VC - A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea Part 13

'Hurry up!' said Volnay. 'That smell is maddening. How did you men come in for such a treasure trove as this?'

'I'm Columbus,' said the Honourable Paddy, tinning the ramrod spit.

'Why, by Jingo!' cried Volnay, 'you've got a whole pig here. I say, Sergeant, I'm going to confiscate a leg for our Christmas mess. You don't think you fellows are going to be allowed to sit gourmandising here whilst we go hungry!'

One man, sheltered by the shadow, answered sneeringly:

'Precious little going hungry amongst your set, sir,' said he.

'And precious little you know about it, my good fellow,' Volnay answered, with his sunny laugh. 'Life isn't all beer and skittles amongst your officers, let me tell you.'

'I'd like to change, sir,' said the malcontent.

'Would you?'asked the Captain. 'Well, I dare say you would. But we all have enough to grumble at, and to spare, if we happen to be built that way. Just expedite that joint, Sergeant.'

'It will be all the better for another turn or two, sir,' said Polson.

'It's a deadly pity, but there's no such thing as a hint of crackling.

Piggy came along with his bristles on, and we have no shaving tackle.'

'Who goes there?' cried a voice in the darkness, two score yards away.

'Grand rounds,' said another voice. It was Major de Blacquaire's, and Polson had not heard it since the day of the Alma, a year and three months ago.

'Halt, grand rounds, and give the countersign.'

'Bonnie Dundee.'

'Pa.s.s, grand rounds, and all's well.'

Grand rounds came tramping down the trench and the men about the fire rose up and stood to attention.

'What is this?' asked De Blacquaire. 'Who's in charge here?'

'I am, sir,' Polson answered, saluting.

'What's the meaning of this blaze here? Can't you see that you're drawing the enemy's fire? Report yourself to me at noon to-morrow.

Scatter that stuff, and trample it out.'

A foot was thrust into the embers, and they flared up suddenly. The Major recognised his enemy, and looked from his eyes to the stripes upon the left sleeve of his ragged overcoat.

'Is that your own coat?' he asked. 'Yes, sir.'

'Sergeant are you? I'll break you for this to-morrow.'

'That you, old chap?' drawled Volnay from his seat on the bread-box.

'Said you were dead. We've got no end of a find here. Whole pig. If you'll let me know where to find you, I've bagged a ham, and I'll invite myself to dine with you, and bring my own rations with me.'

'Thaanks,' said De Blacquaire. 'Don't trouble. I shall find it my duty to report this scene of riot and disorder. Forward. March.'

Grand rounds went by, and the scattered fire faded.

'If you _can_ manage to hack a slice of that pork off, Sergeant!' said Volnay, 'I'm beastly hungry.'

'Done, I think, to a turn,' said Polson. 'Who's got anything that will cut?'

'I'm tould, sir,' said a voice out of the darkness, with a rich oily brogue in it, 'that there's hours of difference between here and Limerick. Won't it be Christmas morning in old Ireland, sir? And will the bells be ringing?'

'Ye're out in your reckonin',' said another voice amid the shadows.

'It's exactly the other way. Your folks is going to bed in Limerick.

The sun has a knack of risin' in the east, my lad, and we're far east of Ireland, or Aberdeen for that matter. I'm not mindin' the exact particulars, but it's a matter of some two hours, I'm thinking. It's deep midnight here, and an hour or so beyond it, and they'll be over their punchbowls, yonner. That's so, sir, I'm believin'?'

'I don't know, upon my word,' said Volnay. 'You're out of my depth, my lad. But it's a bit of a sin to talk about punch-bowls, isn't it, on a night like this, when there isn't a hot drink within a hundred miles?

Sergeant, this pork is like manna in the wilderness. Look me up before you report yourself to Major de Blacquaire, will you? I'm responsible for the fire, you understand. It was my duty to retire the whole crowd of you under arrest, I know, but there isn't a lot of fun going for you beggars here, is there? Goodnight, Sergeant, and don't forget the hour in the morning.'

'Good-night, sir.' 'G.o.d go with you, sir.' 'A merry Christmas and a loight harrut to you, sir, for many a year.'

'That's your man, nah, Sergeant,' said one man out of the shadow in a tone that was learned in Rotherham, or very near it. 'Ah like Captain Volnay as mooch as ah like anybody. He's got a kind of a way with him an' he sits dahn with the like of huz, and he talks to us as if we was men in place o' bein' cattle, which is the way with most on 'em. Here's good luck to Captain Volnay, an' if ah'd got a gla.s.s o' that steamin'

poonch they'n got in Aberdeen, ode bird, ah'd scald _my_ throat with a relish.'

They were all full of roast pork, or of pork more or less roasted, and the scent of the sacrifice was yet in the air, and their war-bitten souls were cheered and warmed, if ever so little.

'Yis,' said one lad, 'if half the quality knowed!'

'Hallo!' said Polson, turning in the fragrant dark. 'How far from Bilston were _you_ born?'

'Wedgebury,' said the voice. 'No furder.'

'Beacon Hargate, me,' said Polson. 'I'd ha' guessed it, Sergeant. I'd ha' guessed it. I niver heerd your voice afore to-night, but there's a kind of a turn of the tongue in it now and then.'

The contingent fell to silence, and a wet clinging snow began, ruled in straight lines. The embers of the fire hissed under it, and the men drew themselves into such shelter as they could find, and waited in the grey, cold patience for the expected relief from duty. It was long in coming, and they learned afterwards that the regimental Sergeant-major, whose duty it ought to have been to relieve them on that Christmas morning, was dead from dysentery, poor fellow, and as a matter of fact it turned out that he was buried in the muddy earth and half frozen in there before anybody remembered to take up his duty.

The long, long night went on, and the Russian gunner, finding his attention no longer drawn to the distant fire, had gone to sleep or anyhow fallen silent, when a witching noise rose upon the air, and all the worn, half-sleeping men sat up to listen. Surely there was the sound of church bells, and there was a rush towards the pleasant noise. It was only a man from the smithy who happened to have a musical ear and had rigged up a kind of gallows from which he had hung carbine and rifle barrels of varying lengths and calibre, on the which he was beating with an iron rod. The sulky dull beginning of the dawn on Christmas Day, and there in the trenches the Christmas bells ringing as they might have rung in any village church in old England, two thousand miles away. And the hearts of the listeners rose to their throats, and men were quiet whilst the music sounded. The notes reached far, and fell on many a drowsy ear, conjuring up visions in the half-slumbering minds of humble whitewashed village steeples, far and far away. Polson's contingent, drawn from a distance of some two hundred yards, stuffed that ingenious musician with half-cold roast pork, and left him well rewarded for his toils.

By one of those surprising fatuities which distinguished this particular campaign almost above all others in which the English private soldier has been engaged, an attack which was ordered for black midnight was ready just in the grey of dawn, and Polson's ear caught a whispered word of command here and there, and a noise of careful footsteps. The trench of the second parallel was ten feet deep, but there was a ladder of foot-holes just behind him, and he turned and climbed, digging his fingers into the half-frozen turf on the Russian side. There was the grim Redoubt at which the English guns had hammered in vain this many and many a day, still solidly silhouetted against the clearing sky of morning, dark and lowering, quiet as death and yet from old experience holding a threat in the entrails of it. The men--three or four thousand of them, as one might guess--climbed into the trench of the first parallel and were lost to sight. They emerged crouching, and raced across the s.p.a.ce which intervened between them and the second, where Polson's own post lay. They were down like a dumb wind on the one side and up again on the other, and raced, crouching, for the first, into which they again disappeared. The man who shouldered Polson from his place, and whose face as he went by might be distinctly seen, was Major de Blacquaire.

'Leading a forlorn hope, you devil, are you?' said the Sergeant to himself; but the words were silent, and he felt a simple throb of admiration for the set mouth and resolute eyes of the man who had climbed past him, and wished himself in his place.

The racing, crouching crowd had dived into the foremost trench and had reappeared again before it was discerned by the Russian sentries; but a hundred yards away from the foot of the glacis, the whole advance was caught and swept and twisted, as by a whirlwind, by a hail of gunshot, canister and rifle fire. The half-melted, new-fallen snow clung to the sloping glacis of the Redoubt, and made a greyish background of dim light against which a watcher could perceive not only the whole motion of the line, but the gesture of any single figure in it. Hate and interest and admiration alike prompted Polson's eyes to follow the slim, active figure with the waving sword which silently beckoned on his followers. The Redoubt opened, as it were, with an earthquake crash, and all the black front of it went fiery red and yellow, and at the first discharge of this inferno, the figure with the flourished sabre in his right hand fell p.r.o.ne. The double line of the invaders shook and wavered from right to left, and men dropped amongst them as if the scythe of Death were literally sweeping there. The lines advanced, wavered, paused, turned, turned again, advanced again with mad cheering, scarce heard amid the rattle of musketry and the roaring of the guns; and finally broke and ran, utterly routed. The onlooker had no part in this conflict except to bite and ram down a cartridge or two and to send a shot more or less at random into the black oblong of the opposing fort; but clinging with his feet on that precarious muddy ladder, and with his elbows to the frozen turf, he saw clearly the convulsive gesture with which De Blacquaire lifted his sabre in a last effort to wave on his men.

Man is a very complex creature, and he will not be finally a.n.a.lysed and done with until this planet is very much older than it was in the nineteenth Christian century. Whether it was hate, or personal pride, or a sudden flash of admiration for a man whom he had hitherto despised, Polson Jervase could not have told you to his dying day.

But though the motives which inspired him were very wildly mixed and very uncertain in their origin, there is no doubt whatever as to the deed to which amongst themselves they inspired him that Christmas morning. The Malakoff belched h.e.l.l. The flying crowds hustled him and threw him twice or thrice. But he was on his feet again, racing towards that p.r.o.ne figure. He dropped into the front trench and trod upon a wounded man who screamed beneath his heel, and climbed out on the further side. The air was musical with hooting sh.e.l.l and singing shot and hissing bullet as if a whole diabolic orchestra were fiddling and bugling. Polson found the fallen body of his foe, and hugged it in his arms, and raced back as hard as he could tear. He tumbled into the trench of the first parallel almost anyhow; but he gripped the man he hated, and in his soul was a great rejoicing. He tore up the opposite side, and came out upon the open slope again, with the unconscious man still in his arms.

'You'll ruin me, you devil!' said Polson, as he ran breathlessly with the wind of shot and sh.e.l.l in his ears. 'And I'm to report myself to you to-morrow, am I? We may report ourselves to Almighty G.o.d together, but _you_ are safe for the minute, I guess.'

He was within a yard of his own post when these mad exaltations of an excited fancy crossed his mind, and at that instant a musket shot took him in the neck and he fell with his burden into the trench before him.