Chapter XI · THE PAROLE OF HONOUR.

The Russian troops in the Crimea were always being changed, with what object it is impossible to say; but those who were once engaged with the Allies seldom saw them again. Thus the Heavy Dragoon force of Prince Galitzin wheeled off towards Simpheropol, en route for the Isthmus of Perecop, while he, accompanied by his aide-de-camp and a few Cossacks, proceeded direct to Yaila, carrying with him one of the few trophies lately secured by the Russians—Horace Ramornie.

The repugnance the latter had of his captor was intense, yet he was compelled by policy to dissemble to an extent that made him almost despise himself; for he had to smile and bow his thanks whenever that personage proffered—as he not unfrequently did—his cigar-case, with a bland yet cunning glitter in his eyes. With all his bad points of character—and Horace knew not the half of them—he sorrowed for the sudden and terrible fate of the hapless Chesters, and justly deemed his death, and more than all, the mode of it, an outrage on humanity, on the laws of war and of nations; for whatever their private quarrel may have been, Galitzin should have respected the rights of a prisoner.

But the butchery of our wounded in the Valley of Inkerman, the massacre of a boat's crew under a flag of truce at Hango, and the cannonading of our ships that were perishing amid the terrible storm that swept the shore of the Euxine, go far to prove that the Russians are not particular in their mode of dealing with an enemy, or remarkable for their nice notions of chivalry.

So the close of the second day, after some forty miles march, saw Horace Ramornie a prisoner in the Castle of Yaila. Along the route he had noted every path and defile, every Tartar village, every wall and tree, that might guide him if he succeeded in escaping. That project, if put in execution, had with it many perils; for he might be shot, or shut up among the rank and file and sent inland he knew not where! He writhed under the restraint of the present, and anticipated the future with doubt and dread.

However, once within the gates of Yaila, his parole of honour was accepted by Galitzin, as commandant of the place, to the effect that he should not go more than one mile beyond its walls, reporting himself every night at gunfire to the parooschick (a lieutenant) of the main-guard; that he would be made a close prisoner if he failed in these conditions, and eventually shot if he attempted to escape.

Horace was fain to accept of these hard terms, stipulating, on the other hand, that his life should be safe, and that he might write to his friends at the camp by a Tartar messenger.

This was peremptorily refused by Galitzin, lest he should in some hidden terms describe the locality of Yaila and strength of the garrison; for distrust of everything and everybody was a second nature with this impoverished Prince. Moreover, he had been more than once a spy himself; so hence came much of the mystery that involved the disappearance of Horace Ramornie.

When he found himself isolated thus in that sequestered fort, amid the mountains of Crim Tartary, at times a stunned sensation came over him. He felt like one who wanders in the unknown places of dreamland, or under a species of nightmare! Was he the same Horace Ramornie who had lately so many friends, a position and rank as Captain in the Line—who had been riding between a file of filthy snub-nosed Cossack Lancers, in coarse uniforms and mangy-looking fur shoubahs, with his hands tied to the shaggy mane of a stolen Tartar pony; and was he actually to pine there, under the shadows of the Tchatr-Dagh and Dimirdji Mountains, for some unnamed period of time?

If this was reality, was Gwenny a myth?

The longing to escape was intense; but then he had given his parole; and to ask it back, would be to announce the intention of flight, and cause him to be made a close prisoner, who would be well watched in one of those cells or dungeons of the place, the bare thought of which made him shudder. He could but hope that some body of the Allies might by chance assault Yaila, and effect his rescue; if the Ruskies did not bayonet him, to prevent him from falling safe into friendly hands; and that he knew they were quite capable of doing.

Rising from the slope of the hill, on rocks of red and white marble, the Castle of Yaila consisted of four towers of very picturesque aspect, connected by an embattled curtain, or wall, before which lay a deep ditch of recent construction; and, in its time it had witnessed many changes, and had many masters.

The basement was originally part of a citadel erected by the Emperor Justinian against the barbarians. The family of a Khan of the house of Zingis, leader of the Golden Horde, who came from the deserts of Tartary to conquer Russia, had occupied it for several generations. It had been demolished by the Genoese, when the Superb City was mistress of Lesbos, Cyprus, and "Scio's rocky isle;" and it had been restored, to undergo a cannonading by Mohammed the Second, when he swept her industrious colonies from the shores of the Black Sea.

Now, each of those sorely-patched round towers, was surmounted by a Russian cupola, the copper of which was of a brilliant green colour. Two were shaped and striped like water-melons, and two like pine-apples, being cut into knobby points to make the resemblance more complete. Each terminated in a great cross, and over all, on the mast of a ship brought from the Euxine, waved the white standard of the Empire, charged with the blue saltire of its patron, the Fisherman of Bethsaida.

The garrison (Horace, intent on rescue if he could not escape, took note of everything) consisted of two four-company battalions of Finland Infantry, under the Pulkovnich, or senior Colonel, Alexis Tegoborski, a kinsman of the Prince—a grim old soldier, who had lost the half of his left hand by a Turkish sabre, at the siege of Varna, and wore a gold medal for the war in Transylvania. As each Russian company is supposed to be two hundred strong, this garrison should have consisted of at least sixteen hundred bayonets; but as Galitzin was one of those good old-fashioned Muscovite officers who peculated whenever he could do so, he had barely two-thirds of that number in his ranks; but when the (obliging) General of the District inspected them, the rest were borrowed from the next officer of the same school at Simpheropol, Kertch, or elsewhere; and the General, pocketing a share of the pay, said nothing about it.

In general vulgarity of appearance, as well as in coarseness of face, it was difficult to distinguish the officers from the men on parade. All wore the same long grey coat, that hid everything, to their gaiters; but under this, each had a dark-green coatee, faced with red and trimmed with yellow, like their flat, round forage-caps.

Heavy cannon, all painted green, with white crosses on the breech, commanded the approaches to the place on every side, and Horace saw with a sigh, that even if some General of the Allies suggested a sudden expedition of the troops to Yaila, as Campbell did to Tchorgoun, that the Castle would not be taken without a terrible loss of life; yet, he was fond of imagining the joy with which he would see the Red-coats, or the active Zouaves, in their baggy madder breeches, crossing the ditch under grape and musketry, and swarming up the rocky glacis at the bayonet's point. And then his heart would leap within him, only to sink lower in hope than ever. For when was it to be?

Though a Russian Prince, and, consequently, we may suppose, a gentleman, Galitzin had but vague ideas of the position held in English society by an officer of any rank: and though the superannuated nurse of the Emperor, and even his coachman, have the nominal rank of Colonel—for everything is judged by the standard of the sword and epaulette in Russia—he was disposed to treat the "Hospodeen Kamhornoff," as he called him, rather coldly, and all the more so when reverses came thick and fast upon the garrison of Sebastopol.

So February passed into April, and wistfully and yearningly did the prisoner gaze upon the blue waters of the Euxine (piquancy being given to that glimpse by the sails and smoke of our war-steamers, cruising between the Straits of Yeni Kale and Sebastopol), "the highroad to Old England," which lay about two miles from his place of detention. And his soul sickened of the same eternal view. Yet that view was not without its charms.

There were the stupendous peaks of the Dimirdji and Tchatr Dagh; the picturesque little Tartar villages with white walls and green roofs; a peep of the wooded valley of the Salghir—the silver rivulets stealing between the slopes of emerald green towards it and the sea. Groups of passing natives; the Asiatic women, with loose trousers and flowing headdresses—the Russian, with high-waisted petticoats; the turbaned and slippered Turk, with a bundle of weapons in his sash; a mounted Tartar, in a red striped jacket with blue trousers and scarlet sash; a Russian Mujik, in jackboots and sheepskin jacket; and troops of all arms, perpetually pouring forward to or from Sebastopol; and high over head the black eagles soaring in the blue sky. But Horace sighed for his little tent in the British camp; for his perilous tour of duty in the trenches; for creeping towards the rifle-pits in rear of a sap-roller; and to hear once more the ding-dong of the great guns, night and day, in and around the beleaguered city!

The greatest terror of Horace was a snowy or, as the season opened, a wet day, for then he was of a necessity confined within the walls.

Minus umbrella and wrappers, he could not even enjoy his paroled mile, but was compelled to keep within a dingy whitewashed room, heated by a peitchka or wall stove, with a tattered copy of the Times or Galignani three months old, which somehow found their way there, and from which the censor of the press had carefully obliterated everything of the slightest interest; otherwise he would encounter General Prince Galitzin, who was most exacting of salutes, at every other turn of the old tumbledown Tartar stronghold, every stone of which he loathed.

The weeks were marked only by a bearded Greek priest, who performed service on Sunday in the armoury, clad in white, with gorgeous vestments of cloth of gold, bordered by the richest lace.

Sometimes he had the honour of dining with the Prince, and the pleasure of having his usual meal of beef, black bread, and beer, especially after wrecks in the Black Sea, varied by a repast à la Russe, where everything was excellent, from the preliminary kimmel and caviare, to the coffee that closed it. There would be turbot from the Euxine, wild boar from Khutor Mackenzie, potatoes garnished with parsley and butter, salted beef and green borsch, plenty of fruit from Achmetchet, and crimskoi or Crimean wine, and that of the Don, which so often passes for champagne in Russia.

Galitzin, to Horace, seemed then a kind of Belshazzar in a green coat and epaulettes, but discontented, and sighing for the beauties of St. Petersburg and the hells of Paris and Baden-Baden. He never asked Horace to play, however, as he knew well that the industrious Cossacks had stripped him of everything, even to half the buttons on his uniform.

On these occasions, when under the influence of the wine, Galitzin would relax a little of his stiffness, and Horace would strive to forget that he was the guest of a spy and assassin—yea, a double one (for by this time Cyril might be dead at Scutari); and once he begged "that his parole might be extended to two miles," as he had an intense longing to stand by the shore of the free rolling sea—but dared not to hint that.

Galitzin bent his keen dark Tartar eyes inquiringly upon him, and said significantly:—

"Are you ill-treated here?"

"Monsieur le Prince, do not misunderstand me; I simply wish to wander out to see——"

"What, Monsieur le Capitaine, if the Tchatr Dagh, the Trapezus of the Greeks and the Palata Gora of the Russians, together with the mountains of Yaila, are where they were yesterday?"

"Well, life has come down pretty much to that sort of thing with me. To find that any of them had vanished like the Palace of Aladdin, would cause a new sensation—a surprise at least."

"An alerte from Balaclava would be more acceptable?"

"Decidedly, Monsieur le Prince," said Horace, smiling.

"You weary of your imprisonment and of our Tauric scenery?"

"How much I weary, heaven alone knows!"

"Well, empty that bottle of Donskoi; your exchange or release is only a matter of time."

And Horace thought sadly in his heart—

"Patience, patience yet awhile. What is there on the land or sea that is not a matter of time?"

How regretfully, yet proudly, he thought of his regiment, the Royal Fusileers—of that splendid group of English officers, who gathered round the farewell mess-table at Chatham—the table that is at once the model of aristocracy, democracy, and dinner society—men so high-hearted, noble, and generous, of all those who drew their swords that morning beside the Alma; of Jack Probyn, of old Conyers Singleton whose blighted life was closed by a Russian bullet; of Pomfret, Bingham, and Joyce, and all who had fallen; of Sir Edward, Ned Elton, Pat Beamish, and others, who, he hoped, were surviving still. His heart turned to them with affectionate longing. He felt himself so much alone among all those hostile foreigners, with whom he had no community of feeling; alone with his sorrows, doubts, and harrowing fears of liberty, promotion, and more than all perhaps—a love lost!

The yearning for letters that could never come, and for news of those at home, became keen and poignant. How drearily the round of each day passed! The utter sameness of place and view and occupation, or rather lack of the latter; so that each night he thanked heaven that another day of his life had gone, and he was twenty-four hours nearer the end of his captivity.

But the end—when might it be?

Surmises of how the war was going on were incessantly in his mind, with thoughts of Gwenny, of Lady Wedderburn, and of their health, or where they might be, whether at Willowdean or in London, where Gwenny would certainly be the object of so much attention! Poor girl! he flattered himself that her sorrow for him would be great indeed—all the greater that she had still perhaps to keep the secret of their engagement in the recesses of her own heart.

And so while he pined thus within the narrow limits defined by his parole d'honneur, the soft Crimean spring stole on towards summer, and the soldiers of the garrison were changed many times. Then came the hum of the mountain bee as it floated over the little caper bushes or the purple heather of Yaila; the plash of the brown scaly fish in the stream that bubbled towards the Salghir or the sea, and these were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the lonely hours Horace spent on slopes outside the fortress (for he loathed the in), while the fertile soil around began to teem with mint and thyme. wild parsley and aromatic herbs; the great dahlias, sweet-briar, and whitethorn flourished amid the marble rocks and the crumbling walls of the days of Justinian and the Genoese, and every breeze of summer as it swept past was laden with delicious perfumes.

Meanwhile, the Czar Nicholas had died; the great sortie of the 4th of April had been repulsed; the rifle-pits had been captured; the terrible conflict took place in the cemetery; Sebastopol still held out desperately, but the Russians were hemmed on all hands within it.

Galitzin was a great tyrant. Seldom did a day pass without finding an officer under arrest for some petty fault; or a soldier mulcted of his miserable pay for the Prince's behoof, flogged, tied neck and heels to a musket, or sent to shot drill; and these punishments generally took place in the evening, after Galitzin had imbibed his full share of crimskoi; and after witnessing them, and saying prayers before a gaudy print of his patron, St. Ivan Veliki, he generally retired to smoke a cigar in the apartments of his kinsman, the Pulkovnick Alexis Tegoborski, with whose florid and fair-haired wife, Norina Paulovna, he seemed on remarkably intimate terms.

So thus the spring wore into summer, and Horace Ramornie was still a lonely prisoner, pining in the Castle of Yaila; but new, strange, and terrible interests were to grow up around him ere he saw the last of its four green-domed towers and heavy gun batteries.