AN EXCITING ESCAPE.
When the Tsar returned to Moscow and set himself deliberately to count
up his losses, he was obliged to admit that what affected him more
grievously than anything else was the disappearance of poor Boris;
a disappearance which he could not but feel certain meant death, or
captivity and torture, in comparison with which death would be vastly
preferable. Peter missed his devoted servant and friend at every turn
and at every hour of the day.
On the second day after his arrival, the Tsar was surprised to receive
a request for an audience from, as his orderly informed him, "a little
English fairy." Permission being given, the door opened, and in walked
Nancy Drury, now nearly fifteen years old, and as sweet-looking an
example of English maidenhood as any could wish to see. Nancy was very
grave and hollow-eyed, and her face showed signs of many tears.
"Is it true?" said Nancy, advancing towards the Tsar, and speaking in
the hollowest and most tragic of voices.
"Is what true, my dear?" asked Peter kindly, taking the child on his
knee, though he thought he knew well enough what she required of him.
"Is it true that he is lost--my Boris--and perhaps dead?" Poor Nancy
burst into tears as she spoke the last word, and hid her face in her
hands. "Oh, what have you done with him, and why did you let the
Tartars have him?" she continued, through sobs and tears.
Peter did his best to pacify the child, assuring her, against his own
convictions, that Boris was certainly alive and well, and promising
faithfully that at the renewed campaign next summer his troops should
certainly release Boris from captivity before they did anything else.
When Nancy had extracted this promise from the Tsar, she dried her
tears, and thanked him and smiled. Peter kissed the sweet English face.
"If only I were not married already, Nancy," he said, laughing, "I
declare I should be tempted to make an empress of you when you were
old enough! Would you like to be an empress?"
Nancy blushed. "I love your Majesty very much," she said, "but I would
never be empress--" She hesitated.
"And why not, my little English fairy?" said the Tsar kindly.
"I--I shouldn't like to live in a big palace all my life," faltered
Nancy. "I love the woods and the fields, and--"
"But if Boris were emperor?" laughed the Tsar.
Nancy hid her face, and flushed scarlet. Then she jumped off his knee
and burst into tears again, throwing herself at his feet, and sobbing,
"Oh, save him from the Tartars, your Majesty--do save him! Take him
away from the enemies of Christ, and God will bless you for it!"
There was not much of the man of sentiment about this practical young
potentate, but Peter could not help feeling greatly touched to see the
child's anxiety and sorrow. Once more he assured her that all would
be well, and Nancy accepted his assurance and left the Tsar's cabinet
smiling and hopeful.
But my readers will wish to know what has become of poor Boris all
this time. They will think, very properly, that the fate of a single
Christian falling wounded into the hands of an excited mob of the
children of the Prophet must be pretty well settled before ever
his feet have touched the ground. So it would be, undoubtedly, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred; but Boris was not quite "done
for" when he fell, and therefore the swords and knives which were
anxiously awaiting the opportunity to dip into his Christian blood were
obliged first to fight for the privilege. He had received a terrific
blow, certainly, but had guarded in time, and though overbalanced and
tumbled off the wall, he was still unhurt. Regaining his feet in an
instant, he had placed his back against the wall, and stood to receive
attack. Half-a-dozen swords soon sprang out to give him battle, and in
a minute he was engaged in an encounter compared with which his fight
with the Streltsi was the tamest of toy battles. Boris felt that there
was little hope of his keeping his antagonists at bay until some of
his friends should have mounted the wall and arrived to give him the
much-needed assistance; but he was resolved, nevertheless, to keep up
the game until either death or assistance came, and to exact at least
twelve Mussulman lives as the price of his own!
Boris fought a good fight that day. Turk after Turk fell before his big
swinging sword, and whenever one fell another took his place. Bravely
he cut and thrust and guarded, and the very Turks themselves stayed
their crowding upon the walls to see out this fine exhibition of skill
and endurance and Muscovitish pluck. But cutting and thrusting and
guarding one's body from two or three assailants at once is tiring
work, and poor Boris felt his strength failing him, and his eye grew
dim, so that he could scarcely see accurately where he struck, and
some of his blows began to fall at random. His breath came and went
in gasps, and his arms ached with weariness. In another moment one of
those flashing blades would find a billet somewhere in the region of
his stout heart, and the career of the brave bear-hunter would be over
and done with.
But fate had decided that the readers of these records of Boris should
have many more pages of his history to peruse, and just when the hunter
was making up his mind that he had fought his last fight and lost
it, this same fate, in the person of a Turkish pasha who had watched
the fray admiringly from the beginning, strode up and knocked aside
the swords of the assailants of Boris just in time to prevent them
from dyeing themselves red in his blood. The pasha felt that here
was a splendid slave being wasted, or perhaps a prisoner for whom a
good ransom might be eventually forthcoming. So he struck away the
swords, and skipping aside to avoid a savage thrust from poor dim-eyed
Boris, who could not see and knew not the signification of this new
assailant's interference, he rushed in and pinned the half-fainting
Russian to the wall. The sword dropped from Boris's hand as the fingers
of the pasha closed around his throat, a thick film came over his eyes,
black fog enveloped his brain, and the shouts and cries of the battle
around him receded further and further into space; his consciousness
faded and failed, his senses vanished one by one like the extinguishing
of candles, and Boris knew no more.
When Boris came to himself he was in a small room, whose only window
was at a height of some five feet from the floor and iron-barred. He
could hear a sentinel pass and repass beneath it, and from a distance
came the sounds of musketry and artillery fire, which quickly recalled
to his mind the events of the morning--or of yesterday, for he was
without means of ascertaining how long he had remained unconscious.
Food--some coarse bread and a dish of water--stood upon the floor
beside the straw upon which he found himself outstretched. Boris was
very hungry, and at once ravenously consumed the food, finishing the
bread to the last crumb, and wishing there were more of it, coarse
though it was. He felt very weary still, and though unwounded, save
for a prick or two in the hand and fore-arm, quite incapable of and
disinclined for thought or exertion. So Boris lay still, and presently
fell asleep.
He was awakened at night by voices as of people conversing within the
room, and opened his eyes to find the pasha, his captor, with another
Turk and a third figure whose presence first filled him with joy,
and then, as he remembered, with bitter loathing. It was Jansen, the
treacherous gunner, to whose perfidy and desire for vengeance was due
the repulse of Peter and his army, and, indeed, indirectly, his own
present situation.
Boris was for upraising his voice in angry denunciation of the traitor,
but the pasha dealt him a blow in the mouth and bade him roughly be
silent. Boris felt for his sword, but found it was no longer at his
side, neither was his dagger nor his big clumsy pistol; he was entirely
unarmed.
Jansen and the Turks were conversing in a language unknown to Boris,
the pasha asking questions and putting down Jansen's replies in a
note-book. Then Jansen, addressing Boris, informed him that the pasha
had spared his life in order to employ him in his own service, either
to teach his soldiers the art of swordsmanship, in which, the pasha had
observed, he excelled, or perhaps to help him, Jansen, in managing the
big guns mounted upon the walls.
But at this point the tongue of Boris would be silent no longer, and
burst into furious invective. That this man should desert his master
the Tsar in his need was bad enough, but that the traitor should expect
him, Boris, to employ his skill in gunnery against his own beloved
sovereign and his own people passed the patience of man, and Boris
was with difficulty prevented from casting himself upon the deserter
and throttling him as he stood. Three swords flashing out of their
scabbards at the same moment, however, reminded the captive of his
helplessness, and Boris relinquished, reluctantly, the pleasure of
suffocating the traitor.
Whether Jansen persuaded the pasha of the impracticability of
compelling Boris to do any useful work with the guns, or whether it
struck the pasha that Boris might easily do more harm than good at
the walls, I know not, but the prisoner was never requested to take
part in artillery practice at the Russian lines. His duties, he found,
consisted chiefly in helping to carry the pasha's palanquin about the
streets of the city--an occupation rendered exceedingly disagreeable by
the rudeness of the population, who pushed, and jostled, and cursed,
and spat upon the "Christian dog" whenever he appeared. Occasionally
he was directed to practise sword exercise with chosen Mussulman
swordsmen; and this he was glad enough to do, for it gave him amusement
in plenty to teach these Easterns all manner of Western malpractices,
tricks of swordsmanship of an obsolete and exploded nature such as
would undoubtedly expose them, should they come to blows with an
experienced fencer, to speedy defeat. Besides these occupations Boris
was ever busy in another way--a field of activity in which his energies
were employed without the sanction or the knowledge of his master, for
he was labouring every day to loosen the iron bars of his prison room.
By means of peeping out of his window at moments when the sentry was
at a distance Boris had discovered that between him and the outer wall
of the city there was but a space of thirty yards of stone pavement,
up and down which paced the sentinel. Beyond this was the wall; and
over the wall, not indeed the plain whereon the Russian troops had till
lately been encamped, but the shining waters of that arm of the Black
Sea known as the Sea of Azof.
Day by day Boris worked at his bar, choosing those moments when the
sentinel was farthest from him. Once, during the sword instruction in
the courtyard, a sword broke, and the broken end of the weapon, a blunt
piece of steel about eight inches in length, was left on the ground.
Boris found an opportunity to seize this and secrete it before leaving
the spot, and the fragment proved of the utmost service to him in
scraping the mortar from beneath and around the iron bars. Two months
after his capture Boris saw to his delight that he could now at any
moment he chose remove these bars and attempt his escape.
The opportunity arrived at last: a warm, dark night, drizzling with
rain; the sentry, muffled in his _bashlik_, could see little and hear
less; no one else would be about the walls in such weather and so
late. The bit of sword end, by constant working, had worn to itself
by this time a sharp and formidable edge; it was no longer a weapon
to be despised. In Boris's wallet were stored the economized savings
of many meals--food enough to keep him alive for several days. The
hunter removed carefully the iron bars which had made this little room
a prison-house for two long months, and clambering upon the somewhat
narrow ledge, sat in the darkness and waited. Would the sentinel never
pass close enough for his purpose? To and fro the man went, but he did
not guess what was required of him, and passed along rather further
from the window than exactly suited the designs of Boris.
Seeing that the man was evidently a person of method, and stepped time
after time in his old tracks, Boris determined that he must accept the
inevitable and deal with matters as they were, without waiting longer
for desirable contingencies which destiny refused to bring about.
Standing crouched upon the ledge, Boris waited until the sentinel was
opposite, as nearly as he could guess in the darkness; then setting
every muscle in his body, he sprang out as far as he could towards the
spot where he judged the man to be. So vigorous was his leap, that
though the soldier was upwards of five yards from the window, Boris
alighted with tremendous force upon his shoulders, bearing him to the
ground and himself falling over him.
The wretched sentry, conscious only that something very heavy indeed
had fallen down upon him, apparently from the skies, was about to howl
to his Prophet for help; but in an instant Boris had one big hand over
the fellow's mouth, and with the other felt for a spot where a dig of
his little weapon might serve to silence for ever the man's appeals,
whether to Mohammed or to any one else. A quick struggle as they rolled
together on the ground, a sharp dig, and the sentinel lay still and
harmless, and Boris had accomplished his task so far.
Taking the man's outer garment and bashlik, and leaving his own, taking
also the fellow's musket and pistol, Boris clambered up the outer wall
and looked for a moment into the darkness beneath. That the sea was
there was certain, for he could hear the sound of the wavelets lapping
the wall below him; but how far down was the water--in other words, how
high was the wall?
However, this was no time for anxious reflection. If Boris ever wished
to see his home again, and his beloved Tsar, and, lastly, his little
friend Nancy Drury, he must jump now and at once. Murmuring a prayer,
then giving one somewhat trembling look down into the grim darkness
beneath him, Boris took a long breath and jumped.
It must have been a high wall, for as Boris fell through the air it
seemed to him as though he would never reach the water. At last he
felt the cold waves close over him, and then it seemed as though he
would never rise to the surface again; but when his breath was nearly
exhausted, and he was well-nigh choked for want of air, his head
emerged once more, and he was able to float quietly for a while, in
order to obtain a fresh supply of breath, and to listen for any sound
which might either warn him of danger, or indicate the direction in
which he ought to strike out in order to make the shore.
Presently Boris heard the sound of oars, and remained where he was
until the boat should pass. It was a party of fishers putting out to
sea, and Boris judged that by going in the opposite direction he would
reach land; so he struck boldly out for the point whence the boat
had come. Soon his intently listening ears caught the sound of the
twittering of sand-pipers, and Boris guessed that he neared the shore.
This was the case, and in some twenty minutes from the time of his
plunge the hunter had the satisfaction of feeling the bottom, and of
wading, drenched and somewhat cold, but exceedingly rejoiced, ashore.
There was no one about. The city lay to the left; he could hear the
crowing of cocks, and caught the occasional glimmer of a light. Boris
took the opposite direction, and walked along what seemed to be the
edge of an arm of the sea or of a large river. All night he toiled
along, sometimes swimming or wading, in order to put possible pursuers
off the track.
When morning came, Boris found himself on the skirt of a large forest,
and here he concealed himself, and dried his clothes and his food in
the sun. Then, deep in the shade of a birch thicket, he lay down and
enjoyed a good rest until the evening, when he rose up and recommenced
his flight, always keeping to the shore of the river, which, as he
afterwards discovered, was the Don. Thus Boris travelled for three
days, pushing on at night and resting during the day, until his food
was well-nigh exhausted. Then, to his joy, he reached a rough-looking
village where he found the Russian language was understood. Here
he was received kindly and entertained hospitably by the rough but
good-hearted inhabitants, a tribe of Don Cossacks; and here he rested
for several days, and collected his exhausted energies amid his kind
Cossack friends, in preparation for the long journey for Moscow and
home!