ha! this was a life again. better this than dawdling about at the heels of a dandy, or sitting on a wheelbarrow in a mews! there is a scent here sweeter than that of the dung-hill, or the dandy’s essences — what is it? the smell of tar, and bilge water, and red herrings. there is a fresh whiff of air up this narrow street, which moves your hair, and makes your pulse quicken. it is the free wind of the sea. at the end of the street are ships, from which comes the clinking of cranes; pleasanter music sometimes than the song of nightingales.
down the narrow street towards the wharf come the hussars. charles is among 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 among the officers by his fearlessness and dexterity. the captain had openly praised him; and, hen the last horse had been slung in, and the last cheer given, and the great ship was away down the river, on her message of wrath, and woe, and glory, charles was looking back at southampton spires, a new man with a new career before him.
the few months of degradation, of brooding misery, of listlessness and helplessness he had gone through, made this short episode in his life appear the most happy and most beautiful of all. the merest clod of a recruit in the regiment felt in some way ennobled and exalted; but as for charles, with his intensely sensitive, romantic nature, he was quite, as the french say, tete montee. the lowest menial drudgery was exalted 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 save with 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 was like the mournful, beautiful autumn sunset, before the dark night closes in. he felt like a boy at midsummer, exploring some wood, or distant valley, watched from a distance long, and at last attained; or as one feels when a stranger in a new and, one first rides forth alone into the forest on some distant expedition, and sees the new world, dreamt of and longed for all one’s life, realized in all its beauty and wonder at last; and expanding leaf by leaf before one. in a romantic state of mind. i can express it no better.
and really it is no wonder that a man, not sea-sick, should have been in a state of wonder, eager curiosity, kindliness, and, above all, high excitement — which four states of mind, i take it, make up together the state of mind called romantic, quixotic, or chivalrous; which is a very pleasant state of mind indeed. for curiosity, there was enough to make the dullest man curious. where were they going? where would the blow be struck? where would the dogs of war first fix their teeth? would it be a campaign in the field, or a siege, or what? tor kindliness: were not his comrades a good set of brave, free-hearted lads, and was not he the favourite among them? as for wonder and excitement, there was plenty of that, and it promised to last. why, the ship herself was a wonder. the biggest in the world, carrying 500 men and horses; and every man in the ship knew, before she had been five hours at sea, that that quiet-looking commander of hers was going to race her out under steam the whole way. who could tire of wondering at the glimpse one got down the iron-railed well into the machinery, at the busy cranks and leaping pistons, or, when tired of that, at the strange dim vista of swinging horses between decks? wonder and excitement enough here to keep twenty don quixotes going! her very name too was romantic — himalaya.
a northeast 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, and above a mighty cobweb of sailless rigging. top-gallant masts sent down and yards close hauled. still, through it all, the busy clack and rattle of the untiring engine.
a dim wild sunset, and scudding prophet clouds that hurried from the west across the crimson zenith, like witches towards a sabbath. a wind that rose and grew as the sun went down, and hummed loud in the rigging as the bows of the ship dipped into the trough of the waves, and failed almost into silence as she raised them. a night of storm and terror; in the morning, the tumbling broken seas of biscay. a few fruit brigs scudding wildly here and there; and a cape on a new land. a high round down, showing a gleam of green among the flying mists.
sail set again before a northerly wind, and the ship rolling before it like a jolly drunkard. then a dim loud of smoke before them. then the great steamer bussorah, thundering forward against the wind, tearing furiously at the leaping seas with her iron teeth. a hurried glimpse of fluttering signals, and bare wet empty decks; and, before you had time to say what a noble ship she was, and what good weather she was making of it, only a cloud of smoke miles astern.
now a dark line, too faint for landsmen’s eyes, far a-head, which changed into a loom of land, which changed into a cloud, which changed into a dim peak towering above the sea mists, which changed into a tall crag, with a town, and endless tiers of white fortification — gibraltar.
then a strong west wind for three days, carrying the ship flying before it with all plain sail set. and each day, at noon, a great excitement on the quarter-deck, among the officers. on the third day much cheering and laughter, and shaking of hands with the commander. charles, catching an opportunity, took leave to ask his little friend the cornet, what it meant the himalaya had run a thousand miles in sixty-three hours.*
* the most famous voyage of the himalaya, from cork to varna ia twelve days, with the fifth dragoon guards, took place in june. the voyage here described is, as will be perceived, a subsequent one. but equally successful, apparently.
and now at sunrise an island is in sight, flat, bald, blazing yellow in the morning sun, with a solitary flat-topped mass of buildings just in the centre, which the sailors say is civita yecchia; and, as they sweep round the southern point of it, a smooth bay opens, and there is a flat-roofed town rising in tiers from the green water — above heavier fortifications than those of gibraltar, charles thinks, but wrongly. eight and left, two great forts, st. elmo and st. angelo, say the sailors, and that flight of stone steps, winding up into the town, is the nix mangare stairs. a flood of historical recollections comes over charles, and he recognises the place as one long known and very dear to him. on those very stairs, mr. midshipman easy stood, and resolved that he would take a boat and sail to gozo. what followed on his resolution is a matter of history. other events have taken place at malta, about which charles was as well informed as the majority, but charles did not think of them; not even of st. paul and the viper, or the old windy dispute, in greek testament lecture, at oxford, between this melita and the 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 point represent charles as falling down the companion-ladder and spraining his ancle, or as having over-eaten himself, or something of that sort, and so pass over the rest of the voyage by saying that he as confined to his bunk, and saw no more of it. but i am going to do nothing of the sort, for two reasons. in the first place, because he did not do anything of the kind; and in the next, because he saw somebody at constantinople, of whom i am sure you will be glad to hear again.
charles had seen tenedos golden in the east, and lemnos purple in the west, as the sun went down; then, after having steamed at half-speed through the dardanelles, was looking the next evening at constantinople, and at the sun going down behind the minarets, and at all that sort of thing, which is no doubt very beautiful, but of which one seems to have heard once or twice before. the ship was lying at anchor, mth fires banked, and it was understood that they were waiting for a queen’s messenger.
they could see their own boat, which they had sent to wait for him at seraglio point. one of the sailors had lent charles a telescope — a regular old brute of a telescope, with a crack across the object-glass. charles was looking at the boat with it, and suddenly said, “there he is.”
he saw a small grey-headed man, with moustaches, come quickly down and get into the boat, followed by some turks with his luggage. this was colonel oldhoss, the queen’s messenger; but there was another an with mm, whom charles recognised at once. he handed the telescope to the man next him, and walked tip and down the deck rapidly.
“i should like to speak to him,” he thought, “if it were only one word. dear old fellow. but then he will betray me, and they will begin persecuting me at home, dear souls. i suppose i had better not. no. if i am 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 got under way and steamed through the bosporus out into the wild seething waves of the “fena kara degniz,” and charles turned in without having come near either of them. but in the chill morning, when the ship’s head was northwest, and the dawn was flushing up on the distant thracian sierra, charles was on deck, and, while pausing for an instant in his duties, to look westward, and try to remember what country and what mountains lay to the northwest of constantinople, a voice behind him said quietly, “go find me captain croker, my man.” he turned and was face to face with general mainwaring.
it was only for an instant, but their eyes met; the general started, but he did not recognise him. charles’s moustache had altered him so much that it was no great wonder. he was afraid that the general would seek him out again, but he did not. these were busy times. they were at varna that night.
men were looking sourly at one another. the french expedition had just come in from kustendji in a lamentable state, and the army was rotting in 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 been down with typhus, and was recovering very slowly, so that charles’s chances of meeting him were very small.
what am i to do with this three weeks or more at varna to which i have reduced charles, you, and myself? say as little about it as need be, i should say. charles and his company were, of course, moved up at once to the cavalry camp at devna, eighteen miles off, among the pleasant hills and woodlands. once, his little friend, the young cornet, who had taken a 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 social positions towards one another. and they tried to carry home every object which 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 like a racehorse, and a grey lizard, who let down a bag under his chin and barked at them like a dog. and the cornet shot a quail, and a hare, and a long-tailed francolin, like a pheasant, and a wood-pigeon. and, lastly, they found out that, if you turned over the stones, there were scorpions under them, who tucked their claws under their armpits, as a man folds his arms, and sparred at them with their tails, drawing their sting in and out, as an experienced boxer moves his left hand when waiting for an attack. altogether, they had a glorious day in a new country, and did not remember in what relation they were to one anothert ill they topped the hill above devna by moonlight, and saw the two long lakes, stretching towards the sea, broken here and there into silver ripples by the oars of the commissariat boats. a happy innocent schoolboy day — the sort of day which never comes if we prepare for it and anticipate it, but which comes without warning, and is never forgotten.
another day the cornet had business in varna, and he managed that charles should come with him as orderly; and with him, as another orderly, went the young lad who spoke about his sister in the pot-house at windsor: for this lad was another favourite of the cornet’s, being a quiet gentlemanly lad, in fact a favourite with everybody. a very handsome lad, too. and the three went branhing bravely down the hill-side, through the woodlands, over the steaming plain, into he white dirty town. and the cornet must stay and dine with the mess of the 42d, and so charles and the other lad might go where they would. and they went and bathed, and then, when they had dressed, they stood together under the burning white wall, looking over the wicked black sea, smoking. and charles told his comrade about ravenshoe, about the deer, and the pheasants, and the blackcock, and about the big trout that lay nosing up into the swift places, in the cool clear water. and suddenly the lad turned on him, with his handsome face livid with agony and horror, and clutched him convulsively by both arms, and prayed im, for god almighty’s sake
there, that will do. we need not go on. the poor lad was dead in four hours. the cholera was very prevalent at varna that month, and those who dawdled about in the hot sun, at the mouth of the filthy drains of that accursed hole, found it unto their cost. we were fighting, you see, to preserve the town to those worthless dirty turks, against the valiant, noble, but, i fear, equally dirty eussians. the provoking part of the eussian war was, that all through we respected and liked our gallant enemies far more than we did the useless rogues for whom we were fighting. moreover, our good friends the french seem to have been more struck by this absurdity than ourselves.
i only mentioned this sad little incident to show that this devna life among the pleasant woodlands was not all sunshine; that now and then charles was reminded, hy some tragedy like this, that vast masses of men were being removed from ordinary occupations and duties into an unusual and abnormal mode of life; and that nature was revenging herself for the violation of her laws.
you see that we have got through this three weeks more pleasantly than they did at varna. charles was sorry when the time came for breaking up the camp among the mountain woodlands. the more so, as it had got about among the men that they were only to take sebastopol by a sudden attack in the rear, and spend the winter there. there would be no work for the cavalry, 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 a week. when one gets accustomed to a change of locality every day for a long while, a week’s pause gives one more familiarity with a place than a month’s residence in a strange house would give if one were habitually stationary. this remark is almost a platitude, but just worth writing down. charles liked devna, and had got used to it, and parted from it as he would from a home.
this brings us up to the point where, after his death and burial, i have described him as riding along the shore of the bay of eupatoria, watching the fleet. the 140th had very little to do. they were on the extreme left; on the seventeenth they thought they were going to have some work, for they saw 150 of the lancers coming in, driving a lot of cattle before them, and about 1,000 cossacks hanging on their rear. but, when some light dragoons rode leisurely out to support them, the cossacks rode off, and the 140th were still condemned to inactivity.
hornby had recovered, and was with the regiment. he had not recognised charles, of course. even if he had come face to face with him, it was almost unlikely that he would have recognised him in his moustache. they were not to meet as yet.
in the evening of the nineteenth there was a rumble of artillery over the hill in front of them, which died away in half an hour. most of the rest of the cavalry were further to the front of the extreme left, and were “at it,” so it was understood, with the cossacks. but the 140th were still idle.
on the morning of the twentieth, charles and the rest of them, sitting in their saddles, heard the guns booming in front and on the right. it became understood among the men that the. fleet was attacking some 3atteries. also, it was whispered that the russians were going to stand and fight. charles was sixth man from the right of the rear rank of the third troop. he could see the tails of the horses immediately before him, and could remark that his front-rank man had a great patch of oil on the right shoulder of his uniform. he could also see hornby in the troop before him.
these guns went moaning on in the distance till half-past one; but still they 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 at one another. even the head of the column could have seen nothing, for they were behind the hill. but all could hear, and guess. we all know that sound well enough now. you hear it now, thank god, on every village green in england when the cricket is over. crack, crack! crack, crack! the noise of advancing skirmishers.
and so it grew from the right towards the front, towards the left, till the air was filled with the shrill treble of musketry. then, as the french skirmished within reach of the artillery, the deep bass roared up, and the men, who dared not whisper before, could shout at one another without rebuke.
louder again, as our artillery came into range. all the air was tortured with concussion. charles would ave given ten years of his life to know what 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 time he came to the conclusion that the patch of grease on his right shoulder was of the same shape as the map of sweden.
a long weary two hours or more was spent like this. charles, by looking forward and to the right, between the two right-hand men of the troop before him, could see the ridge of the hill, and see the smoke rising from beyond it, and drifting away to the left before the sea-breeze. he saw an aide-de-camp come over that ridge and dismount beside the captain of hornby’s troop, loosening his girths. they laughed together; then the captain shouted to hornby, and he laughed and waved his sword over his head. after this, he was reduced to watching the back of the man before him, and studying the map of sweden. it was becoming evident that the map of north america, if it existed, must be on his left shoulder, under his 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 one instant, had a glimpse of the valley below, seething and roaring like a volcano. everywhere bright flashes of flame, single, or running along in lines, or blazing out in volleys. the smoke, driven to the left by tbe wind, liung across the valley like a curtain. on the opposite hill a ring of 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 saw only the back of the man before him, and the patch of grease on his shoulder.
but that night was a night of spurs for them. hard riding for them far into the night. the field of the alma had been won, and they were ordered forward to harass the cossacks, who were covering the rear of the eussian army. they never got near them. but ever after, when the battle of the alma was mentioned before him, charles at once used to begin thinking of the map of sweden.
