She did not err. The south-westerly breeze had shifted. Sky and water
darkened, a cold north wind blew, scattering some sleety drops of rain.
And as the squall broke, and the awnings tugged at their reevings, came
the splitting crack of the old brass Turkish cannon from the batteries
of Deli Talian, and the deeper, more sonorous boom of ships’ guns
answering back again.
Eighteen guns. They were coming! they were coming! The quays of Pera
and the landing-places of Tophaneh and Scutari were crowded with eager,
many-colored sightseers. On the balconies and roofs of houses, on the
gardenwalls bordering the Bosphorus, on the decks and in the rigging
of the warships anchored in the roadsteads, human figures thronged and
clustered. A _susurration_ of excitement--a hum of expectation,
quickened into a clamor--broadened into a roar. For they were
coming--they were coming! the men of Alma and Balaklava and Inkerman,
whom their country and the nation they had fought for could never
praise and honor enough.
They had passed Therapia, for from the nearer fortresses of Europe
and Asia the salute crashed deafeningly. Columns of white smoke
rose beyond the promontory, slanted and came down upon the wind. As
nervous ladies stopped their ears, expectant of an answering salute,
the gorgeous king-dolphin, followed by the flying cloud of variegated
parrot-fish, darted round the promontory that as yet hid the first of
the approaching ships from view, and fled downstream towards Seraglio
Point.
* * * * *
What could have scattered the glittering flotilla? They had gone
out, led by the Golden Peacock and the Sublime Umbrella to do honor
to the brave. They had fled in panic before something unexpected and
appalling; for the retreat was most palpably a flight.
Even as the spectators wondered and questioned, a dark blue mist came
down like a lowered curtain upon the scene that had been instinct a
moment before with light and movement, and color. The wooded hills,
the palaces, and mosques, and shops, and kiosks, the thronged terraces
and quays, the vessels, with their manned yards and decks crowded with
gayly dressed sightseers, were seen dimly as through a thick gauze
veil. And the cold breeze brought with it an appalling stench--a cold
and deadly exhalation as of the battle-field, the charnel-house, and
the plague-pit--as the first of the three great transports came gliding
into view.
They came! and from the flagships of the English, French, and Turkish
Admirals anchored at Beshiktash the guns boomed out their welcome--the
Three Ensigns dipped as in a royal salute. But the cheers and
acclamations died in the throats of the thousands whose eyes were
nailed upon those mighty argosies, deep-laden, deck-piled, with Death’s
blackening harvest.... The shouts went up, quavered, and broke, and
died....
The transports followed each other at an interval of a cable’s length.
They moved slowly, laboriously, painfully, like living creatures
enfeebled by famine and sick to death. Such canvas as they spread hung
crookedly; their tangled cordage, hanging in neglected loops, gave to
them a strange air of neglect and dishevelment. Their sails had proved
useless; their auxiliary steam-power alone had proved available. For
the wounded and the pestilence-smitten, the dead and the living, were
herded and packed and crowded on those dreadful decks, as wantonly as
though some giant child had been playing at soldiers with real men and
real ships--and had wearied of the game half through, jumbled the men
in anyhow--and given each ship a spiteful shake, and gone sulkily away.
* * * * *
Filth flowed from their scuppers and streaked their flanks as the
three transports moved slowly towards their anchorage. Bevies of the
pretty little Adriatic gull accompanied them, screaming and mewing as
in derision; dropping upon the water that had become oily, dark, and
malodorous, to feed eagerly; rising, wheeling, and dropping again.
And flocks of the tiny blue-breasted gray shear-water that haunts the
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles fluttered above them, twittering and
piping: “See here! See here!”
Faces crowded at their ports, and beyond these you could see more
and more faces.... The bulwarks were hedged with faces; the decks
were heaped with them.... The bodies belonging to them were clad in
discolored rags of uniforms, or thin, and torn, and tattered shreds of
linen underwear, and shivered in the bitter wind unceasingly; with a
chattering of the teeth that sounded like the rattle of hail upon wood
or canvas--with a vibration that communicated itself to the timbers of
the ship.
But you could think of nothing but those faces, haggard and worn with
privation and suffering, gaunt and terrible with famine, disfigured
with wounds, or hideous from the ravages of pestilence. There were
faces lividly blue or greenish-yellow with the discoloration of cholera
or dysentery, darkly spotted with typhus, fiercely flushed with
rheumatic fever or pneumonia, black with the decomposition of gangrene.
And, swathed in clotted rags of bandages; or nakedly exposed to the
shuddering sight of men, were faces mutilated by loss of noses or lips;
and blind faces, showing red, empty eye-sockets; or mere fragments of
faces, shattered, and split, and mutilated by grape, and shrapnel,
and shell-splinters; or cloven with great sword-strokes from the
forehead to the chin. And among these were faces snow-white, or yellow
as wax--upheld by the pressure of the living crowd about them--that
showed in the glassy stare and the dropped jaw where Death had taken
toll. For the Red Reaper was busy gathering in his harvest. Many of
these men would not live to be carried up the hilly road that was to
serve as England’s Calvary. They died even as you looked, inwardly
crying.... What wanton wreck and waste of splendid life, what reckless
spill of strength, and hope, and courage! Was it for this, O God!
that Britain has sent forth her pride and flower?--her manly, gallant
officers, her stark and sturdy men?
It is a sacred duty to fight for one’s country, a glorious fate to die
for her, if need be. But to perish, gaunt with famine and rotten with
gangrene, through the neglect and indifference of that same country; to
become, living, the prey of flies and the food of maggots that little
middlemen may grow fat and flourish--and great Contractors become
multi-millionaires--and Nobs and Bigwigs build unto themselves palaces,
and the secret animosities working in crowned heads be gratified and
glutted--that is to be a martyr, not a hero! Surely the gulls and the
little gray shearwaters were crying: “Betrayed! Betrayed! Betrayed!”
* * * * *
One day a great writer will rise up, who will tell this story as it
should be told. You will burn and thrill, you will weep and laugh as
you read.... Meanwhile, be patient with the feebler pen that stumbles
and falters, lost amidst a wilderness of nameless, forgotten graves.
Not that they suffered and died for nought, these men who upheld the
honor of England at Alma, and Balaklava, and Inkerman. With the odor
of their filthy garments, the stench of their gangrened wounds, the
exhalations of fever and pestilence, they brought with them the perfume
of sublime obedience and the fragrance of great acts of heroism,
forever buried in the silence of official reports.
And the sight of them, grotesque, and strange, and awful as the
pipe-dream of an opium or hashish-smoker, fascinated and held those
thousands that beheld. In silence, with suspended breath, the men and
women of many nations looked, and could not cease from looking; while
the gulls shrieked and wheeled, and the tiny gray shearwaters piped
and twittered--and a stranger sound than either of these grew upon the
ear and filled it, and presently drowned out every other sound:
“_A-a-a-a-a-a-a!_”
It was feeble, and faint, and broken, and unutterably pitiful.... It
reminded you of the bleating of sheep buried in a snowdrift--or the
complaint of young calves being bled by the butcher’s knife--or the
whimpering of dogs, bound and tortured by the vivisector’s cruel,
skillful hand.... Most of all it suggested the wailing of innumerable
pauper babies, pining in the grim nursery-wards of the many workhouses
of great grimy London....
“_A-a-a-a-a-a!_”
It was a sound that plucked at the heart-strings, and brought a choke
into the throat, you knew not why or wherefore. Women broke into tears
and sobs as they heard it, and a salt stinging mist came before the
harder eyes of the men. Not until the warships of the Three Nations
anchored at Beshiktash had dipped their Ensigns to the leading
transport--not until, in her slow course, she came abreast of the
luxurious steam-yacht that displayed the Light Cavalry pennant under
her burgee of the Royal Yacht Squadron--were even those who wept to
understand.
Then the wail of the dying pauper babies, the bleating of the perishing
sheep upon the mountain, came louder than ever.
“_A-a-a-a-a!_”
And blackened hands waved rags of caps, and even gory bandages; and the
woman he had called Laura rushed to Lord Cardillon, as the Brigadier
stood--center of the deep half-circle of well-known men and women
assembled on the steam yacht’s after-deck--and a gallantly conspicuous
figure by reason of his height and bearing, and the brilliant tatters
of his Hussar uniform--and clutched him wildly by the arm, and shrieked:
“Oh, Arthur! stop them!--stop them! Oh, for God’s sake, don’t let them
moan like that! Oh! will no one have pity and stop them?”
And he thrust her from him, crying:
“You idiot! Can’t you understand they’re cheering? They’ve seen us!...
They’ve recognized their officers!... Mildare! Leighbury! Southgrave!”
he shouted to the other wearers of soiled and tattered uniforms: “What
the devil has come over you that you don’t know your own Guards and the
fellows of the 555th and 442nd? Briddwater! Gauntless! there are your
plungers of the Heavies! And the rest are my own!--my men of the Light
Brigade!”
And he ran forwards, forgetful of his wound, and leaped upon the
bulwarks; and so stood; holding to the ratlines with the hand that was
uninjured--and gave back the cheer in his clear, hard, ringing tones:
“Hurrah, my men! hurrah!”
And as though a spell had been broken, a mighty shout of acclamation
went up from every British throat in all that vast assemblage, drowning
out the _vivas_ of the French, and the _Hochs_ of the German
Legion, massed upon the crowded slopes of Scutari:
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”