Chapter X · A PRISONER OF WAR.

Out of the whole army, Chesters was the last man whom Horace Ramornie would have chosen for a partner in misfortune, or in anything; and he marched along by his side, preserving a grave and contemptuous silence. Twice or thrice Chesters, who seemed in no way crestfallen, attempted to open a kind of "chaffing" conversation, by offering bets about their destination, the probable term of their captivity, and so forth. But Horace made not the slightest response. And now, as day dawned and the storm abated, about eight miles distant he could see Sebastopol, with all its tremendous batteries, its green domed churches, and lofty houses, the walls of which were white as the snow that covered all the landscape.

He could see the steamers about Balaclava, and the camps of the Allies; and of these he seemed to take a farewell glance, as he and his escort descended into the valley through which the Black River runs.

An irrepressible emotion of sadness crept over him. When should he see his comrades or be free again? What account of his fate would be conveyed to Willowdean? Letters had informed him of the grief and consternation there, consequent to the report of Cyril's being "missing" after the Alma; but how would his disappearance be accounted for? and what an amount of sorrow it would cause to Gwenny! Ideas of escape occurred to him; but he had been deprived of his sword and revolver, and the six Ruskies who formed the escort, were fellows not likely to stand on trifles with those who were in their hands. They had rifled his pockets, deprived him of watch and rings, and stripped the lace from the collar and cuffs of the faded uniform he wore below his pea-jacket; and Chesters was treated in the same scurvy fashion.

They were all men whose raw-boned figures indicated clumsy strength. Their features were hard, angular, and ugly. Their long great-coats were of mud-colour, with flat metal buttons and scarlet shoulder-straps, and their canvas havresacks contained their coarse tobacco and materials for manufacturing sour-krout, while their canteens smelt strongly of raki—the three prime luxuries of their stupid and perilous lives.

One of them, who seemed rather a good-natured man, offered Horace a mouthful from his canteen, and then a piece of black bread, but it looked too like a portion of peat from a bog, and he declined both.

But to be a prisoner almost at the commencement of a war was a galling and oppressive thought to the young man! How long might he remain so, and what might his treatment be? The greatest empires in the world were involved in this mortal contest, and his captivity might last for years—for the natural term of his life perhaps; for at that time strange and dark rumours were afloat in the Allied camps of the French having found in some Tartar castles prisoners who had been gleaned up on the retreat from Moscow, and kept chained as slaves since then. Whether such was the case or not, it is impossible to say now; but the idea of such a doom being his, froze the blood in the veins of Ramornie; and he thought with agony of Gwendoleyne Wedderburn becoming—perhaps when he and his fate were alike forgotten—the bride of another.

A body of Russian cavalry from Kamara was now upon the march rearward, under General Prince Galitzin, as Horace ascertained from a passing officer who spoke French, and behind this force he and his companion in misfortune were marched under a new escort of dirty and unwashed Cossacks, who to make sure of them and save themselves trouble, mounted the captives on two spare Tartar ponies, and tied their hands to the shaggy manes thereof.

These Cossacks were all beetle-browed, ill-favoured looking fellows, with high cheek-bones, piggish-like eyes, and wore fur caps, in colour and quality closely resembling their own beards. Their uniforms were coarse and quaint, but their arms were bright and good, and each rode with his knees up to his saddlebow, and so surrounded by forage, bags of Ghiska wheat, and other plunder taken from the poor Tartar peasantry, that little more than the head and crupper of their little horses could be seen.

They were doubtless brave and resolute men, for the copper medals stitched on their coarse green uniforms showed that they were Don Cossacks, and had faced alike the rifles of Schamyl's Circassian cavaliers, and the keen sabres of the Khirghee outlaws.

This Cossack force continued riding eastward, and ere long they were at the base of the Tchatr-Dagh, or "mountain of the tents"—a flat hill not unlike the famous Table Mountain, but all of red marble, towering above groves of large trees that were leafless then, and clumps of dark green cypresses, where many a huge eagle, and whole clouds of other wild birds, hovered in mid-air. Here they shot and roasted a few bustards, which were plucked, cooked, and eaten, without being permitted to cool—there was no time for that—and Horace and the obnoxious Chesters came in for a share of the birds; though sooth to say the drumsticks were tough enough to have been used on a drum. With these they had some yourgourt, or sour milk and Tartar cakes, taken sans cérémonie by the Cossacks from the house of a neighbouring farmer.

The snow had disappeared now in the changeable climate of the Crimea, having melted so fast that scarcely a trace of it remained even on the bare scalp of the Tchatr-Dagh, or the grotesque-looking Dimirdji Mountain, which towered on the opposite side where the halt had been made, and which was soon to be the scene of a very dark incident.

"Alexis, Ivan," said a smart looking aide-de-camp, in the rich uniform of the Princess Maria Paulovna's Hussars—for that lady was sister to the Empress, and was proprietrix of a regiment of cavalry—"bring those two prisoners before the General, Prince Galitzin."

Then the two weary wretches who escorted Horace and Chesters, and who had just lit their short pipes to enjoy a brief whiff, started simultaneously from that dirty piece of felt on which they were squatted, and which economically serves the Cossack warrior in the triple capacity of bed, tent, and cloak.

We should have mentioned in its place, that it was Chesters who commanded the force of Turks that so disgracefully abandoned the 93rd Highlanders at Balaclava, but not through any fault of his own, as he killed several of the fugitives with his sabre in vain attempts to stay the rest. Left behind sick at Malta by the transport, he and his affair on board that ship had been forgotten amid the bustle of embarking for the Crimea, and the subsequent passage of the Alma; so that he had been permitted to join his corps of that peculiar force, the Turkish Contingent, where his story was unknown, or if known, would not be understood, and now he thought that all his gambling scrapes and sharp play had been forgotten, so he was little prepared for what was before him.

And now we have to apologize to the reader for an introduction to a very unpleasant personage indeed; but such introductions are misfortunes which the historian and novelist cannot avoid.

Apart from where more than a thousand Russian heavy cavalry had hobbled their horses, and were cooking, smoking, eating sour krout and drinking bitter quass or fiery raki, some lounging at length on the still damp grass, with their belts and leather helmets off, for the air was steamy and moist, as the sun had so rapidly melted and exhaled the snow of the preceding night in mist, Prince Galitzin and a few noisy Russian officers were partaking of a hurried repast near the wall of a Tartar vineyard—an erection which, from its massive thickness, age, and height, must have been a remnant of one of the many fortresses erected in the Crimea during the fifth century against the Goths and Huns.

Near it rose several of those green tumuli which are so common over all the Peninsula, and mark the graves of those who had fallen in the ages of classical antiquity—old even as the days of Mithridates.

The Prince occupied a stool beside a kind of table, both of which had been brought from the house of the Tartar farmer, and his brother officers stood or lay on the grass around him, laughing and smoking. Under a loose grey greatcoat, which was open, he wore a rich uniform of grass-coloured green, richly laced with gold. His epaulettes were massive, and several medals and orders of the empire were sparkling on his breast. He seemed rather an undersized man, with a handsome face, having dark and sparkling eyes, set indeed unpleasantly near each other; his nose was hooked, with a somewhat delicate nostril, indicating Tartar blood, and his jet black moustachios were well and fiercely curled up.

He did not rise as the two prisoners approached him, each with proper politeness yielding a salute, in reply to which he simply lifted his cocked hat a few inches; but ere he replaced it, his face and his shorn black hair recalled at once to the memory of Horace a former acquaintance—the person who had figured as Captain of Zouaves among the British at Varna and elsewhere; and the fallen officer who so infamously pistolled poor Cyril Wedderburn after performing an act of mercy at the battle of the Alma, where he dragged him from under his dying horse.

In short, the notorious Russian Spy, and Ivan Tegoborski, General Prince Galitzin, were one and the same man!

As there are upwards of three hundred Princes of that distinguished name in Russia, we shall have no fear of "being called out" for mentioning one of them here; but he in question was the poorest among them, having now only his military pay.

The first emotion of Horace was astonishment, and then genuine contempt, that any officer should so far have degraded himself and his epaulettes; next he thought of the kind, gentle, and manly Cyril Wedderburn, and his heart grew hot with indignation. He involuntarily turned to Chesters, but in the face of that person read considerable alarm and disquietude; for he too had recognised a former acquaintance, who, like De la Fosse, had a gambling grudge to remember.

"So, Messieurs!" said the Russian, coolly and with a strange smile, "we three recognise each other, it seems?"

"I am sorry to say that we do," replied Horace Ramornie, haughtily, in French, which he did not speak nearly so well as the Prince; but, as a traveller remarks, "the Russians have this advantage over other nations—namely, that they are endowed with the gift of tongues, having an extraordinary facility for acquiring and speaking with a pure accent any foreign language;" yet one who can speak Russian or Chinese may easily achieve anything vocable. "Monsieur le Prince, how about the coffee, the broiled chickens, and cream tarts you were wont to get from your dear mother, in Gascony? Was it honourable to act as you did at Varna, and elsewhere?" asked the young officer, boldly.

There was a triumphant and malicious but cruel glitter in the eyes of Galitzin, as he replied, coolly—

"All plans are fair in war and love, my friend. Thanks to me, Alexander Mentschicoff knew to a nicety every bayonet and sabre you had yonder in Bulgaria; yes, and every cannon too. So now we shall drop that subject. You are sorry to recognise me? By the bones of all the Moschti of Russia, and by every shrine in Holy Mother Moscow, one here shall be still more sorry at this meeting!" and his eyes flashed like a sword-blade as they turned to Chesters. He then added, to Horace, "What is your name?"

"Horace Ramornie, Captain in her Britannic Majesty's Royal Fusileers."

Galitzin made a note of the name—"Oraz Ramhornoff, Capitan"—in a fashion that would have puzzled Horace's friends had they seen it on his calling cards.

"Your companion's name I know but too well, as Captain Chesters."

"He is Major Chesters, here at least."

"That will matter little by-and-by," was the ominous response. "What was the object of the sudden night march from Balaclava towards Tchorgoun."

"To attack you."

"Bah! I thought so; you didn't succeed though."

"The snow——"

"Ah, Nicholas, our glorious Emperor, was right. Holy Russia has two generals who never fail her—January and February! What was the strength of your force? There were Turkish dogs among it, I know—the Asiatics!"

"For that very reason I cannot tell. Moreover, I must decline to say more."

"I might compel you," retorted the other.

"Am I to have my parole of honour?"

"That we shall consider elsewhere. Meantime a glass of wine with you."

"Thanks, Monsieur le Prince," and Horace, however repugnant the pretended cordiality, felt himself constrained to clink his glass against that of the Prince and drink with him. After which, the latter said—

"And now, Monsieur Chesters, for you."

"Shall my parole be granted?"

"No!" was the abrupt response.

"What am I to understand by that reply and your peculiar smile, Prince Galitzin?" asked Chesters, uneasily, for his captor was known to be at heart a savage, "but a savage of health and vigour, smoothed and shapened in accordance with the prejudices of civilized life."

"Oui; you smiled when I lost roubles to you by the thousand. I then learned to beware of the smile of such polished villains; but it is my turn to be merry now."

"Why, Monsieur le Prince?"

"Because you are the loser."

"In what way, beyond being a prisoner of war, I have yet to learn," replied Chesters, with ill-assumed hauteur.

"The odd trick is against you, Monsieur."

"I am indifferent about the stakes."

"That we shall see, très bon! Come here, you fellows!" he cried to some soldiers who were loitering near, observantly. "Throw off your accoutrements, and dig me a hole here some six feet long!"

"A hole?" exclaimed Chesters, inquiringly.

"A grave!" replied the hollow-hearted Russian, smiling with his false smile and black, glittering eyes.

"Have you no sense of honour?" asked Chesters, growing very, very pale.

"Some of its kind. Quick! deeper and deeper yet! Throw out the earth, you accursed Asiatics!" he added, kicking one of the soldiers with his jackboot, and bestowing upon him the most opprobrious epithet in Russia, the name of the race which closed his order. "Ah, Monsieur Chesters, you thought that some fine day, sooner or later, you would repent of your misdeeds; and now you have not time, ah! ah!"

"Then, have you no compassion?" urged Horace.

"Bah! I parted company with that long ago," laughed the other.

"Do you actually mean to assassinate him?"

"No!"

"What then?" asked Chesters.

"To punish you."

"Give me pistols, and I shall fight you at twelve paces—ten, if you prefer it!" said Chesters, who gazed at him with a haggard eye.

"I don't fight with cheats or tricksters, and men who use loaded dice, and know the backs of cards quite as well as their fronts, if not better. Tie his hands behind his back, and tie his feet too!"

By this time the sharply ringing brass trumpets had sounded; the cavalry had all mounted, and formed in quarter-distance column of troops, prior to the resumption of their march; and it was evident that whatever was about to be done would soon be over now.

Chesters was all that was vile and bad, yet he was the son of a gentleman—the scion of a family long honoured in his native Merse. The Crimean air had bronzed his cheek; time, and still more, dissipation, had whitened his hair. He had done deadly wrongs to the kinsman of Horace, yet the latter looked on the impending scene with horror, and prayed Galitzin, but in vain, to be merciful.

Horace remembered that there was a local story of the prophecy of a half-crazed female gipsy of Yetholm (at whom Chesters, in his mischievous boyhood, had thrown stones), to the effect that he "would never die of a sudden death, nor yet die in his bed;" and now it flashed upon the mind of Horace; but to judge by the piteous expression of his face, Chesters put no faith in the prediction, if at that moment he remembered it at all.

A couple of dragoons had unslung their carbines and were in the act of loading, ramming their cartridges home, and returning their steel rods, with a sang froid that was more French than Muscovite, when Chesters, who was powerful and athletic, proud and fiery, struggled fiercely with those who sought so ignominiously to bind him. Big bead-like drops of perspiration oozed over the unfortunate man's forehead, his face was deadly pale, his lips a ghastly blue, and his usually light-coloured eyes glared with all the anticipation and the terror of a sudden, merciless, and violent death, which he knew to be inevitable, yet he could not resist the natural desire to shun it as long as possible, for at that moment life seemed dear—oh, so dear! Yet in his blind despair, he sought aid neither from Heaven nor earth.

Horace called hoarsely, piteously, and then threateningly to Prince Galitzin, who only waved his hand in contemptuous silence, and then the two Cossacks once more seized him, one administering a prod from his lance to quicken his movements, and they again mounted him on the Tartar pony, re-tying his hands to the mane thereof. They then forced him away, but, on looking back, he saw a strangely horrible scene.

In his mad terror of death, or in his utter despair, Chesters, with his clenched teeth, had seized fast the coat sleeve—perhaps the arm—of one of those who were binding him. Another dragoon on seeing this clubbed a carbine and dealt him a blow on the head, a blow which, though it inflicted no wound but only a flesh bruise, completely stunned him, and he fell senseless.

"In with him as he is and cover him up," said Galitzin, remorselessly. "Keep your ammunition for others! Quick—obey me, or it shall be the worse for yourselves!"

The two dragoons who had paused with loaded carbine in hand, now relinquished them, for they knew that Galitzin was not a man to brook delay, or have his temper trifled with; and taking a couple of Tartar shovels, they proceeded to assist in filling up the grave upon the yet living and breathing man, whom the cold earth so speedily revived that a sense of his situation dawned upon him!

A half-stifled cry of despair, that made the blood of Horace congeal, came out of that hole; another and another followed, each, however, more faint than the last, as the load of earth grew heavy upon him. Then came a sound like a convulsive groan or snort; anon it was completely filled, and they batted the heaped-up mound with the flat of the shovel. Four feet below that heap writhed the yet living man, bound hand and foot; and while the Pulkovnick, or Colonel of the Russian Dragoons, gave his hoarse words of command to "break into sections" and "march," while the kettledrums rolled and the trumpets pealed forth a lively and martial air, Horace, as he looked back, thought he could see the mound of earth heaving, as the strong man struggled in his death agony amid the depth of his living grave!

So thus, in some fashion, the prophecy of the revengeful Yetholm gipsy came true after all; and the onyx ring of Louis De la Fosse, with its heraldic gauntlet on a sword's point, and the motto Droit en avant, became the prize of an ignorant Cossack, who tore it with his teeth from the finger of the half-senseless man.

This was all base revenge on the part of Galitzin, as he was a man stained with a thousand crimes and immoralities.

So there Ralph Chesters found his grave by the ruin of an old wall of the Gothic days, and amid a lonely clump of caper-trees and juniper-bushes in Crim Tartary!