Chapter IV · THE 21ST OF SEPTEMBER.

It was not until the next day that Horace could discover—and only after a long, painful, and exciting search—where his cousin Cyril was lying, and had lain all night, in extreme suffering and misery.

The night after the storming of the Russian intrenched camp, Horace slept soundly—the deep sleep of that utter exhaustion consequent to intense bodily toil, the heat of the march before the engagement, and over exhaustion of the mind. He did awake once or twice, to see around him, as in a confused dream, the darkness of the chilly night, and, that something of the picturesque might not be wanting, groups of soldiers, lying or sitting, and smoking or chatting round fires of turpentine, olive and willow trees, of Russian muskets and gun carriages, that flamed high above their heads, and caused the piles of muskets to glitter in light. These were the men who, but a few hours before, had been amid all that wild carnage, and were now quietly toasting little scraps of food in the blaze by which they warmed themselves, and which lit up their bronzed faces with a ruddy glow, and displayed their varied and, in many instances, torn and blood-stained uniforms.

Some were moaning over a wounded arm, or a bloody and recently bandaged stump, which they rested on a bed of branches, and thousands were lying about, in every attitude expressive of exhaustion.

So most of the army passed the night after we won the Alma; though some who were less worn out than others spent it in seeking over the field for those whom few or none could help them to find.

By the first ray of dawn, and while the red sun was rising above those hills that, on one side, look down on Simpheropol, and on the other overhang the windings of the fatal Alma, Horace, with a few of the Fusileers, had left the bivouac, and, without seeking food or refreshment, engaged in the melancholy and heart-rending task of searching over the field for his cousin, Cyril Wedderburn.

The two bandsmen by whom he had been borne away had been killed subsequently, and no one could say where they had laid him down, to bleed to death of his wounds, too probably.

Horace thought sadly of the many fine fellows gone for ever—those whose faces he should never look upon again; Jack Probyn, with whom he had played so many keen games at billiards; Bingham, whose handsome figure and winning manner made him a favourite with all women; Joyce, poor old Singleton (the man with the secret sorrow), and merry little Meredyth Pomfret, who was such a first-rate "bat," and so many of the brave rank and file too. He was full of depressing and harrowing thoughts.

Unstripped by "death-hunters," or a plundering peasantry (as those were who fell in the wars of Wellington, and left bare and ghastly under the eye of heaven), the soldiers here were all lying, whether dead or wounded, fully clothed and accoutred, just as the shot had struck them down in their ranks.

Many of the killed lay on their back, with their arms uplifted, as if still levelling their muskets, in all the cataleptic stiffness which so often results from gunshot wounds. "The upstretched arms of dead men were ghastly in the eyes of some; others thought they could envy the soldier released at last from his toil, and encountering no moment of interval between hard fighting and death." And over this scene rose the cloudless sun of a lovely September morning, glowing on the tender green of the willow and olive groves tossing their leaves in the warm, soft breeze, and suggestive of delicious tranquillity rather than the carnage of war.

The unfortunate braves of the Welsh Fusileers lay over each other literally in piles, amid dark pools of blood, in which the flies were battening; and wherever the cannon shot had bowled in their deadly career, lay bodies without legs, or heads, or arms, crushed, rent, and torn in some instances out of all semblance of humanity; and there were grey haired officers who had fought in other lands, in India, Persia, and Afghanistan, lying side by side with our poor boy-subalterns, slain in all the splendour of their first red coat—fresh from school and from their parents' arms.

Many a familiar face of his own corps was seen by Horace as he passed along, but they were pallid and still; no glance of recognition came back from the fixed and glazed eyes; no smile was on the open marble mouth. Among others, he saw young Meredyth Pomfret, lying dead with his hands as if yet clutching the colour-staff, the belt of which was still over his shoulder. He turned away with a sinking heart, and he knew that Cyril could not be there.

All who could speak were inquiring for water, or to learn when they would be taken to the rear and have their sufferings alleviated. Others begged only for a match or a pipeful of tobacco.

In their long grey coats, in many instances cuffed and collared with scarlet, the grim Russians lay thick, like swathes in a harvest field, along the Kourgane Hill, and all about the great redoubt. Many had fallen in the act of reloading, and lay with a steel ramrod in their hand, or a half bitten cartridge between their teeth. A ghastly grin or defiant smile was visible in some of their dead faces: and in many instances there were men of the 23rd and other corps of the Light Division, who appeared to have perished in the act of supplication or entreaty.

These were the wounded whom the merciless Russians butchered, when the division wavered on the crest of the hill.

Hairy knapsacks, glazed helmets, and the coarse, clumsy firelocks of the Russian infantry lay scattered there in thousands, just as they had been cast away; and clouds of ammunition paper were whirling over the sward.

Many acts of perfidy, similar to that by which Cyril fell, had been perpetrated by the enemy. In some instances our soldiers were shot down by the wounded whom they were supplying with water from their canteens. In this manner, Captain Eddington of the 95th perished under the eyes of his brother, who fell in the attempt to avenge him; and enraged by such treacheries, our soldiers clubbed their muskets and dashed out the brains of the perpetrators, as creatures totally unworthy of mercy or life.

Horace felt his heart growing more and more sick as he looked around him, and heard the incessant and afflicting exclamations of suffering, the result of wounds of every kind, and in all parts of the tender human form; stabs by bayonets, cuts by swords, musket shots, and the more dreadful casualties inflicted by cannon balls, grape, canister, and splintered shells; and if his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth with the intensity of his thirst, he thought, "What must these poor creatures be enduring!" But ere long the regimental and naval surgeons, with fatigue parties and seamen from the fleet, began to be busy among them.

Wandering down from the heights by the extreme British right, he came among the wounded of the French left flank, and there the Zouaves were lying thick as leaves in autumn. Two, who had each a limb bandaged tight by a bloody handkerchief, were seated with their backs against a large stone, smoking cigarettes, while a pretty vivandière, in a smart blue jacket and scarlet skirt, with the number of some regiment embroidered on her cap and shoulder-straps, was tripping about giving mouthfuls of brandy from her little barrel.

"Is she not charming—Pauline of ours!" exclaimed one of the smokers, admiringly.

"Mais certainement oui, charmante!" responded the other, and with great politeness they both saluted Horace as he passed them, though unable to rise; "and like ourselves she has breakfasted à la carte on grapes and cold water, most likely."

"Your regiment must have suffered severely," said he, "if we are to judge by the numbers lying here."

"Oui, Monsieur, we have lost twice as many as we did at Constantine. Diable! la fortune de la guerre est bien capricieuse!"

"True, Adrien," said the other, laughing; "but we gave those Muscovites a sharp taste of our little Charlemagnes—our cabbage-cutters;" for so the French soldiers name their sword-bayonets.

A man on the ground with his head propped upon some loose stones, attracted the eye of Horace at a little distance, for he was an officer and in the scarlet uniform of the Royal Fusileers, and proved to be Major Singleton!

He hastened to him, and found that he was just expiring of wounds, which a staff-surgeon, a somewhat elderly officer, had just been examining with great tenderness and care. The latter held up his hand warningly to Horace, as if to say, "Do not speak—it is useless." He had been pierced by two balls, each of which had inflicted a mortal wound. His filmy eye dilated as Horace bent over him; then his jaw fell, the breath passed away, and the brave soldier who, yesterday had been face to face with the Russians, was now face to face with—his Maker.

"We can but leave him till the burial party comes," said Dr. Riversdale, with great emotion; for, by a singular fatality, it was in his hands, almost in his arms, that the first husband of Isabel Vane—poor Conyers Singleton, died! "Another officer of your corps," he added, "is lying near the river severely wounded—a Captain Wedderburn."

"In which direction?" asked Horace, starting.

"Where those turpentine bushes are. I have just dressed his wounds."

"Oh, how shall I thank you! It is he I have been in search of. Are the wounds dangerous?"

"One may prove so. A ball has entered the left breast, and injuring the lung, has passed out under the shoulder-blade. I am not without hopes of him, however."

Horace hurried in the direction indicated, and there amid the turpentine bushes, the branches of which were quite alive with brown larks and golden linnets, unscared by the din of yesterday, in full melody, lay him he sought!

Cyril was lying on his back and breathing heavily; his handsome face was pale as marble, and with his thick curly brown hair and well-curved moustache, Horace thought he looked like a manly and beautiful statue. His eyes were closed, but a quiver of agony at times passed over his features. His epaulettes had been torn off, probably by some passing Tartar of Burliuk. His uniform was open and sorely soiled, for bloody bandages traversed his breast. His whole aspect was intensely pitiable and forlorn. Alas for Cyril! once so particular in his toilet, in the quality of his perfumes, the exquisite fit of his gloves and boots, and the general perfection of his apparel. His sword was still lying near his hand, and on hearing a step, he instinctively clutched it nervously, thus causing the blood to well forth anew from the wound in his breast.

Poor Horace was deeply moved.

"Oh, Cyril," thought he, "if that poor mother who dotes on you were to see you thus, sodden and damp with dew, splashed with blood and pierced with wounds! Cyril!"

He opened his eyes, and a faint smile of recognition passed over his face as he took the hand of his cousin, who knelt by his side.

"Thank Heaven you have escaped, Horace," said he.

"Yes, Cyril, my dear fellow. Would to God that you had been so fortunate. I had my left epaulette shot away by one bullet, my cap knocked off by another, and my sword hand grazed by the splinter of a shell, but I am untouched. If that Russian scoundrel—the spy——"

"He may have got his deserts by this time and be lower than he has brought me. You will write to my father—say, to break all this gently to my mother; but then she will unfortunately see the Gazette first!" said Cyril, and now his voice failed him.

After a time he asked—

"Who of ours have fallen, and who escaped?"

"I know not who have escaped, but I know that Bingham, Jack Probyn, Joyce, and Pomfret are all gone. Ned Elton had a leg smashed under the colours, and poor Conyers Singleton is lying dead among some stones yonder."

"Poor Joyce—his wife and children—he loved them so!"

"The Colonel had his black horse shot under him, and then led the regiment on foot."

"I feel utterly sick of life, Horace. I hope I shall die—and I must, if this agony endures," said Cyril in a low voice through his clenched teeth.

"Do not speak or think thus. You shall soon be comfortably cared for. The wounded are ordered to be sent on board the fleet, and I shall see you off among the first."

Yesterday Cyril really had a mad desire to court danger—to tempt death, but not to be stricken down thus—almost assassinated, when assisting in an act of mercy! Yet why should he have wished for death? he began to think now. Did not his tender mother, his affectionate and manly father, love him, and Bob too, after his somewhat cold and legal fashion? All his brother officers were his friends. The passing emotion was morbid and ungrateful; yet, as he lay there, he sighed in his soul for one glance from Mary's eye—one touch of Mary's hand again!

Just as Horace was about to leave him in quest of assistance, a little midshipman with four seamen bearing stretchers passed near, and he hailed them. Into one of these he was carefully, even tenderly, lifted, and conveyed towards the shore, while Horace, with a prayer of hope that he might recover soon—for he and Cyril were especial friends—turned away to attend to his duties with the now shattered regiment—and these duties were the reverse of cheerful.

Many vessels sailed with their melancholy freights for Scutari; but on the voyage of three hundred and thirty miles which lie between that place and the mouth of the Alma, many a body was committed, coffinless, to the waves of the Euxine; for many brave fellows were uselessly shipped who were mortally wounded, and through routine, circumlocution, and infamous parsimony, "there were not medical necessaries on board for five out of fifty sufferers."*

"Ten men per company to bury the dead!" was the order issued to each regiment on the morning of the 21st September.

During the two days subsequent to the battle, Horace was so busy with one of the working parties who were ordered to separate the dead from the wounded; to bury the former and get the latter out of the field; collecting the abandoned Russian arms and destroying them by fire, or otherwise, that he could barely snatch a few minutes to dispatch a letter to Gwenny—think what his aunt might of it, he could not resist the temptation of writing to her—with a brief detail of all that had transpired.

And from this pleasant office which brought her bright face and sweet presence and all the distinct individuality of the girl so vividly before him, it was hard to turn to the grim task of having those ghastly trenches dug, tenanted, and filled up.

Though reflective, he was not much of a sentimentalist; yet as he stood by one of those hecatombs and heard the solemn words of the surpliced regimental chaplain, reading the English burial service—now that the fury of the battle had passed away, his soul was stirred. "The bitter pains of eternal death;" "The certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life;" "For a thousand years are in Thy sight as yesterday, seeing that is past as a watch of the night. As soon as Thou scatterest them, they are even as a sleep, and fade away suddenly like the grass."

An old sergeant of the Welsh Fusileers, whose son lay in that grave, all belted and accoutred as when in life, made the responses tremulously, and Horace felt moved by an emotion of great pity.

To what end, or for what useful purpose, had all this carnage been? Why had all those strong and, many of them, handsome young men been cut off thus in the flower of their manhood? For a time he thought war horrible—an utter desecration of God's fair earth; but anon the trench was filled, the drums beat for dinner, and the living soon forgot those dead with whom they might be sleeping on the morrow.

"My poor fellows! there lie one hundred and sixty of them!" said Sir Edward Elton, as he stood at the head of the long trench, with his sword-arm slung in his crimson sash; "by this time they have learned the grand secret that lies between Time and Eternity. Well—well! God rest them! General and drum-boy, king and clown, we must all lie alike in our graves; there is no distinction there!"