VC - A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea Part 12

'Here is a mount, sir,' said the young dragoon. 'Not as good as your own, but it will carry you back to camp, anyhow.'

As he spoke, the epauletted c.o.c.ked-hatted owner of the slaughtered charger was leaning downward, detaching something from a holster, and when he looked up he displayed the features of Major de Blacquaire.

Until that instant neither could have recognised the other, but at the first glance there was a challenge in the eyes of either.

'Thanks, my man,' said De Blacquaire, laying a hand upon the rein which Polson held out towards him.

Nothing could have been more savagely incisive than the tone, nothing more purposed to wound.

'You caught this horse rather cleverly,' said De Blacquaire, 'and I'm very much obliged to you. Of course, you understand that a man doesn't go into action with a lot of money about him; but if you'll ask for me at headquarters this evening, Major de Blacquaire, you'll find half-a-sovereign waiting for you. You can ask my man for it.'

The Major stood drawling there, with purposed insult in word and tone and smile, and Polson, leaning downward, drew his dragoon's gauntlet from the left hand, and struck him across the face with it.

'I suppose,' he said, 'that's flat mutiny, and whilst I am about it, here's another sample of the same.'

The Major retreated behind his horse, and stood there, almost speechless with indignation.

'I threatened you with a hiding once before,' said Polson. 'And you were cur enough to run away. I told you on the day I joined that if we ever met again and by word or look or gesture you insulted me, I would spoil that handsome face of yours. You can report against me, if you like, and I dare say that if you do it may go pretty hard with me. But I will let you off for the moment with what you have taken, and for the present I will say good evening to you.'

He drew on his gauntlet as he spoke, and turned his horse's head.

'Wait there,' said De Blacquaire. 'I have just one word to say to you.

You know that I could have you triced to the triangle and flogged?'

Polson nodded, but said nothing. His eyes spoke for him. 'You know I could have you court-martialled and shot?'

'Like enough,' said Polson. Major de Blacquaire swung into the saddle.

'I don't care to take revenge that way,' he said. 'I have known you always for an impudent and underbred young cub; but you go by way of pretending to be a gentleman, and I have my punishment in store for you.

I learned something of you from your friend, Captain Volnay, and amongst other things I find you are playing Quixote. When the campaign is over you'll be going back to the old thief's thousands. I will give you a gaol-bird to go back to. I have at quarters what amounts to a confession. It's an offer of rest.i.tution from Mr. Jervase; and I am not disposed to accept it. The case must slumber until this little business is over; but when I get back I will make a criminal prosecution of it, and you may make up your mind for whatever it may be worth that the work of this last five minutes has made a felon of that blackguard of a father.'

'And that,' said Polson, 'is an English officer's answer to a blow!'

'Yes,' said De Blacquaire, 'that is the English officer's answer.' And so saying, he put in spurs and rode away.

CHAPTER X

Here we are, fifteen months later, with Balaclava and Inkerman behind us, and the world ringing with the story of our valour; and something here and there being said about the staring incapacity of our commanders and the cra.s.s dishonesty and stupidity of our contractors. The army which left home in such bright array is transformed to a crowd of ragged vagabonds, and all the services are mixed together in the trenches and the camps before Sevastopol. Here are men of the Horse Artillery whose batteries have lost their horses; and here are cavalrymen dismounted, whether by reason of warlike misadventure or the sheer starvation of horseflesh. And since folks must do something for their bread in campaigning times, as at more peaceful seasons, the rules and regulations of special branches of the military service are cast aside, and men of every arm are working in the trenches together. A crowd of vagabonds we are to look at, to be sure; but a year of war, if you only think of it, makes a boy a veteran, and the bronzed, weatherbeaten, and ragged lads of whom the army is in the main composed, have lived in an atmosphere of powder for a year past; have gone marching and counter-marching under shot and sh.e.l.l; and charging, and repelling charges, until the imminent peril of their lives is a great deal more familiar to them than their daily bread. The peril is there always, and the bread turns up with extreme fitfulness.

On the Christmas Eve of 'fifty-five there was a time of excitement in the second parallel before the Malakoff; and this was not because of any special danger of the siege or any threatened imminent a.s.sault, but simply and merely because of the late slaughter of a pig of tender age whose screams had come up from the Turkish camp about the witching hour of midnight.

Amongst the war-worn, ragged, bronzed and bearded crowd is that identical Paddy who reckoned his uniform the livery of his degradation when he first a.s.sumed it. He is as ragged as any Connemara harvester by this time, and as tanned, as plucky, and as impudent in the face of death and hards.h.i.+p as he knows how to stick; and it is he who has brought the news which flutters the spirits of the score of men who are huddled in the trench together, right beneath the gaping embrasure of the Russian guns.

It was near midnight, and an extreme languor of fatigue had fallen upon all men when the tattered slip of Hibernian n.o.bility crawled up on hands and knees so as not to expose himself against the sky-line, and dropped into his own place in the trench. He dropped with his feet on the stomach of Sergeant Polson Jervase, who denounced his clumsiness in fair set terms, which came as pat to his lips as if he had rehea.r.s.ed them for a year.

'Is that you?' said Paddy. 'I beg yer pardon, and be d.a.m.ned to you. And now will ye just listen? D'ye hear the death cry?'

Everybody heard the death cry, filling the air from barely a third of a mile away: the voice of pork at the last agony.

'The Lord alone knows where it's come from, but that Mussulman crush down below has got hold of a pig. The devil a ration has been served to them for a month past, and they ought to know what hunger means be this time. But bhoys,' the speaker went on, with a whispered emphasis, 'we're Christian men, I hope, and we can't dream of allowing those poor infidels to peril their immortal salvation by the eating of strange food. It's eternal loss to the soul of a Mussulman that puts a knife and fork into a griskin. And I'm proposin' a work of Christian charity. Have ye got the matayrials for a fire handy?'

One of the men sleepily bade him be d.a.m.ned, and turned over in the mud in a sc.r.a.p of ragged blanket; but all the rest at the bare suggestion of a meal were wide awake. 'Sergeant, darlin', just be giving me half-a-dozen men and we will make an exploitation, and be back in no time with a meal of meat that ought to be good enough for this particular mess from now till New Year's Day. Is there any chance of a fire now?'

A member of the hungry, hard-bitten band owned a solitary lucifer; but was afraid that the damp had deprived it of all virtue.

'Hurry up, boys,' said one. 'If once those blessed Bazouks get a fork into piggy, we shall have to fight for a share of him.'

'We've got the makings of a fire here somewhere,' said the man with the solitary lucifer. 'But how are we to start it? This brushwood stuff is all wet, and it won't catch.'

But one man was there with a providential sc.r.a.p of newspaper. There was a moon in the frosty sky, with tatters of windy cloud about it, which gave light enough to show the men each others' faces dimly, and they all cl.u.s.tered in a rough ring, some kneeling, some standing, and the centre of the throng was the man with the match. Near him, second only in importance, was the man with the newspaper, and kneeling near was a third who stirred up the loose brushwood below the heaped fuel which had been gathered and h.o.a.rded for a month past for a Christmas fire.

'Here's a dry pebble,' said one man, pressing solicitously forward, and proffering his midnight find to the man with the match. 'Strike her on that, and for G.o.d's sake hold your breath, boys.'

The human centre of interest, the man with the match, took the pebble and polished it to complete dryness on the lining of his overcoat. Then he struck the match, which emitted a faint phosph.o.r.escent glow, and went dark again.

In those days, when a Russian gunner felt aweary, and found a lack of interest in the crawling hours of darkness, he would let bang a gun from the Redoubt, simply _pour pa.s.ser le temps_; and at this minute the skipping 'zip' of a shot, a splutter of earth, and then the sullen boom of the discharge came to give variation to the scene. The lucifer match, however, was the all-absorbing centre of interest just then, and the scratch on the pebble was a much more important sound than any bellow of cannon from the fort. The lucifer was barely equal to its duties, and half-a-dozen times it gave its feeble spark of phosph.o.r.escent light in vain; but at last it struck, and the blue and yellow sulphur bubbled and crackled into flame. The man with the newspaper was ready, and caught the fire. The wet twigs smoked pungently, and there was one heart-sinking moment when the last chance seemed to have vanished; but then the fire sparkled up merrily, and the blaze lit the earthen side of the trench and the silky-bearded, bronzed, unwashed faces, and the stalwart, tattered figures of the crowd, with a flickering changeful brightness.

'That's all right, boys,' said the Honourable Patrick Erroll, Private of Dragoons. 'And now, Sergeant darlin', give me half-a-dozen rank and file, and, please G.o.d, well have a meal for Christmas morning.'

'Now, I'm just as keen as any one of you,' said Sergeant Jervase, 'and just as hungry; but be very quiet about the business, Paddy, and don't have a row with the Bas.h.i.+s, for the Lord's sake.'

'Trust me, Sergeant,' said the Honourable Mr. Erroll, 'and nurse the fire whilst we're away.'

Out of the blank darkness of the night the flame and glow from the second parallel seemed to bite a hole; and as its brightness grew, it drew the attention of the gunners of the Malakoff, who banged at it sulkily from time to time. But the reckless contingent under Paddy's leaders.h.i.+p had already clambered to the open and were making a muddy way in the darkness towards the Turkish camp.

Down in the trench the fire grew to a rich and splendid glow, and one or two of the favoured of fortune, who owned pipes and tobacco, plucked bright embers from it, and, nestling under the shelter of the wall, sucked away at their comfort with simple animal noises of satisfaction.

'I say, Bill,' says one, 'was you ever Hingry before you seen this Gawd-forsaken Crimea?'

'Lor' love yer,' says the man questioned, 'I was born hungry, and I've been hungry ever since. But if the Honourable Paddy finds that 'og, and I get hold of a hind leg of him, I won't complain before to-morrow midnight.'

The fire glowed with a richer and a richer light, and men of hospitable minds wiped their half-smoked clays on the inside crook of a coated elbow and pa.s.sed on luxury and refreshment to less-favoured neighbours.

It was a time for comrades.h.i.+p, if only for the fact that it was Christmas Eve, and coming fast towards Christmas morning. But the thought of the slain porker was in all men's minds, and made them expansive and generous and reserved by turns. Boom! said the gun from the Redoubt, and the earth spluttered between the collar of Sergeant Polson's jacket and his neck, and dribbled comfortlessly down his back, colder than any charity he had known of: lately-frozen earth, half thawed, with wet snow on the top of it, and a sulky boom behind to add a threat to its cold sting.

After long waiting, a voice in ecstatic laughter, and surely the voice of the Honourable Paddy, Shuffling footsteps in the dark, and the hungriest of the whole crowd in the trench climbing to peer into the blackness; a youth who has not yet finished growing, and who finds the irregularity of meals a cruel thing.

'I'd like to know,' says the Honourable Mr. Erroll cheerfully, 'who trusted those infernal Russians with a gun? They'll be hurting somebody by and by, if they're not careful. But here's the pig, boys, and there's n.o.body but poor little Ahmed Bey the worse for us. I knocked him on the head from behind, and we'll be none the worse friends to-morrow.'

Bang, and bang, and bang! sounded the guns from the Russian battery, drawn by the light; but a delicious odour rose upon the air, and the teeth of the little contingent watered. There was a ramrod with Sergeant Polson at one end of it, and Paddy Erroll at the other, and the loveliest loin of young pork in the middle; and the two, with scorched hands and scorched faces, turned, and turned, and turned the improvised spit. And there were some less nice in appet.i.te who had raked out heaps of glowing cinders from the fire, and had lain succulent slices thereon and buried them in more cinders, and who were now enjoying a compound feast of pork and charcoal, with such an insane relish as no home-staying epicure could conceive over the lordliest dish the combined cuisine of the whole wide world could show him.

'What are you up to here, you fellows?' said a voice out of the darkness. 'That's a jolly appetising smell.'

'Fresh roast pork, sir,' responded one man with his mouth full.

'Fresh roast pork!' echoed the inquirer. 'Hillo--that you, Sergeant?

You're in luck. I'll join your mess if you make no objection.'

'n.o.body more welcome than Captain Volnay, sir,' said Polson. 'Find that old bread-box, one of you, and give Captain Volnay a seat.'