Here we are, fifteen months later, with Balaclava and Inkerman behind
us, and the world ringing with the story of our valour; and something
here and there being said about the staring incapacity of our commanders
and the crass dishonesty and stupidity of our contractors. The army
which left home in such bright array is transformed to a crowd of ragged
vagabonds, and all the services are mixed together in the trenches and
the camps before Sevastopol. Here are men of the Horse Artillery whose
batteries have lost their horses; and here are cavalrymen dismounted,
whether by reason of warlike misadventure or the sheer starvation
of horseflesh. And since folks must do something for their bread
in campaigning times, as at more peaceful seasons, the rules and
regulations of special branches of the military service are cast aside,
and men of every arm are working in the trenches together. A crowd of
vagabonds we are to look at, to be sure; but a year of war, if you only
think of it, makes a boy a veteran, and the bronzed, weatherbeaten, and
ragged lads of whom the army is in the main composed, have lived in
an atmosphere of powder for a year past; have gone marching and
counter-marching under shot and shell; and charging, and repelling
charges, until the imminent peril of their lives is a great deal more
familiar to them than their daily bread. The peril is there always, and
the bread turns up with extreme fitfulness.
On the Christmas Eve of ‘fifty-five there was a time of excitement in
the second parallel before the Malakoff; and this was not because of
any special danger of the siege or any threatened imminent assault, but
simply and merely because of the late slaughter of a pig of tender age
whose screams had come up from the Turkish camp about the witching hour
of midnight.
Amongst the war-worn, ragged, bronzed and bearded crowd is that
identical Paddy who reckoned his uniform the livery of his degradation
when he first assumed it. He is as ragged as any Connemara harvester
by this time, and as tanned, as plucky, and as impudent in the face
of death and hardship as he knows how to stick; and it is he who has
brought the news which flutters the spirits of the score of men who are
huddled in the trench together, right beneath the gaping embrasure of
the Russian guns.
It was near midnight, and an extreme languor of fatigue had fallen upon
all men when the tattered slip of Hibernian nobility crawled up on hands
and knees so as not to expose himself against the sky-line, and dropped
into his own place in the trench. He dropped with his feet on the
stomach of Sergeant Polson Jervase, who denounced his clumsiness in fair
set terms, which came as pat to his lips as if he had rehearsed them for
a year.
‘Is that you?’ said Paddy. ‘I beg yer pardon, and be damned to you. And
now will ye just listen? D’ye hear the death cry?’
Everybody heard the death cry, filling the air from barely a third of a
mile away: the voice of pork at the last agony.
‘The Lord alone knows where it’s come from, but that Mussulman crush
down below has got hold of a pig. The devil a ration has been served to
them for a month past, and they ought to know what hunger means be this
time. But bhoys,’ the speaker went on, with a whispered emphasis,
‘we’re Christian men, I hope, and we can’t dream of allowing those poor
infidels to peril their immortal salvation by the eating of strange
food. It’s eternal loss to the soul of a Mussulman that puts a knife and
fork into a griskin. And I’m proposin’ a work of Christian charity. Have
ye got the matayrials for a fire handy?’
One of the men sleepily bade him be damned, and turned over in the mud
in a scrap of ragged blanket; but all the rest at the bare suggestion
of a meal were wide awake. ‘Sergeant, darlin’, just be giving me
half-a-dozen men and we will make an exploitation, and be back in
no time with a meal of meat that ought to be good enough for this
particular mess from now till New Year’s Day. Is there any chance of a
fire now?’
A member of the hungry, hard-bitten band owned a solitary lucifer; but
was afraid that the damp had deprived it of all virtue.
‘Hurry up, boys,’ said one. ‘If once those blessed Bazouks get a fork
into piggy, we shall have to fight for a share of him.’
‘We’ve got the makings of a fire here somewhere,’ said the man with the
solitary lucifer. ‘But how are we to start it? This brushwood stuff is
all wet, and it won’t catch.’
But one man was there with a providential scrap of newspaper. There was
a moon in the frosty sky, with tatters of windy cloud about it, which
gave light enough to show the men each others’ faces dimly, and they all
clustered in a rough ring, some kneeling, some standing, and the centre
of the throng was the man with the match. Near him, second only in
importance, was the man with the newspaper, and kneeling near was a
third who stirred up the loose brushwood below the heaped fuel which had
been gathered and hoarded for a month past for a Christmas fire.
‘Here’s a dry pebble,’ said one man, pressing solicitously forward, and
proffering his midnight find to the man with the match. ‘Strike her on
that, and for God’s sake hold your breath, boys.’
The human centre of interest, the man with the match, took the pebble
and polished it to complete dryness on the lining of his overcoat. Then
he struck the match, which emitted a faint phosphorescent glow, and went
dark again.
In those days, when a Russian gunner felt aweary, and found a lack of
interest in the crawling hours of darkness, he would let bang a gun
from the Redoubt, simply _pour passer le temps_; and at this minute the
skipping ‘zip’ of a shot, a splutter of earth, and then the sullen boom
of the discharge came to give variation to the scene. The lucifer match,
however, was the all-absorbing centre of interest just then, and the
scratch on the pebble was a much more important sound than any bellow
of cannon from the fort. The lucifer was barely equal to its duties, and
half-a-dozen times it gave its feeble spark of phosphorescent light in
vain; but at last it struck, and the blue and yellow sulphur bubbled and
crackled into flame. The man with the newspaper was ready, and
caught the fire. The wet twigs smoked pungently, and there was one
heart-sinking moment when the last chance seemed to have vanished; but
then the fire sparkled up merrily, and the blaze lit the earthen side
of the trench and the silky-bearded, bronzed, unwashed faces, and the
stalwart, tattered figures of the crowd, with a flickering changeful
brightness.
‘That’s all right, boys,’ said the Honourable Patrick Erroll, Private
of Dragoons. ‘And now, Sergeant darlin’, give me half-a-dozen rank and
file, and, please God, well have a meal for Christmas morning.’
‘Now, I’m just as keen as any one of you,’ said Sergeant Jervase, ‘and
just as hungry; but be very quiet about the business, Paddy, and don’t
have a row with the Bashis, for the Lord’s sake.’
‘Trust me, Sergeant,’ said the Honourable Mr. Erroll, ‘and nurse the
fire whilst we’re away.’
Out of the blank darkness of the night the flame and glow from the
second parallel seemed to bite a hole; and as its brightness grew, it
drew the attention of the gunners of the Malakoff, who banged at it
sulkily from time to time. But the reckless contingent under Paddy’s
leadership had already clambered to the open and were making a muddy way
in the darkness towards the Turkish camp.
Down in the trench the fire grew to a rich and splendid glow, and one
or two of the favoured of fortune, who owned pipes and tobacco, plucked
bright embers from it, and, nestling under the shelter of the wall,
sucked away at their comfort with simple animal noises of satisfaction.
‘I say, Bill,’ says one, ‘was you ever Hingry before you seen this
Gawd-forsaken Crimea?’
‘Lor’ love yer,’ says the man questioned, ‘I was born hungry, and I’ve
been hungry ever since. But if the Honourable Paddy finds that ‘og,
and I get hold of a hind leg of him, I won’t complain before to-morrow
midnight.’
The fire glowed with a richer and a richer light, and men of hospitable
minds wiped their half-smoked clays on the inside crook of a coated
elbow and passed on luxury and refreshment to less-favoured neighbours.
It was a time for comradeship, if only for the fact that it was
Christmas Eve, and coming fast towards Christmas morning. But the
thought of the slain porker was in all men’s minds, and made them
expansive and generous and reserved by turns. Boom! said the gun from
the Redoubt, and the earth spluttered between the collar of Sergeant
Polson’s jacket and his neck, and dribbled comfortlessly down his back,
colder than any charity he had known of: lately-frozen earth, half
thawed, with wet snow on the top of it, and a sulky boom behind to add a
threat to its cold sting.
After long waiting, a voice in ecstatic laughter, and surely the voice
of the Honourable Paddy, Shuffling footsteps in the dark, and the
hungriest of the whole crowd in the trench climbing to peer into the
blackness; a youth who has not yet finished growing, and who finds the
irregularity of meals a cruel thing.
‘I’d like to know,’ says the Honourable Mr. Erroll cheerfully, ‘who
trusted those infernal Russians with a gun? They’ll be hurting somebody
by and by, if they’re not careful. But here’s the pig, boys, and there’s
nobody but poor little Ahmed Bey the worse for us. I knocked him on the
head from behind, and we’ll be none the worse friends to-morrow.’
Bang, and bang, and bang! sounded the guns from the Russian battery,
drawn by the light; but a delicious odour rose upon the air, and the
teeth of the little contingent watered. There was a ramrod with
Sergeant Polson at one end of it, and Paddy Erroll at the other, and the
loveliest loin of young pork in the middle; and the two, with scorched
hands and scorched faces, turned, and turned, and turned the improvised
spit. And there were some less nice in appetite who had raked out heaps
of glowing cinders from the fire, and had lain succulent slices thereon
and buried them in more cinders, and who were now enjoying a
compound feast of pork and charcoal, with such an insane relish as no
home-staying epicure could conceive over the lordliest dish the combined
cuisine of the whole wide world could show him.
‘What are you up to here, you fellows?’ said a voice out of the
darkness. ‘That’s a jolly appetising smell.’
‘Fresh roast pork, sir,’ responded one man with his mouth full.
‘Fresh roast pork!’ echoed the inquirer. ‘Hillo--that you, Sergeant?
You’re in luck. I’ll join your mess if you make no objection.’
‘Nobody more welcome than Captain Volnay, sir,’ said Polson. ‘Find that
old bread-box, one of you, and give Captain Volnay a seat.’
‘Hurry up!’ said Volnay. ‘That smell is maddening. How did you men come
in for such a treasure trove as this?’
‘I’m Columbus,’ said the Honourable Paddy, tinning the ramrod spit.
‘Why, by Jingo!’ cried Volnay, ‘you’ve got a whole pig here. I say,
Sergeant, I’m going to confiscate a leg for our Christmas mess. You
don’t think you fellows are going to be allowed to sit gourmandising
here whilst we go hungry!’
One man, sheltered by the shadow, answered sneeringly:
‘Precious little going hungry amongst your set, sir,’ said he.
‘And precious little you know about it, my good fellow,’ Volnay
answered, with his sunny laugh. ‘Life isn’t all beer and skittles
amongst your officers, let me tell you.’
‘I’d like to change, sir,’ said the malcontent.
‘Would you?’ asked the Captain. ‘Well, I dare say you would. But we all
have enough to grumble at, and to spare, if we happen to be built that
way. Just expedite that joint, Sergeant.’
‘It will be all the better for another turn or two, sir,’ said Polson.
‘It’s a deadly pity, but there’s no such thing as a hint of crackling.
Piggy came along with his bristles on, and we have no shaving tackle.’
‘Who goes there?’ cried a voice in the darkness, two score yards away.
‘Grand rounds,’ said another voice. It was Major de Blacquaire’s, and
Polson had not heard it since the day of the Alma, a year and three
months ago.
‘Halt, grand rounds, and give the countersign.’
‘Bonnie Dundee.’
‘Pass, grand rounds, and all’s well.’
Grand rounds came tramping down the trench and the men about the fire
rose up and stood to attention.
‘What is this?’ asked De Blacquaire. ‘Who’s in charge here?’
‘I am, sir,’ Polson answered, saluting.
‘What’s the meaning of this blaze here? Can’t you see that you’re
drawing the enemy’s fire? Report yourself to me at noon to-morrow.
Scatter that stuff, and trample it out.’
A foot was thrust into the embers, and they flared up suddenly. The
Major recognised his enemy, and looked from his eyes to the stripes upon
the left sleeve of his ragged overcoat.
‘Is that your own coat?’ he asked. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sergeant are you? I’ll break you for this to-morrow.’
‘That you, old chap?’ drawled Volnay from his seat on the bread-box.
‘Said you were dead. We’ve got no end of a find here. Whole pig. If
you’ll let me know where to find you, I’ve bagged a ham, and I’ll invite
myself to dine with you, and bring my own rations with me.’
‘Thaanks,’ said De Blacquaire. ‘Don’t trouble. I shall find it my duty
to report this scene of riot and disorder. Forward. March.’
Grand rounds went by, and the scattered fire faded.
‘If you _can_ manage to hack a slice of that pork off, Sergeant!’ said
Volnay, ‘I’m beastly hungry.’
‘Done, I think, to a turn,’ said Polson. ‘Who’s got anything that will
cut?’
‘I’m tould, sir,’ said a voice out of the darkness, with a rich oily
brogue in it, ‘that there’s hours of difference between here and
Limerick. Won’t it be Christmas morning in old Ireland, sir? And will
the bells be ringing?’
‘Ye’re out in your reckonin’,’ said another voice amid the shadows.
‘It’s exactly the other way. Your folks is going to bed in Limerick.
The sun has a knack of risin’ in the east, my lad, and we’re far east
of Ireland, or Aberdeen for that matter. I’m not mindin’ the exact
particulars, but it’s a matter of some two hours, I’m thinking. It’s
deep midnight here, and an hour or so beyond it, and they’ll be over
their punchbowls, yonner. That’s so, sir, I’m believin’?’
‘I don’t know, upon my word,’ said Volnay. ‘You’re out of my depth, my
lad. But it’s a bit of a sin to talk about punch-bowls, isn’t it, on a
night like this, when there isn’t a hot drink within a hundred miles?
Sergeant, this pork is like manna in the wilderness. Look me up before
you report yourself to Major de Blacquaire, will you? I’m responsible
for the fire, you understand. It was my duty to retire the whole crowd
of you under arrest, I know, but there isn’t a lot of fun going for you
beggars here, is there? Goodnight, Sergeant, and don’t forget the hour
in the morning.’
‘Good-night, sir.’ ‘God go with you, sir.’ ‘A merry Christmas and a
loight harrut to you, sir, for many a year.’
‘That’s your man, nah, Sergeant,’ said one man out of the shadow in a
tone that was learned in Rotherham, or very near it. ‘Ah like Captain
Volnay as mooch as ah like anybody. He’s got a kind of a way with him
an’ he sits dahn with the like of huz, and he talks to us as if we was
men in place o’ bein’ cattle, which is the way with most on ‘em. Here’s
good luck to Captain Volnay, an’ if ah’d got a glass o’ that steamin’
poonch they’n got in Aberdeen, ode bird, ah’d scald _my_ throat with a
relish.’
They were all full of roast pork, or of pork more or less roasted, and
the scent of the sacrifice was yet in the air, and their war-bitten
souls were cheered and warmed, if ever so little.
‘Yis,’ said one lad, ‘if half the quality knowed!’
‘Hallo!’ said Polson, turning in the fragrant dark. ‘How far from
Bilston were _you_ born?’
‘Wedgebury,’ said the voice. ‘No furder.’
‘Beacon Hargate, me,’ said Polson. ‘I’d ha’ guessed it, Sergeant. I’d
ha’ guessed it. I niver heerd your voice afore to-night, but there’s a
kind of a turn of the tongue in it now and then.’
The contingent fell to silence, and a wet clinging snow began, ruled in
straight lines. The embers of the fire hissed under it, and the men drew
themselves into such shelter as they could find, and waited in the grey,
cold patience for the expected relief from duty. It was long in coming,
and they learned afterwards that the regimental Sergeant-major, whose
duty it ought to have been to relieve them on that Christmas morning,
was dead from dysentery, poor fellow, and as a matter of fact it turned
out that he was buried in the muddy earth and half frozen in there
before anybody remembered to take up his duty.
The long, long night went on, and the Russian gunner, finding his
attention no longer drawn to the distant fire, had gone to sleep or
anyhow fallen silent, when a witching noise rose upon the air, and all
the worn, half-sleeping men sat up to listen. Surely there was the sound
of church bells, and there was a rush towards the pleasant noise. It was
only a man from the smithy who happened to have a musical ear and had
rigged up a kind of gallows from which he had hung carbine and rifle
barrels of varying lengths and calibre, on the which he was beating with
an iron rod. The sulky dull beginning of the dawn on Christmas Day, and
there in the trenches the Christmas bells ringing as they might have
rung in any village church in old England, two thousand miles away. And
the hearts of the listeners rose to their throats, and men were quiet
whilst the music sounded. The notes reached far, and fell on many a
drowsy ear, conjuring up visions in the half-slumbering minds of humble
whitewashed village steeples, far and far away. Polson’s contingent,
drawn from a distance of some two hundred yards, stuffed that ingenious
musician with half-cold roast pork, and left him well rewarded for his
toils.
By one of those surprising fatuities which distinguished this particular
campaign almost above all others in which the English private soldier
has been engaged, an attack which was ordered for black midnight was
ready just in the grey of dawn, and Polson’s ear caught a whispered word
of command here and there, and a noise of careful footsteps. The trench
of the second parallel was ten feet deep, but there was a ladder of
foot-holes just behind him, and he turned and climbed, digging his
fingers into the half-frozen turf on the Russian side. There was the
grim Redoubt at which the English guns had hammered in vain this many
and many a day, still solidly silhouetted against the clearing sky of
morning, dark and lowering, quiet as death and yet from old experience
holding a threat in the entrails of it. The men--three or four thousand
of them, as one might guess--climbed into the trench of the first
parallel and were lost to sight. They emerged crouching, and raced
across the space which intervened between them and the second, where
Polson’s own post lay. They were down like a dumb wind on the one side
and up again on the other, and raced, crouching, for the first, into
which they again disappeared. The man who shouldered Polson from his
place, and whose face as he went by might be distinctly seen, was Major
de Blacquaire.
‘Leading a forlorn hope, you devil, are you?’ said the Sergeant to
himself; but the words were silent, and he felt a simple throb of
admiration for the set mouth and resolute eyes of the man who had
climbed past him, and wished himself in his place.
The racing, crouching crowd had dived into the foremost trench and had
reappeared again before it was discerned by the Russian sentries; but
a hundred yards away from the foot of the glacis, the whole advance was
caught and swept and twisted, as by a whirlwind, by a hail of gunshot,
canister and rifle fire. The half-melted, new-fallen snow clung to the
sloping glacis of the Redoubt, and made a greyish background of dim
light against which a watcher could perceive not only the whole motion
of the line, but the gesture of any single figure in it. Hate and
interest and admiration alike prompted Polson’s eyes to follow the
slim, active figure with the waving sword which silently beckoned on his
followers. The Redoubt opened, as it were, with an earthquake crash, and
all the black front of it went fiery red and yellow, and at the first
discharge of this inferno, the figure with the flourished sabre in his
right hand fell prone. The double line of the invaders shook and wavered
from right to left, and men dropped amongst them as if the scythe
of Death were literally sweeping there. The lines advanced, wavered,
paused, turned, turned again, advanced again with mad cheering, scarce
heard amid the rattle of musketry and the roaring of the guns; and
finally broke and ran, utterly routed. The onlooker had no part in this
conflict except to bite and ram down a cartridge or two and to send a
shot more or less at random into the black oblong of the opposing fort;
but clinging with his feet on that precarious muddy ladder, and with his
elbows to the frozen turf, he saw clearly the convulsive gesture with
which De Blacquaire lifted his sabre in a last effort to wave on his
men.
Man is a very complex creature, and he will not be finally analysed
and done with until this planet is very much older than it was in the
nineteenth Christian century. Whether it was hate, or personal pride,
or a sudden flash of admiration for a man whom he had hitherto despised,
Polson Jervase could not have told you to his dying day.
But though the motives which inspired him were very wildly mixed and
very uncertain in their origin, there is no doubt whatever as to the
deed to which amongst themselves they inspired him that Christmas
morning. The Malakoff belched hell. The flying crowds hustled him and
threw him twice or thrice. But he was on his feet again, racing towards
that prone figure. He dropped into the front trench and trod upon
a wounded man who screamed beneath his heel, and climbed out on the
further side. The air was musical with hooting shell and singing shot
and hissing bullet as if a whole diabolic orchestra were fiddling and
bugling. Polson found the fallen body of his foe, and hugged it in
his arms, and raced back as hard as he could tear. He tumbled into the
trench of the first parallel almost anyhow; but he gripped the man he
hated, and in his soul was a great rejoicing. He tore up the opposite
side, and came out upon the open slope again, with the unconscious man
still in his arms.
‘You’ll ruin me, you devil!’ said Polson, as he ran breathlessly with
the wind of shot and shell in his ears. ‘And I’m to report myself to you
to-morrow, am I? We may report ourselves to Almighty God together, but
_you_ are safe for the minute, I guess.’
He was within a yard of his own post when these mad exaltations of an
excited fancy crossed his mind, and at that instant a musket shot took
him in the neck and he fell with his burden into the trench before him.