I dozed at last; but my slumber was haunted by dreams and nightmares,
like those of a fevered patient. I saw Louisa Loftus, with her pale and
lovely features distorted by fear, her black hair floating all
dishevelled about her white shoulders. She was clinging to the verge of
a lofty rock, towards which an angry tide was advancing, while I,
chained, withheld by some mysterious power, was unable to succour or to
save her. My voice was gone, and my agonies were unbelieved, as she
only beheld them with proud smiles of scorn and derision.
The scene changed. Now she had married, or was about to marry the
Marquis of Slubber, believing me dead--that I had perished in the East.
I heard her say so, distinctly and tearlessly, with a calm sympathetic
smile, which my Lady Chillingham, with an impatient motion of her fan
rebuked. Still I was deprived of all power of volition, and a spell tied
up my utterance, till Berkeley--I saw him to the life, in his lancer
uniform, hovering about her, to the evident annoyance of the senile
marquis--told her, in his drawling lisp, that he had seen me killed, and
she quite believed him. Then a painful cry escaped me, and I awoke. I
had other dreams, and these were, perhaps, the worst of all. I was
free! I had exposed and punished Berkeley. I was again among my
friends; handsome Beverley, Travers, bluff Jack Studhome, Fred Wilford,
and the others were around me. The lancers were on parade, I heard the
neighing of the chargers; and saw the long line of glittering lances,
the plumes and banperoles waving in the sunshine; I heard the music of
our band; we were laughing, talking, smoking; we were in the mess or
billiard-room, and I could hear the bells of Canterbury ringing in the
cathedral towers.
At other times I was in Calderwood Glen, under the old, old trees that
had echoed to the hunting-horn of many a kingly Stuart; or I was on the
heather muirs, gun in hand, with old Sir Nigel, knocking over the
whirring partridges and the golden pheasants, the plash of the mountain
burn and the hum of the mountain bee coming together on the balmy
breeze, as I trod the green Lomond side, and saw the grassy glens of
Fife, the blue Forth, and many a village spire among the woodlands far
away.
Then to waken and find myself chained to the Cossack corporal, in that
loathly Russian den, in the wilds of Crim Tartary, was a disappointment
cruel and bitter!
The rising sun saw us once more on the road; but for what place I was
still ignorant. Before we started Corporal Pugacheff released my hand,
but pointed significantly to his pistols.
On this day, as we proceeded eastward, there rose in the distance on our
right the mountain of the Tents, the highest in the Crimea (the Tchatir
Dagh, a mass of red marble), so named from its resemblance to the
dwellings of the Nogai Tartars. Five thousand feet it towered above the
Euxine, with its summit crimsoned in the morning sun.
Through a defile, named Demir-Kapon (or the Iron Gate), we entered the
valley of the Angar, a tributary of the Salghir (which flows into the
Putrid Sea); and here, from the slopes of the mountain, the scenes we
saw were full of rural loveliness--picturesque Tartar villages, laden
orchards and blushing vineyards, and flocks and herds without end;
everywhere softness blending with sublimity. I noted every foot of the
way well, as I had but one thought--escape.
I remember that near the Tartar town of Sivritash, which lies twenty
miles north-east of Sebastopol, we passed a body of Russian recruits for
various regiments, all hastening to get into the latter place before the
Allies could invest it.
These recruits were escorted by a squadron of the hussars of the
Princess Maria Paulowna (sister of the Emperor). They were certainly
gorgeously-equipped and accoutred troopers, mounted on fine Arab horses;
but my admiration for them was not increased by a blow which one of them
dealt me, in mere wantonness, with the flat of his sabre, as I trudged
past wearily and afoot: but this insult honest Pugacheff resented by
laying his lance heavily across the shoulders of the hussar.
Many questions were asked of him by the officers of these troops, who
altogether mustered about five thousand men; and from the frequency with
which the name Kourouk occurred in his replies, as well as the direction
in which we were travelling, I surmised that we were proceeding to the
fortress at that place.
In this conjecture I was right, for on the evening of the third day
after my capture, I found myself a prisoner in the secluded Russian fort
or outpost of Kourouk, which lies on the northern slope of the mountain
of Karaba Yaila, and is distant exactly seventy miles, as a bird flies,
from Sebastopol.
No parole was offered me; I was without money, and my name and rank were
alike unknown; I was clad only in the tatters of my own regimental
finery; and I felt a deep gloom steal over me, when the little wicket
gate in the massive wooden and iron barriers of the fortress was closed
behind me. And now, cast utterly among strangers, I parted with regret
even from the snub-nosed Corporal Pugacheff, who had been my guide thus
far, and from his red-eyed poodle, Olga, too.