"Are you hurt, dear?"
Twice I repeated the question before she appeared to understand me;
then, raising a pair of large lustrous but tearless eyes to my face, she
uttered the single word "Father," and pointed to something that lay in
the gloom of the passage beyond her. I entered, lifted the corner of a
piece of coarse canvas, and under it saw the form of a man, but there
was no countenance. His head had been completely shattered by a shell.
Replacing the canvas, I returned to the child. Her right hand was
thrust into her bosom, and as she held it there in an unnatural
position, I suspected something, and drew it gently out. I was right.
It had been struck, and the middle finger was hanging by a piece of
skin. A mere touch of my knife was sufficient to sever it. As I
bandaged the stump, I tried to console the poor child. She did not
appear to care for the pain I unavoidably caused her, but remained quite
still, only saying now and then, in a low voice, "Father," as she looked
with her tearless eyes at the heap that lay in the passage.
Giving this hapless little one in charge of a woman who seemed to be an
inhabitant of the same building, I hurried away, but had not gone a
hundred yards when I chanced to meet Nicholas.
"Ha! well met, my boy!" he exclaimed, evidently in a state of suppressed
excitement; "come along. I expected to have had a long hunt after you,
but fortune favours me, and we have not a moment to lose."
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Just think," he said, seizing my arm and hurrying me along, but taking
no heed of my question; "we are fairly over the Danube in force! The
night before last three thousand men, Cossacks and infantry, crossed
from Galatz in boats and rafts, and gained the heights above Matchin.
Zoukoff has beaten the enemy everywhere, and Zimmermann is reported to
have driven them out of Matchin--in fact we have fairly broken the ice,
and all that we have now to do is to go in and win."
I saw by the flush on his handsome countenance that the martial ardour
of Nicholas was stirred to its depths. There was a noble look of daring
in his clear grey eye, and a smile of what seemed like joy on his lips,
which I knew well were the expression of such sentiments as love of
country, desire to serve, like a brave son, that Emperor whom he
regarded as a father, hatred of oppression, belief in the righteousness
of the cause for which he fought, and delight in the prospect of wild
animal excitement. He was full of high hopes, noble aspirations,
superabundant energy, and, although not a deep thinker, could tell
better than most men, by looking at it, whether the edge of a grindstone
were rough or smooth.
We walked smartly to our hotel, but found that our servant had fled, no
one knew whither, taking our horses with him. The landlord, however,
suggested the railway station, and thither we ran.
A train was entering when we arrived. It was full of Russian soldiers.
On the platform stood a Jew, to whom Nicholas addressed himself. The
Jew at first seemed to have difficulty in understanding him, but he
ultimately said that he had seen a man who must be the one we were in
search of, and was about to tell us more, when a Turkish shell burst
through the roof of the station, and exploded on the platform, part of
which it tore up, sending splinters of iron and wood in all directions.
The confused noise of shout and yell that followed, together with the
smoke, prevented my observing for a moment or two what damage had been
done, but soon I ascertained that Nicholas and myself were unhurt; that
the Jew had been slightly wounded, and also several of the people who
were waiting the arrival of the train.
The groans of some of the wounded, and the cursing and shouting of the
soldiers just arrived, made a powerful impression on me.
"Come, I see our fellow," cried Nicholas, seizing me suddenly by the arm
and hurrying me away.
In a few minutes we had caught our man, mounted our horses, rejoined our
cavalry escort, which awaited us in the marketplace, and galloped out of
the town.
It is a fact worthy of record that of all the people killed and hurt
during this bombardment of Giurgevo, not one was a Russian! This arose
from the fact that the soldiers were under the safe cover of their
batteries. The Turkish shells did not produce any real damage to works
or men. In short, all that was accomplished in this noisy display of
the "art of war" was the destruction of many private houses, the killing
and maiming of several civilians, including women and children, and a
shameful waste of very expensive ammunition, partly paid for by the
sufferers. In contemplating these facts, the word "glory" assumed a
very strange and quite a new meaning in my mind.
Soon we were beyond the reach of Turkish missiles, though still within
sound of the guns. Our pace showed that we were making what I suppose
my military friends would style a forced march. Nicholas was evidently
unwilling to converse on the object of our march, but at length gave way
a little.
"I see no harm," he said, "in telling you that we are about to cross the
Danube not far from this, and that at least one of my objects is to
secure a trustworthy intelligent spy. You know--perhaps you don't
know--that such men are rare. Of course we can procure any number of
men who have pluck enough to offer themselves as spies, for the sake of
the high pay, just as we can get any number of men who are willing to
jump down a cannon's throat for the honour and glory of the thing."
"Yes," said I, interrupting, "men like our friend Nicholas
Naranovitsch!"
"Well, perhaps," he replied, with a light laugh, "but don't change the
subject, Jeff, you've got a bad tendency to do so. I say there is no
difficulty in getting spies; but it is not easy to find men well
qualified for such work. Now one has been heard of at last, and, among
other things, I am commissioned to secure him for the purpose of leading
our troops across the Balkans."
"The Balkans!" said I, in surprise; "you are a long way from that
range."
"The length of any way, Jeff, depends not so much upon the way as on the
spirit of him who measures it. Ten miles to one man is a hundred miles
to another, and _vice versa_."
I could make no objection to that, for it was true. "Nevertheless,"
said I, after a pause, "there may be spirits among the Turks who could
render that, which is only a few days' journey in ordinary
circumstances, a six months' business to the Russians."
"Admitted heartily," returned Nicholas, with animation; "if the Turk
were not a brave foe, one could not take so much interest in the war."
This last remark silenced me for a time. The view-point of my future
kinsman was so utterly different from mine that I knew not what to
reply. He evidently thought that a plucky foe, worthy of his steel, was
most desirable, while to my mind it appeared obvious that the pluckier
the foe the longer and more resolute would be the resistance, and, as a
consequence, the greater the amount of bloodshed and of suffering to the
women, children, and aged, the heavier the drain on the resources of
both empires, and of addition to the burdens of generations yet unborn.
When, after a considerable time, I put the subject in this light before
Nicholas, he laughed heartily, and said--
"Why, Jeff, at that rate you would knock all the romance out of war."
"That were impossible, Nick," I rejoined quickly, "for there is no
romance whatever in war."
"No romance?" he exclaimed, opening his eyes to their widest, and
raising his black brows to their highest in astonishment.
"No," said I, firmly, "not a scrap. All the romance connected with war
is in spite of it, and by no means the result of it. The heroism
displayed in its wildest sallies is true heroism undoubtedly, but it
would be none the less heroism if it were exercised in the rescue of men
and women from shipwreck or from fire. The romance of the bivouac in
the dark woods or on the moonlit plains of foreign lands, with the
delights of fresh air and life-giving exercise and thrilling adventure,
is not the perquisite of the warrior; it is the privilege, quite as
much, if not more, of the pioneer in the American backwoods and
prairies, and of the hunter in the wilds of Africa. The romance of
unexpected meetings with foreign `fair ones' in out-o''-the-way
circumstances, with broken bones, perhaps, or gunshot wounds, to lend
pathos to the affair, and necessitate nursing, which may lead to
love-making,--all that is equally possible to the Alpine climber and the
chamois-hunter, to the traveller almost anywhere, who chooses to indulge
in reckless sport, regardless of his neck.--Of course," I added, with a
smile, for I did not wish to appear too cynical in my friend's eyes,
"the soldier has a few advantages in which the civilian does not quite
come up to him, such as the glorious brass band, and the red coat, and
the glittering lace."
"Jeff," said Nicholas, somewhat gravely, "would you then take all the
glory out of war, and reduce soldiers to a set of mere professional and
legalised cut-throats, whose duty it is callously to knock over so many
thousand men at the command of governments?"
"Bear with me a little," said I, "and hear me out. You misunderstand
me. I speak of war, not of warriors. As there is no `romance,' so
there is no `glory' in war. Many a glorious deed may be, and often is,
done _in connection with_ war. Such a deed is done when a handful of
brave men sacrifice their lives at the call of duty, and in defence of
country, as at Thermopylae. Such a deed is done when a wounded Prussian
soldier, dying of thirst on the battle-field, forgets the accursed
custom--war--which has brought him to that pass, and shares the last
drops of his water-flask with a so-called French enemy. And such a deed
is done, still more gloriously, when a soldier, true to his Queen and
country, is true also to his God, and preaches while he practises the
principles and gospel of the Prince of Peace, in the presence of those
with whom he acts his part in this world's drama. There is indeed much
that is glorious in the conduct of many warriors, but there is no glory
whatever in war itself. The best that can be said of it is, that
sometimes it is a stern yet sad necessity."
We dropped the subject here, having reached the point of the river where
our party was to cross to the Turkish shore.
The passage was soon accomplished by means of rafts, and many thousands
of Russians having already preceded us we experienced no opposition. It
was daylight when we rode into a village on the Bulgarian shore, and I
looked up sleepily at the cottages as we passed.
"We halt here," said Nicholas, with a yawn as he drew rein.
The officer in command of our party had already halted his men, who,
gladly quitting their saddles, streamed after us into the courtyard of
the village.