CECIL COMES TO GRIEF.
At this very time yesterday he had been hanging over Margarita at the
piano, and busy with the numerous buttons of her long kid-gloves; and
then listening to her coquettish song of 'The Wishes.'
Now what a change had come! He was a fugitive, pursued by men who
were veritable human bloodhounds!
'No doubt about Guebhard now!' thought Cecil. 'Fool that I was not
to quarrel with him at Palenka as he wished; and shoot him on the
terrace, or anywhere else. But a time may come; nay, must come--if I
escape--if I escape!'
And a time _did_ come, when they were to meet face to face, though
Cecil could little foresee, then, when and where it was to be.
It was plain enough that this subtle and ferocious fellow, half an
Oriental, in the first moments of supposing himself supplanted by
Cecil--already so successful in the field and camp--had resorted to
the deep scheme of cutting him off and obtaining his despatches;
spurred on by the intensity of the twin passions, love and hate--love
for Margarita, and hate for a supposed rival, in more ways than one;
and if successful, there was no knowing what foul stories he might
circulate to blacken the honour of the dead, with
Tchernaieff--stories that might ultimately find their way into every
print in Britain!
To Cecil there was a bitterness worse than death in the thought of
this; but he could little conceive that it was not for Tchernaieff,
or any other officer in Servia, the fatal despatches and plan of the
future campaign were wanted!
Cecil looked from an eminence; his pursuers were still in sight, but
looking faint and distant, amid the gathering gloom.
'If it comes to the worst, I would rather be shot down than
captured--could I be assured of being shot dead,' thought Cecil, as
he rode steadily on, he knew not in what direction; he could make out
that his pursuers were five in number, and one was evidently
Guebhard. 'Had I a good Enfield rifle, I could pick every man of
them off at leisure from this, and then there would be a few less
Montenegrins to trouble the world.'
These fellows had belonged, of course, to that Montenegrin
contingent, five hundred strong, which had come into the camp of
General Tchernaieff; but he being an officer as humane as he was
brave, had been compelled to expel the whole force for their
barbarous mutilation of the Turkish wounded, and many of them were
now prowling about as idle freebooters.
These Montenegrins--men of the race which make such a stir in
European politics at present--were literally savages of the
_Zerna-gora_, as it is named, from the mountains clothed with darkest
pine, which cover the greatest part of its surface--men inured to
arms, hardship and cruelty from their boyhood--without religion or
scruple, save in implicit obedience to their chiefs or leaders; and
in camp and out of it they committed many an awful outrage, the
report of which never found its way into the columns of the _Glas
Czentagora_ or official journal of Montenegro.
Cecil knew that when leaving Palenka, he had, at the utmost, only
some forty miles to travel, with a horse that was fresh and active;
but its shoes had been tampered with, he had been driven from his
proper path, and the difficulties of that he traversed were now
enhanced, as a storm came on.
Black and heavy clouds overhung the savage landscape--for savage it
seemed, in its utter solitude. For the hour, the sky became
preternaturally dark, and remained so till night deepened; and far in
the hazy distance the ghastly green forked lightning flashed with
weird splendour about the peaks of Mount Mezlanie, and the thunder
boomed sullenly in the valleys below; and once or twice, when he
obtained glimpses of the winding Morava, its current seemed
increasing, as if in haste to leave the storm behind it.
Then the heavy smoke-like rain came down with a species of roar on
the earth, crashing through the foliage of the trees, for hours after
the time that should have seen our wanderer safe within the outposts
of Tchernaieff; but wild though the storm, he welcomed it as a means
of concealing him from his pursuers, for he felt that if overtaken,
his arm was yet so feeble as to make him rather helpless. He was
compelled to ride slowly now, and with a firm hand on a shortened
rein.
The enormous pine trees towered skyward like giants, and seemed to
assume something menacing in their aspect amid the gloom. Knotted
and gnarled stems and roots also seemed to take the form of those
grotesque monsters that figure in the forest through which Undine
went; and in imagination perils mysterious and impalpable seemed to
gather in the lonely path of Cecil, who was not without an active and
fervid imagination.
At last he reached what appeared to be the border of the woodlands he
had been traversing; the pathway grew broader; lights glittered out
of the obscurity, and he could make out the form of a two-storied
house, which he at once approached.
From the highway, as he supposed it to be, a modern gate gave access
to a path through an orchard, as he eventually found, and in the
centre thereof stood the house--the inmates of which, a Servian
farmer and his family, received him with politeness rather than
cordiality, and under the influence of the native distrust of all
strangers, though he wore the brown Servian tunic of the patriotic
army; but his pleasant and genial manner, and the fairness of his
complexion won him favour, and while his horse was being stabled, he
soon found himself installed before a wood fire, drying his sodden
uniform, while the farmer's wife prepared some food, and her spouse
endeavoured to describe the way he must pursue to reach the outposts
of Tchernaieff, near Deligrad.
The house was a snug one. A tile-paved entrance-hall gave access to
a room off it with four shuttered windows; it was floored with red
tiles; an iron stove stood in a corner, and all round was a divan
covered with rugs and cushions.
'Well,' thought Cecil, as some food was set before him, 'there are
worse things in this world than taking pot-luck with a Servian
farmer!'
Youth and hunger alone made him relish the plate of hot _paprakash_,
or chicken soup with tomatoes dressed with hot pepper, bread, cheese,
and black coffee _à la Turque_, served up in pottery, the form of
which indicated a vast antiquity in its design--for the jars, vases,
and plates, glazed white and green, were all Roman in style, and
might have been used by the Emperor Trajan.
But little archæology was in Cecil's mind then; he was thankful to
his hostess for the meal she gave him, and was intent on the host's
description of the route he must pursue on the morrow, and was in the
act of accepting from the hands of the former a tiny dish of the
famous sweetmeat of Kirk-kelisie (near the Balkans), boiled grapes
formed in a roll with walnut-kernels, when a strange sound like a
distant 'whoop' caught his ear, together with the tramp of horses'
hoofs. Then he felt his heart leap and his colour change, or fade.
'Horsemen are coming up the hollow way,' said a peasant, entering in
haste.
'Horsemen!' exclaimed Cecil, starting up and looking at once to his
pistols.
'Armed, too--Montenegrins--I saw them by a glimpse of the moon.'
'Guebhard and his gang--my pursuers. I am lost!' cried Cecil,
leaping from the table and buckling on his sword, as he looked
hurriedly around him for concealment, defence, or escape.
His evident emotion and admission that he had pursuers renewed at
once the inborn mistrust of the Servian household, who all shrank
from him. Despite his uniform and the gold cross of Takovo, they
imagined he must be a culprit, and felt neither disposed to conceal
nor defend him. Even the gentle hostess eyed him now with horror,
mistrust and affright.
Cecil saw in a moment that he had nothing to hope for from his host,
or the servants, among whom were four stalwart Servians; and just as
he heard the noise of horsemen dismounting at the door, and the
unmistakable voice of Guebhard summoning the house, he hurried away
to the upper story, and locking two doors behind him, resolved with
his sword and his pistols to sell his life as dearly as possible.
By the noise and din below he became aware that his pursuers had
greatly increased in number, and now indeed a violent death seemed
close to him--terribly so, and his heart beat wildly.
'One can die but once,' thought he; 'and why should we shrink from
what we cannot shun?' he added, involuntarily quoting Byron. If he
perished in that obscure and secluded place, who would there be to
regret him, save Mary? And then he thought of his comrades of the
old Cameronians; but none would ever know his fate. There was
something very bitter in that reflection, yet the memory of the
regiment, and of his comrades, seemed to nerve him anew at this
terrible crisis.
In the dark he sought about for furniture to barricade the room-door,
if it was forced, and to form a barricade to fire over. A chest or
two, a table and chairs, he piled against it, and then examined the
window--it was small, narrow, far from the ground, apparently; but
all was obscurity and darkness without, and unknown to him, there was
immediately beneath it a deep hole, formed by the farmer when digging
for copper ore. But now two minutes had barely elapsed, when shouts
and execrations fell upon his ears, together with the din of blows
upon the first door he had closed.
It was speedily beaten in, and then the door of the room was
assailed. It seemed stronger, and for a time resisted the blows that
were rained upon it.
'He wears a diamond ring, the gift of Palenka, which will prove a
fortune to whoever gets it,' he heard Guebhard say in a loud voice;
'and he has a plan of the campaign, well worth a thousand ducats to
me, and more to Kara Georgevitch!'
But his Montenegrins scarcely needed these incentives to outrage and
bloodshed.
Through a hole in the door Cecil, for a moment, saw them crowding and
jostling in the narrow passage, by the light of a torch held by one
of their number. Ferocious-looking they were, yet men of magnificent
physique, in long white camises, open in front, with gaudy waistcoats
below; their sashes filled with knives, yataghans sharp as needles,
and brass-butted pistols; their faces inflamed by raki, their dark
eyes gleaming like those of devils; their white teeth glistening;
their wide blue petticoat-trousers reaching to the knee, and their
feet encased in thongs and sandals of hide.
A gleam of light flashed inward, as an axe clove a rent in the door,
and thereat, for a moment, he saw the gleaming eyes and pallid face
of Guebhard, and he fired full at it; but with what effect he never
knew.
He fired again and again, at a venture, through the door, and so did
his assailants; but their chance bullets went wide of the intended
mark; while more than one shriek and hoarse malediction announced
that his fire had told on the group wedged in the narrow space
without; but now the door was yielding fast, and Cecil, aware that
when once it was broken down he would inevitably perish by a death
too probably of protracted mutilation and torture, threw open the
window and resolved to drop therefrom.
Firing all the chambers of his revolver at the door, through the
splintered gaps in which a red light was streaming now, he lowered
himself down, just as two of his assailants came rushing round a
corner of the house, intending, no doubt, to cut off his retreat; and
quitting his hold on the window-sill, he fell down--down--he knew not
whither; but it was into the excavation already mentioned, and there
he lay for some moments, stunned, confused, and well-nigh senseless,
and incapable of further thought or action.
Round the hole, wherein he lay, his pursuers gathered.
'Here he lies!' exclaimed Guebhard, 'stunned or dead!'
'A single shot to make sure!' said one, cocking his long brass pistol.
'Not one!' cried Guebhard, imperatively; 'I hear cavalry moving
through the wood--perhaps those we might be sorry to meet. He lies
still enough--some of our balls must have hit him--I saw blood in the
room.'
That was the case certainly; but it was blood from the wounds of some
of his own followers.
'Hark!' he added, as the sound of a cavalry trumpet was heard close
by; 'here are shovels--cover him up--and when the horse are past, we
can return and get what we want, at leisure.'
Cecil heard all this; he never stirred--scarcely breathed; and now he
felt shovelful after shovelful of earth thrown upon him, cold, damp,
and moist, as they proceeded, not to bury, but merely to cover him
up, with the intention of concealing, as they thought, the dead body
for a brief space.
No groan, no sigh, no sound, escaped him, while this horrible process
went on; yet he felt a horror and dismay no language can depict, as
he knew not how much soil they might heap upon him.
Unseen, or unnoticed by them, he eventually felt himself compelled to
move his head, lest his face should be covered as completely as his
body was; and then suffocation would ensue.
At last a great mass was shovelled in; his head was entirely
concealed, and then Guebhard and his Montenegrins withdrew from the
spot.
END OF VOL. II.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, GUILDFORD.
_J. W. & Sons._