DUE EAST
Jack, to his immense delight, found himself detailed for duty with a
large number of his men to assist General Canrobert in the
fortification of the long narrow peninsula on which, Gallipoli is
situated.
No matter that the fortifications were little likely to be of any
actual benefit, it was active service and turning to practical account
the theoretical knowledge of which he was full.
The men, who had left England ablaze with warlike fervour amid the
cheers of the populace, had found their long detention at Malta very
trying and relaxing. Warlike fervour cannot keep at boiling-point
unless it has something to expend itself upon. And so they welcomed
this diversion, and planned, and built earthen ramparts, and bastions,
and barbettes, and ravelins, and redoubts, to their hearts' content,
and felt very much better both in mind and body than when they were
kicking their heels and frizzling in the tawny dust of Malta.
There were many discomforts, however, chiefly in regard to the
provisioning. Even at this very first stage in the proceedings the men
had little to eat and less to drink; and if curses could have assisted
the commissariat, or blighted it off the face of the earth, its
movements would have been mightily quickened. But forty years of peace
do not make for efficiency in the fighting machine. It had grown rusty
through disuse, as all machines will, and the ominous creakings which
began at Gallipoli never ceased till--too late for the hosts of
gallant souls who died of want before Sebastopol--England awoke at
last to the shame of her relapse, and set her house in order with a
roar of righteous, but belated, indignation.
Jack and his men fared better than most, through their intimacy with
the Frenchmen, who had the knack of living in plenty where others
starved. Jack brushed up his French, and found welcome, and still more
welcome hospitality, among the officers, and his men learned how tasty
dinners could be made out of the scantiest of rations if only you knew
how to do it.
But the slow weeks dragged on; there was no sign of an enemy, and the
fighting for which they had come out seemed as far off as ever. And
the little advance army growled and grizzled and cursed things in
general, and began to get a trifle mouldy. And meanwhile the Turks,
under Omar, were valiantly holding the Danube against the Russians,
and the allied generals were in communication with the allied
ambassadors at Constantinople, and the ambassadors were in
communication with the un-allied diplomatists at Vienna, and the
diplomatists were seeking instructions from London, Paris, Berlin, and
St. Petersburg, and futile talk blocked the way of warlike deeds.
It was the middle of May before the welcome order came to move on, and
their spirits rose at the prospect. They had come out to fight, and
anything was better than moulting at Gallipoli.
But the diplomats were still chopping words at Vienna, so they were
all dumped down again at Scutari, till the wise men should see which
way the cat was really going to jump.
More weary weeks followed, though, since they gave Jack the chance of
seeing a great deal of Constantinople, he at all events had no cause
for complaint. The neat little steamer, which the Sultan had placed at
the disposal of the British officers, ran across in a quarter of an
hour and plied to and fro constantly; and having no duties to perform,
Jack missed none of his opportunities and saw all he could, and that
included many strange sights.
He made many new acquaintances, and began to lose somewhat of the
studious concentration which had hitherto stood in the way of his
making any very close friendships even at Woolwich and Chatham. He had
given heart and brain to his work, and now only craved the opportunity
of applying his knowledge and climbing the ladder. While frivolous
Jim, with a modicum of the brains and still less of the application,
somehow possessed the knack of making friends wherever he went. And
having mastered his drill and won the hearts of his men, he also
considered his military education completed, and longed only to get
the chance of showing what was in him and them.
Jim would have had a delightful time in Constantinople, and, with all
his desire for glory, would still have enjoyed himself thoroughly; but
Jack, with most of his fellows, felt keenly that all this was not what
they had come out for; and when, in June, orders came to embark for
Varna, up along the coast of the Black Sea towards the Danube, he was
heartily glad. For there had been heavy fighting on the Danube, and if
they could only get there in time there might still be a chance of
showing what they were made of.
It was four months since they left England, and so far they had
practically done nothing more than mark time, and there is a certain
monotony about that necessary but fruitless operation which has a
depressing effect on spirits and bodies alike.
However, they were getting on by degrees at last, though what their
ultimate objective really was no one seemed to know, unless, perhaps,
Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, and they kept their own counsel.
Jack had been a fortnight at Varna, and was beginning to get sick of
it as he had of Malta and Gallipoli, when one day the stately
_Himalaya_ steamed quietly in among the mob of smaller craft which
crowded Varna Bay, and began to discharge the first of the cavalry
that had put in an appearance. This looked like business, and Jack
joined the crowd watching the disembarkation.
"Hello, Jim, old boy!"
"Hello, Jack! That you?" And the boys of Carne had met again.
"Hardly knew you in those togs. Took you for a tramp," grinned Jim.
"You loaf here for half a dozen weeks, my boy, and you'll come to it.
Have you any news? Are we going on? We're all sick to death of the
whole business."
"_I_ dunno. We've come straight through. We began to be afraid we'd be
too late and miss all the fun."
"You've not missed much so far. We've been frizzling and grizzling all
this time. Never seen the ghost of a Russian so far."
"Waiting for us, I expect. Can't get on without cavalry."
"If that's what we've been waiting for we're all mighty glad to see
you. All this hanging about is the hardest work I've ever done yet."
"Where are you living?"
"Up on the hill there. You'll be going on to Devna, I expect. That's
twenty miles further up."
"I've got to look after the horses. They've done splendidly so far.
Not lost a leg. We'll have a talk when we knock off." And Jim turned
to the congenial work of seeing his equine friends safely ashore.
When he had seen them all picketed on the stretch of turf near the
beach, and enjoyed for a time their rollings and stretchings and
kickings of cramped heels, he walked away up the shore, had his first
delicious swim in the Black Sea, and then made his way into the dirty
little town and struggled slowly through its narrow streets, packed
with such a heterogeneous assortment of nationalities as his wondering
eyes had never looked upon before.
Guardsmen, Fusiliers, Riflemen, Highlanders, Dragoons, and Hussars,
Lancers, Chasseurs, Zouaves, Artillerymen, and Cantinières; Greeks,
Turks, Italians, Smyrniotes, Bashi-Bazouks, and nondescripts of all
shapes and sizes; dark, windowless little shops with streaming calico
signs in many languages, offering for sale every possible requirement
from pickles to saddlery, but especially drinks; a slow-moving,
chattering, chaffering, and occasionally quarrelling, mob of shakos,
turbans, fezes, Highland bonnets, _képis_, and wide-awakes, with
bearded faces under them in every possible shade of brown and
mud-colour,--no wonder it took Jim a long time to get through.
But he got out into the open country at last, and breathed clean air
again, and climbed the hill and found his way to Jack's tent, and
demanded something to drink.
"What a place!" he gasped. "Never saw such a sight in my life!"
"Beastly hole!" growled Jack. "I wish to Heaven they'd get us on and
give us some work to do."
"Why don't they?"
"Ah--why don't they? Some one may know, but I'm beginning to doubt it.
When we came up here we had hopes again, but now they say the Russians
have had enough on the Danube and are bolting, so that's off. What's
the news from home? I've hardly had a letter since we left."
Jim gave him of his latest, and handed him Lord Deseret's present,
which Jack found greatly to his taste.
"No more news of Kattie?" he asked presently, when other subjects
seemed exhausted, and in a tone that anticipated a negative reply.
"Yes. I found her--the very last night," said Jim quietly.
"You did? How was it?"
"I had been dining with Lord Deseret, and saying good-bye all round,
and was dead tired. We were to start at six next morning and I was
hurrying home to get some sleep, when suddenly Kattie stepped up and
spoke to me."
"Good God! Did she know it was you?"
"Oh yes. She hadn't got so low as all that. But it gave me a shock, I
can tell you, Jack, to meet her like that, though we had been doing
all we could to find her."
"And how did she seem? And what had she to say for herself?"
"She looked prettier than I'd ever seen her--better dressed, you know,
and all that."
"And what did she say?"
"She flatly refused to tell me who had brought her to London.
She had heard we were leaving in the morning and she wanted to say
good-bye--so she said."
"Deuced odd! What did you do?"
"Well--I was knocked all of a heap and didn't know what to do. Then I
suddenly bethought me of Mine Beteta. She had been very kind to me,
and only that afternoon, when I was saying good-bye, she had laughed
and said her only regret was that I hadn't got into any scrape that
she could help me out of. It was jolly nice of her, you know. So I
bundled Kattie into a cab, and took her straight to madame, and left
her with her."
"Poor little Kattie! She was too good for that kind of thing. And you
got no hint as to who----
"Not a word. I asked her straight, and she said she would not tell."
"I'd like to wring his neck for him, whoever he was."
"She probably knew we would feel that way, and that's why she wouldn't
speak. And how have you been keeping, Jack? Seems to me you look
thinner. Perhaps it's the way you dress--or don't dress. I never saw
such a seedy, weedy-looking set. You'd certainly be taken for tramps
in England."
"Just you wait, my boy. If you get four months of this infernal
loafing in dust and dirt and blazing sun, you'll come to it. And I may
well be thin. I'd hang every commissary in the service. They starve us
half the time and give us rubbish the rest."
"That sounds bad. What's got them?"
"Everything's at sixes and sevens. All the food and drink in one place
and all the hungry and thirsty souls in another, some hundreds of
miles away. If I was the Chief I'd hang a commissary every time the
men go short. And the amount of red-tape! Oh, Lord! But you'll know
all about it before you're through, my boy. Some of the fellows have
chucked it and gone home."
"Rotters!"
"I don't know. It's been almost beyond endurance at times, and all so
senseless, and nothing comes of it. Starving for a good cause is one
thing, but starving simply because the men who ought to feed you are
fools is quite another."
"Overworked, I expect."
"Underbrained, I should say. I'll ask you three months hence what you
think about it all."
Jim was very busy the next few days getting his men and horses on to
Devna. His chiefs had found out that he could get more out of men and
horses than most, and that when he took a thing in hand he did it. So
work was heaped upon him and he was as happy as could be.
He messed with Charlie Denham in a little tent on the shore, bathed
morning and night, and Joyce and Denham's man saw that their
masters--and incidentally themselves--were properly fed.