As we advanced towards the high lands the scenery became more beautiful
and picturesque. Rich fields of grain waved on every side. Pretty
towns, villages, and hamlets seemed to me to lie everywhere, smiling in
the midst of plenty; in short, all that the heart of man could desire
was there in superabundance, and as one looked on the evidences of
plenty, one naturally associated it with the idea of peace.
But as that is not all gold which glitters, so the signs of plenty do
not necessarily tell of peace. Here and there, as we passed over the
land, we had evidences of this in burned homesteads and trampled fields,
which had been hurriedly reaped of their golden store as if by the sword
rather than the sickle. As we drew near to the front these signs of war
became more numerous.
We had not much time, however, to take note of them; our special service
required hard riding and little rest.
One night we encamped on the margin of a wood. It was very dark, for,
although the moon was nearly full, thick clouds effectually concealed
her, or permitted only a faint ray to escape now and then, like a gleam
of hope from the battlements of heaven.
I wandered from one fire to another to observe the conduct of the men in
bivouac. They were generally light-hearted, being very young and
hopeful. Evidently their great desire was to meet with the enemy.
Whatever thoughts they might have had of home, they did not at that time
express them aloud. Some among them, however, were grave and sad; a few
were stern--almost sulky.
Such was Dobri Petroff that night. Round his fire, among others, stood
Sergeant Gotsuchakoff and Corporal Shoveloff.
"Come, scout," said the corporal, slapping Petroff heartily on the
shoulder, "don't be down-hearted, man. That pretty little sweetheart
you left behind you will never forsake such a strapping fellow as you;
she will wait till you return crowned with laurels."
Petroff was well aware that Corporal Shoveloff, knowing nothing of his
private history, had made a mere guess at the "little sweetheart," and
having no desire to be communicative, met him in his own vein.
"It's not that, corporal," he said, with a serious yet anxious air,
which attracted the attention of the surrounding soldiers, "it's not
that which troubles me. I'm as sure of the pretty little sweetheart as
I am that the sun will rise to-morrow; but there's my dear old mother
that lost a leg last Christmas by the overturning of a sledge, an' my
old father who's been bedridden for the last quarter of a century, and
the brindled cow that's just recovering from the measles. How they are
all to get on without me, and nobody left to look after them but an old
sister as tall as myself, and in the last stages of a decline--"
At this point the scout, as Corporal Shoveloff had dubbed him, was
interrupted by a roar of laughter from his comrades, in which the
"corporal" joined heartily.
"Well, well," said the latter, who was not easily quelled either
mentally or physically, "I admit that you have good cause for
despondency; nevertheless a man like you ought to keep up his spirits--
if it were only for the sake of example to young fellows, now, like
Andre Yanovitch there, who seems to have buried all his relatives before
starting for the wars."
The youth on whom Shoveloff tried to turn the laugh of his own
discomfiture was a splendid fellow, tall and broad-shouldered enough for
a man of twenty-five, though his smooth and youthful face suggested
sixteen. He had been staring at the fire, regardless of what was going
on around.
"What did you say?" he cried, starting up and reddening violently.
"Come, come, corporal," said Sergeant Gotsuchakoff, interposing, "no
insinuations. Andre Yanovitch will be ten times the man you are when he
attains to your advanced age.--Off with that kettle, lads; it must be
more than cooked by this time, and there is nothing so bad for digestion
as overdone meat."
It chanced that night, after the men were rolled in their cloaks, that
Dobri Petroff found himself lying close to Andre under the same bush.
"You don't sleep," he said, observing that the young soldier moved
frequently. "Thinking of home, like me, no doubt?"
"That was all nonsense," said the youth sharply, "about the cow, and
your mother and sister, wasn't it?"
"Of course it was. Do you think I was going to give a straight answer
to a fool like Shoveloff?"
"But you _have_ left a mother behind you, I suppose?" said Andre, in a
low voice.
"No, lad, no; my mother died when I was but a child, and has left naught
but the memory of an angel on my mind."
The scout said no more for a time, but the tone of his voice had opened
the heart of the young dragoon. After a short silence he ventured to
ask a few more questions. The scout replied cheerfully, and, from one
thing to another, they went on until, discovering that they were
sympathetic spirits, they became confidante, and each told to the other
his whole history.
That of the young dragoon was short and simple, but sad. He had been
chosen, he said, for service from a rural district, and sent to the war
without reference to the fact that he was the only support of an invalid
mother, whose husband had died the previous year. He had an elder
brother who ought to have filled his place, but who, being given to
drink, did not in any way fulfil his duties as a son. There was also,
it was true, a young girl, the daughter of a neighbour, who had done her
best to help and comfort his mother at all times, but without the aid of
his strong hand that girl's delicate fingers could not support his
mother, despite the willingness of her brave heart, and thus he had left
them hurriedly at the sudden and peremptory call of Government.
"That young girl," said Petroff, after listening to the lad's earnest
account of the matter with sympathetic attention, "has no place _there_,
has she?"--he touched the left breast of Andre's coat and nodded.
The blush of the young soldier was visible even in the dim light of the
camp-fire as he started up on one elbow, and said--
"Well, yes; she _has_ a place there!"
He drew out a small gilt locket as he spoke, and, opening it, displayed
a lock of soft auburn hair.
"I never spoke to her about it," he continued, in a low tone, "till the
night we parted. She is very modest, you must know, and I never dared
to speak to her before, but I became desperate that night, and told her
all, and she confessed her love for me. Oh, Petroff, if I could only
have had one day more of--of--but the sergeant would not wait. I had to
go to the wars. One evening in paradise is but a short time, yet I
would not exchange it for all I ever--" He paused.
"Yes, yes, _I_ know all about that," said the scout, with an encouraging
nod; "I've had more than one evening in that region, and so will you,
lad, after the war is over."
"I'm not so sure of that," returned the dragoon sadly; "however, she
gave me this lock of her hair--she is called `Maria with the auburn
hair' at our place--and mother gave me the locket to put it in. I
noticed that she took some grey hair out when she did so."
"Keep it, lad; keep it always near your heart," said the scout, with
sudden enthusiasm, as the youth replaced and buttoned up his treasure;
"it will save you, mayhap, like a charm, in the hour of temptation."
"I don't need _that_ advice," returned the soldier, with a quiet smile,
as he once more laid his head on his saddle.
Soon the noise in our little camp ceased, and, ere long, every man was
asleep except the sentinels.
Towards morning one of these observed a man approaching at full speed.
As he came near the sentinel threw forward his carbine and challenged.
The man stopped and looked about him like a startled hare, then, without
reply, turned sharply to the left and dashed off. The sentinel fired.
Of course we all sprang up, and the fugitive, doubling again to avoid
another sentinel, almost leaped into the arms of Andre Yanovitch, who
held him as if in a vice, until he ceased his struggles, and sank
exhausted with a deep groan.
On being led to one of the fires in a half-fainting condition, it was
found that he was covered with blood and wounds. He looked round him at
first with an expression of maniacal terror, but the moment he observed
Petroff among his captors he uttered a loud cry, and, springing forward
seized his hand.
"Why, Lewie," exclaimed the scout, with a gleam of recognition, "what
has happened?"
"The Bashi-Bazouks have been at our village!" cried the man wildly, as
he wiped the blood out of his eyes.
"Ha!" exclaimed Dobri, with a fierce look; "we can succour--"
"No, no, no," interrupted the man: with a strange mixture of horror and
fury in his blood-streaked face; "too late! too late!"
He raised his head, stammered as if attempting to say more, then,
lifting both arms aloft, while the outspread fingers clutched the air,
uttered an appalling cry, and fell flat on the ground.
"Not too late for revenge," muttered the officer commanding the
detachment. "Dress his wounds as quickly as may be, Mr Childers."
He gave the necessary orders to get ready. In a few minutes the horses
were saddled, and I had done what I could for the wounded man.
"You know the village he came from, and the way to it?" asked the
commanding officer of Petroff.
"Yes, sir, I know it well."
"Take the man up behind you, then, and lead the way."
The troop mounted, and a few minutes later we were galloping over a wide
plain, on the eastern verge of which the light of the new day was slowly
dawning.
An hour's ride brought us to the village. We could see the smoke of the
still burning cottages as we advanced, and were prepared for a sad
spectacle of one of the effects of war; but what we beheld on entering
far surpassed our expectations. Harvests trampled down or burned were
bad enough, so were burning cottages, battered-in doors, and smashed
windows, but these things were nothing to the sight of dead men and
women scattered about the streets. The men were not men of war; their
peasant garbs bespoke them men of peace. Gallantly had they fought,
however, in defence of hearth and home, but all in vain. The trained
miscreants who had attacked them form a part of the Turkish army, which
receives no pay, and is therefore virtually told that, after fighting,
their recognised duty is to pillage. But the brutes had done more than
this. As we trotted through the little hamlet, which was peopled only
by the dead, we observed that most of the men had been more or less
mutilated, some in a very horrible manner, and the poor fellow who had
escaped said that this had been done while the men were alive.
Dismounting, we examined some of the cottages, and there beheld sights
at the mere recollection of which I shudder. In one I saw women and
children heaped together, with their limbs cut and garments torn off,
while their long hair lay tossed about on the bloody floors. In
another, which was on fire, I could see the limbs of corpses that were
being roasted, or had already been burnt to cinders.
Not one soul in that village was left alive. How many had escaped we
could not ascertain, for the wounded man had fallen into such a state of
wild horror that he could not be got to understand or answer questions.
At one cottage door which we came to he stood with clasped hands gazing
at the dead inside, like one petrified. Some one touched him on the
shoulder, when we were ready to leave the place, but he merely muttered,
"My home!"
As we could do no good there, and were anxious to pursue the fiends who
had left such desolation behind them, we again urged the man to come
with us, but he refused. On our attempting to use gentle force, he
started suddenly, drew a knife from his girdle, and plunging it into his
heart, fell dead on his own threshold.
It was with a sense of relief, as if we had been delivered from a dark
oppressive dungeon, that we galloped out of the village, and followed
the tracks of the Bashi-Bazouks, which were luckily visible on the
plain. Soon we traced them to a road that led towards the mountainous
country. There was no other road there, and as this one had neither
fork nor diverging path, we had no difficulty in following them up.
It was night, however, before we came upon further traces of them,--
several fires where they had stopped to cook some food. As the sky was
clear, we pushed on all that night.
Shortly after dawn we reached a sequestered dell. The road being curved
at the place, we came on it suddenly, and here, under the bushes, we
discovered the lair of the Bashi-Bazouks.
They kept no guard, apparently, but the sound of our approach had roused
them, for, as we galloped into the dell, some were seen running to catch
their horses, others, scarcely awake, were wildly buckling on their
swords, while a few were creeping from under the low booths of brushwood
they had set up to shelter them.
The scene that followed was brief but terrible. Our men, some of whom
were lancers, some dragoons, charged them in all directions with yells
of execration. Here I saw one wretch thrust through with a lance,
doubling backward in his death-agony as he fell; there, another turned
fiercely, and fired his pistol full at the dragoon who charged him, but
missed, and was cleft next moment to the chin. In another place a
wretched man had dropped on his knees, and, while in a supplicating
attitude, was run through the neck by a lancer. But, to say truth,
little quarter was asked by these Bashi-Bazouks, and none was granted.
They fought on foot, fiercely, with spear and pistol and short sword.
It seemed to me as if some of my conceptions of hell were being
realised: rapid shots; fire and smoke; imprecations, shouts, and yells,
with looks of fiercest passion and deadly hate; shrieks of mortal pain;
blood spouting in thick fountains from sudden wounds; men lying in
horrible, almost grotesque, contortions, or writhing on the ground in
throes of agony.
"O God!" thought I, "and all this is done for the amelioration of the
condition of the Christians in Turkey!"
"Ha! ha-a!" shouted a voice near me, as if in mockery of my thought. It
was more like that of a fiend than a man. I turned quickly. It was
Andre Yanovitch, his young and handsome face distorted with a look of
furious triumph as he wiped his bloody sword after killing the last of
the Bashi-Bazouks who had failed to escape into the neighbouring woods.
"_These_ brutes at least won't have another chance of drawing blood from
women and children," he cried, sheathing his sword with a clang, and
trotting towards his comrades, who were already mustering at the bottom
of the dell, the skirmish being over.
The smooth-faced, tender-hearted youth, with the lock of auburn hair in
his bosom, had fairly begun his education in the art of war. His young
heart was bursting and his young blood boiling with the tumultuous
emotions caused by a combination of pity and revenge.
The scout also galloped past to rejoin our party. I noticed in the
_melee_ that his sword-sweep had been even more terrible and deadly than
that of Andre, but he had done his fearful work in comparative silence,
with knitted brows, compressed lips, and clenched teeth. He was a
full-grown man, the other a mere boy. Besides, Dobri Petroff had been
born and bred in a land of rampant tyranny, and had learned, naturally
bold and independent though he was, at all times to hold himself, and
all his powers, well in hand.
Little did the scout imagine that, while he was thus inflicting
well-deserved punishment on the Turkish Bashi-Bazouks, the Cossacks of
Russia had, about the same time, made demands on the men of his own
village, who, resisting, were put to the sword, and many of them
massacred. Strong in the belief that the country which had taken up
arms for the deliverance of Bulgaria would be able to fulfil its
engagements, and afford secure protection to the inhabitants of Yenilik,
and, among them, to his wife and little ones, Dobri Petroff went on his
way with a comparatively easy mind.
It was evening when we reached another village, where the people had
been visited by a body of Russian irregular horse, who had murdered some
of them, and carried off whatever they required.
Putting up at the little hostelry of the place, I felt too much fatigued
to talk over recent events with Nicholas, and was glad to retire to a
small room, where, stretched on a wooden bench, with a greatcoat for a
pillow, I soon forgot the sorrows and sufferings of Bulgaria in profound
slumber.