Both Menshikoff and Lefort failed to accomplish the feat, andBoris was obliged to repeat it, in order that the Tsar might try thesensations of the sentinel, as a "bolt from the blue," in the shape ofsome thirteen stone of humanity, came crashing down upon his shoulders.Peter was better built to stand the shock than the unfortunate Turkishsoldier, and Boris's big body hardly caused him to stagger; though whenthe two changed places, and the huge Tsar sprang through the air andalighted upon the back of Boris, that hardy young hunter, for all hissturdiness, rolled over like a rabbit.

  Then at length the Tsar, now in the highest good-humour, permittedBoris to finish his tale--how he had plunged into the dark waters ofthe Azof Sea, and found his way to land; how he had been befriendedin a village of the Cossacks of the Don--Peter making a note of thename of the village; and of his long adventurous journey through moorand forest, where he supplied himself with food from day to day bymeans of his knowledge of woodcraft, until he reached Moscow that verymorning. Then the Tsar informed Boris of his own designs for a renewedsiege of Azof by land and sea, and of all that had happened in theregiment and out of it since his disappearance. The officers had allmourned him as certainl
y lost, the Tsar said, and had even includedhis name in their service for the repose of the souls of those slainbeneath the walls of the city; they would be overjoyed to see his faceagain. Then Peter told of how little Nancy Drury had come to scold himfor losing "her Boris," and of how he had promised faithfully to goand fetch her friend home again in the summer. When Peter mentionedNancy, the face of Boris flushed, but his eyes glowed with greattenderness; and presently he asked leave to retire, in order to visithis fellow-officers, "and others." The Tsar permitted him to go, oncondition that he went first to see "those others;" for, said Peter,those others might be even more rejoiced to see him home again thanthe officers of the regiment, who, at least, had not blushed wheneverhis name had been mentioned. Then Boris blushed again, and thanked theTsar, and went out to do his kind bidding.

  When Boris reached the house of the Drurys, and was ushered into thesitting-room by the frightened servant, who took him for a ghost, anddid not announce him because his tongue refused to speak for very fear,Mrs. Drury was busy over her needlework, while Nancy sat at her lessonsat the same table. Mother and daughter looked up together, but theirfirst impressions were entirely different. Mrs. Drury had never feltthe slightest doubt that her little daughter's faithful friend was longsince dead and buried in the far-away Tartar city, and had mourned hisdeath in secret, while concealing her convictions from Nancy, in thehope that when the truth must be known time would have softened theblow. When, therefore, the door opened noiselessly, and the scaredservant, speechless and pale, admitted the ragged figure which sostrongly resembled the dead friend of the family, Mrs. Drury was takenby surprise, and screamed and hid her face in her hands. But Nancy'sinstincts did not err. No sooner did she raise her eyes than she knewthat this was no ghost, but her own beloved and familiar friend; andwith a cry of great joy and surprise she sprang to her feet, and was inhis arms in a moment, her head buried in his tanned neck, sobbing andlaughing, and conscious of nothing excepting that here was her Borisalive and well and come home again.

  When Mrs. Drury recovered her equanimity, which she did in a minute,her English ideas of propriety were a little shocked at Nancy'sundisguised demonstration towards her friend, and, after warmlygreeting Boris, she reminded her little daughter that her fifteenthbirthday was at hand, and that she would shock Boris Ivanitch by herdemonstrativeness. But Boris begged her to let Nancy be as affectionateas she pleased, for, he said, he had sadly needed the comfort of alittle love for many a long and dreary month. So Mrs. Drury let mattersbe as they were, and Nancy clung to her friend's neck, and cried andlaughed in turns, though saying but little, until Boris gently detachedher arms from about his neck and placed her upon his knee to hear thestirring tale of his adventures and escape and return home.

  Boris left the Drurys' house presently with a new conviction loominglarge and prominent in his inner consciousness, and that was thatthere was nothing in all the world quite so good as the love of aninnocent girl; neither the delights of bear-hunting, nor the glory ofsuccessful fight, nor the favour of a great king, nor the applause ofhis fellows, nor rank in the army, nor wealth, nor the pride of greatstrength, nor anything else. All these things were good, especiallythe praise of a beloved master and Tsar; but the clinging arms of thischild had revealed a new yet a very old thing to him, and Boris walkedtowards the barracks of the Preobrajensk Guards on feet that felt notthe wooden pavement beneath them, and with his manly heart so full oftenderness towards that other confiding and loving little heart that healmost wished all the world would rise up and menace that one littlechild, that he might rise also and defend her.

  Then Boris went and proved for a third time that he was no ghost, but asolid and able-bodied bear-hunter, and retold once again the story ofhis adventures for the benefit of an admiring mess. Here Boris learnedalso from the officers of his regiment that he had narrowly escapeda shot in the back as he stood alone upon the wall of Azof; for aformer companion of the Streltsi, one Zaitzoff, had deliberately takena shot at him, in order, as he had declared, to pay off old scores.Another member of the corps, one Platonof, being wounded to death, andhorrified at the dastardliness of the proceeding, had communicatedZaitzoff's words to the surgeon who attended him. The surgeon in histurn reported to the officers of the Preobrajensk, and these tooksummary vengeance. They had gone in a body to the Streltsi quartersthat very evening on hearing the surgeon's tale, had pulled Zaitzoffout of his tent, held an improvised court-martial on the spot, and shotthe miscreant then and there, and in the presence of all his comrades,who did nothing to protect him, being themselves horrified with hisaction.

  One more danger escaped, added to the many, was as nothing to this manreturned, as it were, from the very gates of death; yet Boris did notfail to offer thanks for the erring flight of Zaitzoff's bullet when hecounted up the mercies of God on this first evening of his return, andknelt long and fervently within the cathedral of the Kremlin. Neitherdid Nancy forget to be grateful when she knelt at her bedside and saidher daily prayers, which were the old English ones, in spite of thefact that Colonel Drury and all his house were now within the fold ofthe Russo-Greek Church and naturalized Russians.