HARD IS THE FIGHT
What right had I to be out of breath, after standing stock-still no one
knows how long, like a cardboard dummy to be shot at? But there seemed
to be a hollow where my heart in its duty should have been staunch and
steadfast; and my brain (having never been wrought up like this) must
have lost its true balance and standard. Otherwise could it have shocked
me to know that a career of cruelty and wickedness was brought to an
ignominious close?
"Marva is dead," I kept on saying; "the greatest woman of the age is
dead! Not the best, not the purest, not even a true woman. But how grand
was her attitude, and how she disdained me! And now a wretched Svân has
shot her!"
Let any one despise me as he likes, with reason on his tongue and
humanity in his eyes. For the world at large it might be better to have
such a woman stretched beneath the turf; but a man with his heart in the
right place--which the muzzle of her musket knew too well--could not
help feeling for her grandeur.
However, it was not for me to lay down the law, or even to stand up for
it against this crew of savages. To keep out of their way was my one
desire, and at first there seemed to be some chance of it, with their
leader a corpse, and superstition frowning at them from the
dungeon-gate. Hoping thus, I stood back in a niche of granite, while a
bullet or two sang along the vault, and I strove to recover the spirit
of a man, by thinking of my country and the luck we have in turning the
corner of situations, where others would lie down and breathe their
last.
The bar to which Sûr Imar had been bound was still in place; but he was
not in sight, neither could I see his son, the gentle youth sent to
assassinate him. Then I heard the sound of heavy blows, and concluded
that the younger man was striving to release his sister, while the
father lay half-conscious still from brutal cruelty and want of food.
There was none but myself to guard the entrance--for Usi and Nickols had
not appeared--until our friends at the valley's mouth should have time
to come to the rescue.
Glad was I to think, as I did at first, that the savage warriors, scared
and puzzled, and without a leader, would now hang back; as they had done
when the Lesghian chief brought their Prince Rakhan to account. And so
it would have been, by their own confession, but for the ferocity of one
young man, Karkok the brother of Lura, and the chief friend of that
Hisar whom I had struck down. Karkok cannot have been stirred up by
love, or loyalty, or any other noble motive,--for who could have
regretted Hisar?--but by ambition of the meanest sort, and a dash at the
mastery of the tribe, for he was now the last relative of Rakhan.
This upstart fellow brought the fighting men together; and they laid
aside the bodies of Queen Marva and her son, in fear of their being
trampled on; and then (with a screech that must have set all the teeth
of the flintiest echo aching) at the prison-gate they rushed, and the
valves being back there was only my poor body between them and the
helpless inmates.
When I saw those fellows advancing upon me, capering, and flinging hairy
arms about, and tossing white sheepskins, and flourishing long muskets,
beyond any denial I was frightened, and would have given every penny I
was worth to be in my own little saddle-room once more. My hand shook so
badly that the blue revolver revolved without any mechanism; and the
prudence which has been implanted in us all suggested that the bravest
man must value his own bacon. When a friend assures me that I was
gloriously brave, it would be a rude thing to contradict him; but what a
different tale my conscience tells!
In a word, just presence of mind enough was left me to show that I must
fight it out. To make a bolt of it was useless, for whither could I go?
Anywhere across the cave would bring a bullet into me; and as for
slinking along the dark wall, where would that take me, even if I could
contrive it? Into the very arms of Dariel,--a truly sweet refuge, but
not for a coward. All I could do was to say to myself that the lines
were hard, but the Lord had made them so, and I must trust in Him to
deliver me.
Whether it were faith, or sense of justice, or the love of woman, or
something far lower than any of these, the brute element inborn in the
sons of men,--no sooner did I see hateful eyes agoggle with lust for
blood glaring at me, and great mouths agrin for a grab at me, than the
like spirit kindled in myself.
"Blood you shall have, but it shall be your own first," I shouted in
English, and leaped at them from the mouth of the cave, like the demon
of Kazbek. They took me for that great power, and fell back, while a
ball slit the tip of my ear off, and before they could rally there were
two as dead as stones with bullets in their heads, and two more fell
upon them with their skulls cracked by the swing of my _toorak_. "Want
any more?" I asked, having two charges left, and many of them showed the
better part of valour. But a kinjal was thrown at me down a lane of
cowards, and stuck in my breast, and that rallied the crowd. Three or
four made at me from behind, and I know not how it was, but down I went
from a terrible whack on the back of my head, at the very same moment
that I shot their new chief.
A very lucky shot, and one that governed all the issue. But of that I
knew nothing until weeks had passed, my latest sense being of a white
flash across me, and a plunge into a bottomless abyss of some one, who
might be anybody. "There let him lay," as a great poet says--and never
would he have stood up again, if his skull had been of Norman growth.
But a mighty champion just in time had rushed into the thick of it, and
scattered a storm of sword-flash, as the lightning fires a forest. Two
ruffians, poised for the final stab at my defenceless body, swung
backward with their arms chopped off, and the blade that should have
drained Sûr Imar's blood revelled in the gore of his enemies. For the
fury of the mild and gentle "Hafer" (now that he had learned his wrongs
and guessed his father's) swooped on those sheep-clad fiends, as a
whirlwind leaps upon a drying-ground of tallow candles. Would that I had
only kept sufficient sense to see, for they tell me that it was
magnificent. Heads that are full of hate should have some of it let out,
and several of the worst were stopped for ever from receiving any more
misanthropy. All who knew anything about it said that Rakhabat himself,
the worst man-hater of all the demons of Kazbek, was seen to come down
with the wings of a black eagle, and enter the vesture of the white
"Lamb-angel." That was the Osset name for this poor Prince; and now
having broken bounds, he proved the irony of his claim to it. For soon
the chief-justice of the court went down, and so did the foreman of the
jury, and a pair of clerks who sought nothing but their living, and
others who had come to see things out without any view to their own
exit. Among them raged "Hafer," like Hector of Troy, with twenty years,
and more than that, of goodness to let out; and no man could shoot
straight at him, because he was in the right, while all their guns were
crooked.
Nevertheless the force of numbers must have been too great for him,--for
the conscience of Ossets still requires to be formed,--but for the rapid
and resistless charge of Stepan and Strogue, and the Lesghians, and the
miners, down the long valley, and over the moss reeking already with
more blood than it could staunch. At the same moment Usi, the Svân, and
Jack Nickols, who had been hampered by some tangle of the rope, shouting
to their comrades, fell in upon the flank; and the noble tribe of
Ossets, or at any rate that branch of it, split up and fell asunder like
an unroped fagot. There can be no certainty of justice in this world;
but even the races connected with them by the tenderest ties of
co-robbery found it in their hearts, when the facts could not be
altered, to pronounce the only verdict--"Served them right."