JIM'S LUCK
Jim, by force of circumstance, acquired a very wholesome reputation as
the best-mounted man in the Light Brigade, as a tireless rider, and as
an officer who doggedly carried out his instructions. The result was
much hard work, which he enjoyed, and much commendation, which he
thoroughly deserved.
When the Russians retired from the Danube and disappeared into the
wilds of Wallachia, Lord Cardigan was ordered to follow them with a
party of gallopers and learn what route they had taken.
The first man picked for his troop was Jim Carron, and Jim was wild
with delight. Here, at last, was something out of the common to be
done, something with more than a spice of danger in it, and altogether
to his liking.
They were away for seventeen days, camping as best they could without
tents, and they rode through three hundred miles of the wildest and
most desolate country Jim had ever set eyes on. For one hundred miles
at a stretch they never saw a human being, but finally got on the
track of the Russians and found they had gone by way of Babadagh. Then
they rode up the Danube to Silistria and returned to camp by way of
Shumla, somewhat way-worn as to the horses, but the men fit and hard
as nails.
But they were the fortunate ones, and their satisfaction with their
lot could not leaven the seething mass of growling discontent
represented by the remaining fifty thousand would-be warriors, who had
come out all aflame with martial ardour, but had so far never set eyes
on an enemy, who were ready to die cheerfully for a cause which not
one in a hundred properly understood, but found themselves like to
moulder with ennui and lack of proper provisioning.
Their hopes had been constantly raised only to be dashed. They were to
go up to the Danube to help the Turks against the Russians. They were
aching to go. But fifty thousand men need feeding, and the
commissariat was in a state of confusion, and transport non-existent
and unprocurable. So they stayed where they were, and mouldered and
cursed, and began to look askance at the whole business and to doubt
the good faith of every one concerned.
Many officers fell sick, some threw up their commissions in disgust
and went home. The men would have liked to follow.
In July came the inevitable consequences of ill-feeding, ill-temper,
enforced idleness, and mismanagement--the men became as sick in body
as they had long been at heart. The heats and rains of August turned
the camps into steaming stew-pans, and the men, who would have faced
death by shot and steel with cheers, died miserably of cholera and
typhus, and dying, struck a chill to the hearts of those who were
left.
The officers did their best--got up games for them and races. But the
more intimate companionship between officers and men which obtained in
the French army was lacking in the British, and could not be called
into spasmodic existence on the spur of the moment.
The races alone excited a certain amount of enthusiasm, and whenever
Jim happened to be in camp he carried all before him.
With quite mistaken grandmotherly solicitude, too, the bands were all
silenced, lest their lively music should jar on the ears of the SICK
and dying. The men tried sing-songs of their own, but sorely missed
their music, and those near any of the French camps would walk any
distance to share with them the cheery strains they could not get at
home.
The camps were moved from place to place in vain attempt at dodging
death. But death went with them and the men died in hundreds. And
those who were sent to the hospitals at Varna wished they had died
before they got there.
Through all that dreadful time, when the doctors were next to
powerless and burying-parties the order of the day, our two boys kept
wonderfully well. And for that they were not a little indebted to Lord
Deseret, to a certain amount of fatherly oversight on the part of
Colonel Carron, and perhaps most of all to the fact that they were
kept busy.
Jack and his fellows beat the country-sides for game until they had
swept them bare.
Jim, still in luck, was sent out to buy horses, and travelled far and
wide, and still farther and wider as the nearer provinces became
depleted. And when Jack's game was finished he got permission to go
with him, and in those long, venturesome rides they two renewed their
youth together, and rejoiced in one another, and found life good.
Many a lively adventure they had as they scoured the long Bulgarian
plains in search of their four-legged prizes, for which they paid a
trifle over a pound a leg in cash, whereby they beat their French
opponents, who only paid in paper which had to be cashed at French
Head-quarters, one hundred or more miles away.
To the boys it was all a delightful game; and getting the horses home,
when they had found and bought them, was by no means the least
exciting part of it. But the chief thing was that it took them out of
the deadly camps, kept them fully occupied, and in soundest health
when so many sickened and died.
The risks of the road were comparatively small, and they always went
well armed and with an escort.
Danger, indeed, lurked nearer home. For the twenty miles of road
between Varna and the camps at Aladyn and Devna began to be infested
with the baser spirits from among the great gathering of the
off-scourings of the Levant which had flocked after the army.
Outrages were of daily occurrence, and every man who went that way
alone rode warily, with his hand on his revolver and his eyes on the
look out.
One day Jack had ridden up to the plateau by the sea, where the
Dragoons were, to visit George Herapath and Harben, who were both down
with dysentery, and Jim had been delayed at the commissary's office by
the only part of the business in which he took no delight--the
settlement of his accounts, which never by any chance came out right.
They were cantering home in the cool of the evening, when cries of
distress at a short distance from the road turned their horses'
heads that way, and galloping up in haste they came on a band of
Bashi-Bazouks--cut-throat ruffians whom General Yusuf was trying to
lick into shape--dragging away a young country girl, whose terrified
eyes had caught sight of the British uniforms. Already that uniform
carried with it greater guarantee of right and justice than any of the
many others with which the country was overrun. So as soon as she saw
them she shrieked for help, and they answered.
"Let her go, you beasts!" shouted Jack, as he dragged out his sword.
And then, as dirty hands fumbled in waist-shawls full of pistols,
Jim's revolver cracked out, and two of the rascals went down. Curses
and bullets flew promiscuously for a second or two, and then the
remaining Bashis bolted, leaving four on the ground and the girl on
their hands.
"What the deuce are we to do with her?" said Jack, as the spoils of
war clung tearfully to his leg.
"Where?" asked Jim, in one of the few native words he had picked up in
the course of business.
"Pravadi," panted the girl.
"That's over yonder, past Aladyn," said Jim. "We'd better take her
home, or those brutes will get her again. I'll take her up--my horse
is fresher than yours. Come along, my beauty!" And he stuck out his
boot for a foot-rest, and held out his hand to the girl.
The uniform was her sufficient guarantee, and she climbed up and
straddled the horse, and locked her arms tightly round Jim's waist.
"All right?" he asked. And they turned to the road.
Two minutes later they fell in with a Turkish patrol galloping up at
sound of the firing, and had some difficulty in making them understand
that they were not carrying off the girl on their own account. They
were only convinced by being led back to the place where the wounded
Bashis lay. Then they offered to take care of the girl and see her
safely home. But she knew them too well and would have none of them.
She clung like a leech to Jim, and at last they were permitted to go
on their way.
They had many little adventures of the kind, and they tended to keep
their blood in circulation, and the blues, which afflicted their
fellows, at a distance.
Lord Deseret had laid down the law for Jim as regards eating and
drinking.
"I have lived in Turkey," he said. "Drink no water unless it has been
boiled, and then dash it with rum. Tea or coffee are better still. And
eat as little fruit as possible; it's tempting, but dangerous."
And Jim used to get wildly angry with his men, when he saw them
devouring cucumbers by the half-dozen, and apricots and plums by the
basketful, under the impression that these things were good for their
health. They laughed at his remonstrances at first, but remembered
them later; and those who did not die foreswore cucumbers for the rest
of their lives.