Chapter XXIV · VARNA.

"And so you and Gwenny are engaged? By Jove! Don't wonder at it! She is a most attractive girl; and there are worse-looking fellows in the service than you, Horace. But I've not been lucky myself lately in this game of love-making. And you should hear old Conyers Singleton of ours tell the story of the girl he left behind him. It is quite a warning," said Cyril, as they trotted towards the line of advanced sentinels posted round the British camp.

"Going to Varna?" asked Captain Joyce, of the Fusileers, whose guard tent was in that quarter.

"Yes. What is the parole?"

"'Bomarsund.' Countersign, 'Baltic.'"

"Thanks. That Zouave heard you?"

"Perhaps; but it can't matter much. He is a captain, I presume?"

Had Horace not been full of Gwenny's letter, and had he not found ample occupation in repeating to himself certain pleasant passages thereof, he must have been aware that there was a forced or spasmodic gaiety in the manner of Cyril Wedderburn that was not real, for he tugged at his moustache nervously, and viciously switched at the flies which buzzed about his horse's ears.

Troops of every kind; Lancers, with gay bannerets; Hussars, with their glittering dolmans; Carbineers, with brass helmets and slung carbines; Artillery, in dark blue; and Infantry, in red, covered all the plain. Our Household Brigade of Guards, in their bright scarlet coats, with large white epaulettes and bearskins; the Highlanders, who were in the same division, in their varied tartans, with their sturdy bare legs and tall-plumed bonnets, exciting the wonder of the starved-looking little Arabs of the Egyptian Contingent. There, too, were the Rifles, in their sombre green uniform, which looks almost black at a distance.

All the bustle of preparing food went forward at hundreds of impromptu fires, by soldiers in their shirt-sleeves; and the sound of chopping wood was heard on very hand, while the sun of the afternoon blazed hot in their fires from the unclouded Bulgarian sky. Fatigue parties went to and fro, laden with bundles of sticks for the cooks, or corn or swathes of grass for the horses; and songs and merriment came at times from the tents where the soldiers lay smoking on the sward. But the camp had its darker pictures.

Here and there a ghastly and attenuated sick man might be seen carried on a stretcher to the hospital tents; and, ere long, the same stretcher would be borne in another direction, with some victim of the Fever King, to be cast into the graves which honeycombed the low range of hills that overlook the Vale of Aladyn, or it might be to yonder "City of the Dead," in the plain, where the solemn rows of giant cypresses stand like guardians round the tombs of "the Faithful."

Beyond the British lay the French camp, with all its gaily-clad, untidy, but somewhat purpose-looking little soldiery. The Infantry of the Line, in long blue tunics, with scarlet epaulettes, and brass eagles on their tiny shakos; the splendid Cavalry and Artillery of the Imperial Guard; the Chasseurs à Pied; the Tirailleurs Algériens, dressed like Arabs, but in light blue; and the active Zouaves, in their (to us) well-known uniform, which excited great surprise and speculation among the stolid Turks and the Bulgarians who swarmed about the camps in great numbers, clad in jackets of undyed wool, wide white trousers, girt with sashes of silk, caps of brown sheepskin, and sandals of hide; and who failed to comprehend how Christians should be going to battle wearing the turban of Mohammed; for the poor Bulgarians loathe the Turks, whose slaves they are; and as such, dare not carry a knife, while all the former, down to the lowest hamal (or porter) go armed to the teeth, with pistols, sabre, and yataghan.

Amid all its splendour and order of military array, this camp, like our own, had also its dark features; the sick and dead were hourly borne through it; and there too were the intoxicated, courting disease and death, as they lay by the waysides, in ditches or kennels, stupefied with raki or peach-brandy, their faces blistering in the sunshine, and covered by clouds of odious flies. Others, despite all warnings, might be seen gorging themselves with scarlet pumpkins, cucumbers, gages and plums which the acquisitive Greeks offered for sale; and the Turks of Omar Pasha were nearly as reckless, for they were always eating of the perilous green fruit, when not engaged in smoking, praying, or covertly reviling "the Christian dogs," who had to fight their battles.

As Wedderburn and Horace were passing a mass of Araba carts, all drawn up wheel to wheel, there darted from under them a long snake of dark green colour mottled with white, and having bright protuberant eyes that flashed like carbuncles. As the reptile came forward, writhing, wriggling, and almost dancing on its tail, Cyril's horse reared back upon its haunches; but a Turkish Yazboshi, or captain of cavalry, who was riding by, drew a long brass pistol from his belt, and with singular adroitness shot it dead; and with a pleasant smile and a low salaam rode on. Once or twice the reptile quivered all its length in the dust, and then lay still.

"Ma foi, mes camarades, but that was well done!" said a voice, and they found themselves joined by the same Captain of Zouaves whom they had seen near Joyce's guard-tent. He was now mounted on a stout little Tartar horse and seemed to have made a détour round the French lines, instead of coming through them. The cousins scarcely noted the circumstance then, but subsequent events made them remember it. "Going into Varna, Messieurs?" he asked, reining in beside them.

"Yes," replied Cyril.

"A horrid place—dull as a vast catacomb; even the French can scarcely make it lively. Any word yet of when the troops are like to take the field, or for what point?"

"I have heard nothing yet, Monsieur," said Cyril, with some reserve, as the manner of the questioner seemed abrupt and authoritative.

"Your cavalry force is dwindling fast," resumed the Zouave. "Why, diable! all your regiments put together would barely make one efficient Russian corps of four squadrons," he added, with a mocking laugh.

"I don't understand this Captain of Zouaves," said Cyril, in a low voice: "he spends his whole time in our camp, and seems to have fallen in love with perfidious Albion. What can his object be?"

"Are you sure that he is a Captain of Zouaves?" asked Horace.

"I have no reason to doubt it—but hush; he may understand English."

It might have been some peculiarity of his dress which made Horace think what he said, for the Zouave had features that were more finely cut than usually appertain to Frenchmen. His eyes were black, glittering, and closely set together; his nose was somewhat hooked and a fierce moustache stuck sharply out on each side of it; but his hair, which was dark as a raven's wing, was shorn close to the scalp.

"Sang dieu!" he exclaimed, as if he had penetrated their thoughts and doubts, "but I am tired of this work. Ugh! when we pound the green beans here, between two friable stones, which add dust in plenty to the condiment, I think of the fragrant coffee I used to get at home, and the little pats of sweet butter on a honey-cake, or on a cool green ivy-leaf—the breakfast of my schoolboy days, at home in pleasant Gascony. I have been a soldier for twenty years; but I have never forgotten those days."

"He is a Gascon—ah, that accounts for his peculiar accent," said Horace.

"I am not much of a gourmand," resumed the Captain of Zouaves. "In Africa, I have often dined on a slice from an old trooper—a horse I mean; but still I have a predilection for fricassées, and fricandeaux et galettes, which mean collops Ecossais, or thin cakes (though the Scotch stole all their cooking from us, in the days of the old alliance), and I doat on broiled chicken and cream-tarts, such as I used to get from my old mother in Gascony, before I betook me to the rough-and-ready trade of soldiering."

"And now, Horace," said Cyril, whom the Frenchman's empty chatter bored, "behold our thriving city of Varna!"

It was a dreary looking place, and rose from a bank of white sand that stretched far along the flat Bulgarian shore.

Imagine a low and half-ruined wall, a mile in length, broken and battered as the shot of the Scoto-Russian Alexis Greig had left it in 1828, but all loopholed and painted pure white. Before it lies a ditch, over which a number of 68-pounder guns are pointed. Above it rise the round leaden domes of four mosques, with their tall, white, slender minarets, encircled by wooden galleries; the solitary campanile of the Greek church, and round these a little sea of dingy red-tiled roofs, and one may picture that Varna on which so many of our soldiers looked their last, and before which Ladislaus of Lithuania and Poland perished in a futile attempt to drive the stupid and brutal Osmanlees out of Christendom.

Prior to the arrival of our troops, its filthy streets had been deserted and silent as the grave. Save when a wild dog—the unclean and forbidden animal of the Prophet—panting with out-lolled tongue on a heap of decayed melons or festering offal, uttered a melancholy howl; when a stork, with flapping wings, came swooping down on the eaves of a dilapidated house, and loosened a tile or two, to fall with a crash; or when a bare-legged saka (a water carrier), with his brown feet, in low slippers, and his greasy buckets slung from a shoulder-strap, shambled along the narrow and tortuous, yet sunbaked, thoroughfares, no sound was ever heard there.

But now French and British soldiers filled every street and alley with noise and bustle; the bazaars were crowded by Zouaves chattering like magpies; by Rifles and Guardsmen; by grave and observant Scottish Highlanders in search of food, soochook sausages, and kabobs, or little articles of finery for wives and sweethearts far away at home; by quartermasters and sutlers, seeking corn and flour, beef and mutton, Greek wine and peach-brandy; in short, everything eatable and drinkable. Drums were beaten, bugles sounded incessantly, and incessant too was the marching to and fro of guards, escorts, pickets, and fatigue parties in their canvas frocks. Tumbrils, limbers, cannon and tents, encumbered the five arched gates; war-ships, transports, and pestilent looking little gunboats, crowded all its once empty harbour. The black kites and mangy pariah dogs were alike scared from its streets and market place. The lazy and blasé Turkish householder secluded himself in his divan hanee, or zenanah if he had one; and hourly held up his hands, or stuck his fingers in his ears, at every fresh wonder, for to him it seemed that the end of the world was nigh, for the sons of Anak, the children of Perdition and the Devil himself, had all possessed the city together!

French names were actually painted up at the street corners, and to crown all, an old deserted caravansera had been taken possession of, sans permission, by a speculative Parisian restaurateur, who papered, painted, and furbished it up gaily, and hung out an immense sign-board, on which an artistic Corporal of Zouaves had painted the French eagle, with the words, "Le Restaurant de l'Armée d'Orient, pour Messieurs les Officiers et Sous-Officiers;" and under this sign-board Wedderburn and Horace Ramornie dismounted, gave their nags, with a few piastres, to two half-naked hamals to lead about, and then entered the café.

END OF VOL. II

LONDON: SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN.