ZUPI.
Ivan Carlovitch, he resumed, was a soldier insensible alike to pity
and to danger. His cold and rigid sternness had first brought him
under the notice of his imperial master, who raised him from the
humblest rank in the army. He had a strict and almost absurd idea of
the implicit obedience which should be rendered by the soldier to his
superior; and wild as I was then with passion and grief on finding
that I had only saved Basilia from one degrading condition to deliver
her over to one still more cruel and terrible--to be the mistress,
the plaything of a wretched Russian--I had sufficient tact to see
that resistance would only serve to destroy my own hopes of a
dreadful vengeance, and of achieving her freedom. On the first
symptom of disobedience, Carlovitch would have brought me before a
general court-martial. From this tribunal in Russia, the way to the
knout or the grave is short and rapid, especially to a poor Pole, or
a captive Tcherkesse warrior.
It is related that early in life, Ivan Carlovitch, the son of Carl, a
porter of Moscow, was a soldier in General Ouchterlony's battalion of
the Imperial Guard, and was one day a sentinel on the private gate of
the palace at St. Petersburg, when a sudden inundation of the Neva
spread terror among the inmates of the edifice, and forced them to
retreat to the upper stories.
The Empress Alexandrina was surveying the rising waters from a
balcony, when she perceived Carlovitch standing at his post
motionless, and mid leg in the water. In great alarm she desired him
to retire within doors. He "presented arms" when Her Majesty
addressed him, but respectfully declined. The flood increased.
Trees were swept away, railings and balustrades, vases of flowers,
dead cattle, boats, and logs of wood were surged and dashed against
the palace walls; again and again the Empress and her ladies called
in great agitation to the sentinel, desiring him to abandon a post so
perilous; but with admirable coolness he replied, that he "dared not
until properly relieved or withdrawn by an order from the captain of
the guard." That officer had by this time clambered to the roof of
the guard-house, from whence he sent the corporal, a good swimmer, to
bring off this obstinate sentinel, who was now up to his neck in
water.
For this act of bravado or insensibility to danger, Carlovitch was
appointed a captain in the Infantry Regiment of Tenginski, and
marched with it against the Circassians. In due time he was
appointed colonel of the Tenginski Hussars (for there are two corps,
one of horse and the other of foot, so named), and as such I found
him when misfortune cast me in his way.
He was a man without mercy, and often brought his bravest soldiers to
the knout for the most trivial fault; but he never broke into gusts
of passion, and though constantly using among the soldiers, the
serfs, and prisoners a heavy rattan, every blow of which brought away
a stripe of flesh, he always addressed them with a cold and cruel
smile, which filled those who knew him with fear and repugnance.
Oh, how I loathe his memory and the recollection of that fiendish
leer, which I can picture so distinctly at this moment!
But what of Basilia, you would ask me?
Fain would I draw a veil over her fate; but a few words will relate
it.
The insulting advances, the bold declarations of a love the most
repugnant to a heart so pure, the caresses and the presents of
Carlovitch she received with disdain. For three days and three
nights tears were her only protection; entreaties for mercy her only
weapon; but at last even they failed her. One night Carlovitch,
flushed with wine and fury on leaving a banquet given by Prince
Merischikoff, assailed her in his own tent, and to escape him, the
miserable Basilia pierced her throat with a poniard, and died at his
feet!
Her pure, fair, beautiful form was wrapped in a horse-rug, and buried
by the rough hands of Cossack pioneers, at the foot of a rock on the
left bank of the Kuban.
The grave of my love lay but a pistol shot distant from the tent of
her destroyer; yet his iron heart never smote him, and never
reproached him with his cruelty; he smoked, he drank the wine of the
Tcherkesses, and played at cards and chess, and with his brother
officers sang as merrily as ever, and no more regarded the death he
had caused and the misery he had wrought, than the ashes of his last
cigar.
Where then was I?
Forced to lead my troop against my own people, and watched by a
chosen few of my own soldiers, I had been sent towards Azov in
pursuit of fugitive Circassians. One whom we had tracked the
livelong day, riding over steep mountains, through pathless forests
and deep rivers, was taken at nightfall by his horse falling under
him. He was brought in, exhausted with fatigue and faint with
hunger, covered with blood, with scars, brambles, and heavily
fettered. The poor fugitive we had pursued so long, and taken at
last, proved to be my brother Selim, who had failed to reach the camp
of our confederated princes, and had wandered long on the Russian
side of Mount Shapsucka.
I was filled with new dismay. It seemed that I required but this to
complete my misery. I rent my beard, and threw myself on the ground;
I cursed myself and Ivan Carlovitch in the same breath, and daringly
upbraided the Prophet with injustice to a Mussulman so devout as I.
Poor Selim heard my words with terror. He raised me from the ground;
he kissed me on both cheeks, and besought me to be composed, and then
we were separated. I had to continue my march towards the shores of
the sea of Azov, while Selim, the miserable Selim, was dragged before
Carlovitch, who tried him as a deserter, had him degraded, and his
sword and commission trodden under foot; after which he was sentenced
to die--to die under the knout--"a terror to other Tcherkesses who
trifled with the service of their beneficent lord and father the
emperor."
Three weeks afterwards I heard of his fate, and to nerve my soul for
the coming vengeance, I drank in the terrible description of the poor
boy's dying scene. I was told by my sergeant how the troops were
formed in a hollow square--ten thousand Russian slaves, misnamed as
soldiers, with bayonets fixed and colours flying; I was told how the
noble prisoner stood amid them, with the kingly air of a true
Circassian cavalier, though stripped of every article of attire, save
a pair of tattered drawers; how he was bound by the wrists, the neck,
and ancles, to a large gun-carriage, and how the executioner, a
gigantic Kalmuck, stood six feet distant to give his infernal weapon
a swing more full and heavy. I was told how Selim--for he was the
youngest of us--screamed in agony as each successive blow fell on his
bare and quivering shoulders, from which the flesh was torn in pieces
by every lash of the dreadful whip; how between every stroke this
giant Kalmuck dipped its bloody ends in brimstone, and how the victim
sank beneath the strokes, until at last their sound came dull and
dead, for poor Selim had expired with four words on his lips; they
were, "My brothers--my brothers."
I did not shed a tear for him; a fiend seemed to possess me; a
devilish joy swelled within me, as I lay that night in the bivouac
beside the feet of Zupi, rolled in my mantle, with my sword and
pistols at my side.
"Woe to thee, whining cur of the Czar, woe!" I repeated again and
again; "to-morrow I will see thee, Carlovitch--to-morrow shall thy
soul answer to heaven and to hell for these atrocities; and to-morrow
Mostapha's son shall cease to be the serf of this dog Emperor,
Nicholas Paulovitch!"
The sunny morrow came, and loud and shrill rang the trumpets which
summoned the Hussars and Grenadiers of Tenginski to a general parade.
I examined my saddle girths, my bridle, and my arms, with scrupulous
exactness, for this would be the last parade I was ever to attend. I
threw away everything that might serve to encumber my motions or
overload my horse, and by my advice Karolyi did the same.
We were now with that portion of the Russian army which had fallen
back from the Circassian Mountains to recruit and reform after their
defeats by Schamyl; and which, after recrossing the Don, was cantoned
principally in the Ukraine. The division to which we belonged
occupied Poltava, one of the richest and best parts of the adjoining
province for pasturing cavalry horses.
On the very day after we halted at Poltava, a grand parade was formed
before Prince Menschikoff, and as I had marched with the baggage
guard, I saw Carlovitch for the first time since these atrocities had
cast a horror on my soul. The Prophet alone knows what were my
emotions at the sight of him. The voices of Basilia and of Selim
were rising from their graves--they were ever in my ears whispering
"vengeance," and I rode amid the troops like one in a stupor. The
parade was a magnificent one.
There were present the Imperial Guard, under General Ouchterlony, a
Scotsman, and his three sons, all colonels of battalions; these men
were the flower of the Russian army; the six Grenadier battalions of
Prince Frederick of Hesse Phillipesthal; the veteran regiment of
Moscow, commanded by Prince Frederick of Mecklenburg; the Cuirassiers
of the Grand Duchess Olga, and the gorgeous Hussars of the Princess
Maria Paulowna (sister of the Emperor), whose trappings far eclipsed
those of the two Tenginski corps of Hussars and Infantry. But
Karolyi and I laughed at the splendour of these idolaters, and scorn
grew with hatred in our hearts; for it is of these, and such as
these--eaters of hogs'-flesh and drinkers of brandy--that our Prophet
spoke, when he said, "lo! they are like no other than brute cattle,"
and they shall perish like the people of Irem, of Thamud, and those
who, as the Koran tells us, dwelt in al Rass.
The review passed before me like a dream, for my mind was full of
other thoughts, and I saw only the mangled and bleeding body of Selim
bound to the field-piece, and the poor remains of Basilia asleep in
that uncouth grave where the Russian pioneers had buried her, when
suddenly my name resounded along the glittering ranks; Carlovitch
summoned me to the front, when all the cavalry were formed in line to
deliver a general salute.
Something had gone wrong. I know not what, but I had neglected my
troop when deploying from close column into line, and Carlovitch,
usually so grave and impassible, was choking with passion. He called
me "a dog of a Tcherkesse," and smote me on the face with his rattan.
The blow went straight to my heart!
For a moment I felt as if a thunderbolt had struck me; but
transported with fury, I uttered the yell-like war cry of Circassia,
and buried my sharp sabre--the noble steel of far-away Damascus--in
his dastard heart!
Again I thrust it to the hilt, as tottering he drooped upon his
holsters, dying and gushing of blood, and then I spurned the corpse
with my feet as it fell. I slew him on the spot, in the face of
fifty thousand men! May the curse of mankind fall upon the turf
which wraps the dog who begot him!
I brandished my sabre, and shouted wildly to Karolyi,--
"To the hills--away, away! Tcherkesse! Tcherkesse!"
Goring his horse with the spurs, he sprang from the ranks, as the
roar of a thousand voices ascended from them, on witnessing this act
of justice; together we dashed at a furious pace towards the nearest
mountains, and had already placed a deep and rapid torrent between us
and the Russians, before they had recovered from their astonishment,
or made proper arrangements for a pursuit.
The most accomplished rider in Europe is acknowledged to sit his
horse like a clown when contrasted with a Circassian cavalier; and
fortunate it was for Karolyi and me, that we--both men and
horses--were bred and reared on the slopes of the Caucasus; as we
were hotly and fiercely pursued by relays of mounted men despatched
fresh and lightly accoutred from the innumerable military posts we
passed. The wild Tchernemorski Cossacks, with their long lances, and
wiry little horses; the Tenginski and Paulowna Hussars, and even the
heavy, helmeted, breast-plated and jack-booted Olga cuirassiers
spurred after us; but among the deep rocky gorges, the tangled
brakes, the shifting mosses, and the fordless rivers, we soon rid
ourselves of the latter, and most of the others, save the Cossacks,
who followed us like spirits of evil, unrelenting and unwearying, for
many a day and many a night.
In desperate hope to reach the Prussian frontier, we had already
crossed the Dnieper, and traversed the palatinate of Minsk, where for
days we rode over a flat country, of which we were ignorant, and
where, in despair, we were frequently about to abandon the hope of
escape, when we found ourselves involved in the mazes of a wild
forest and dreary morass that lie on the banks of its rivers. But
our native hardihood preserved us; for a cleft in a rock, or the
branch of a tree with a sword for a pillow, is home enough at any
time for a Tcherkesse warrior.
However, we now began to experience a serious difficulty in procuring
a knowledge of the route to be pursued. We knew little of the
language; our aspect was jaded, wan, and terrible; our uniform hung
about us in rags; our horses were sinking, and that we were deserters
was evident to every observer. And now the people of Lithuania
joined in the pursuit, and one evening, just as we were about to
cross a river named the Swislocz, our Tchernemorski Cossacks came
upon us, and their wild shout of joy at the termination of that
flight, which to them had been a long and exciting chase, rang in the
air above us, as they reined up their horses on the rocks that
overhung the stream, and brandished their spears.
We were about to plunge in, when one more bold or more freshly
mounted than his comrades, wounded Karolyi by a lance thrust.
"May demons defile thy beard, and their plagues fall on thee and
thine!" exclaimed my brother in a gust of fury; but now he had
dropped or broken every weapon save his dagger, so with that
quickness which is peculiar to the Circassian, he dismounted, rushed
upon the Cossack's horse, drove the weapon into its breast, and
bearing it back at the same time by the bridle, he hurled the
snorting steed over upon its rider, and crushed him to death in an
instant.
Vaulting again into his own well-worn saddle, he plunged with me into
the stream, and gallantly we breasted it--while the carbines of the
Tchememorski Cossacks--the only soldiers in the Russian service who
can at all compete with our people--rang on every side, as they
commenced a simultaneous discharge upon us, and their bullets
flattened on the rocks, or raised incessant water-spouts around us.
Suddenly I heard a low cry and a choking gurgle that filled my heart
with misery. I looked back; Karolyi, struck by a bullet, had sunk
from his saddle, and a spurred boot alone was visible, as horse and
rider was swept over a cataract, and borne away towards the Dnieper.
So perished my second brother!
Forcing Zupi up a bank where the reeds grew at least twelve feet
high, I still rode recklessly on; but brave as they were, not one of
the Cossacks dared to cross that foaming torrent in pursuit. Night
came down to shroud my flight; there was no moon. I reached a wood,
and flung myself down exhausted in mind and body. I was now dead to
the fear of discovery, and I cared not for wolves, or other wild
animals.
The presence of Karolyi, his companionship and our brotherly love,
had alone sustained me thus far; now he was gone, and I was alone in
the world; but there was at least one consolation: he had died the
death of a warrior, with one hand on his bridle, and the other on his
weapon; he had fallen, like his father's son, in battle with the
enemies of his country, but he had found a tomb far from his father's
grave, and far from the banks of the Kisselbash River.
Three days I lay without food, save a little wild honey, and without
repose in that Lithuanian forest, and careless whether I lived or
died; for want, misery, privation and mental agony had broken my
spirit, and destroyed alike every purpose, hope, and reflection.
There I prayed to the only Prophet of God, and remembered with
growing trust that in the blessed Koran, he enjoins us to seek aid
with perseverance; and I implored him to deliver me, even as the Lord
divided the sea of Kolzom with his hand to let his people pass, and
thereafter drowned the Egyptian host; and the Prophet heard me; for
even while I prayed with my bare head in the dust, there chanced to
pass that way a poor Tartar who dwelt on the skirts of the forest,
and who had come hither to cut wood.
He heard me address the Prophet, and remembering the faith of his
fathers, felt his heart moved within him; so he had compassion upon
me, and took me to his hut, which, like all the Tartar dwellings, was
little better than a rabbit-hole, burrowed on the face of a hill,
with a rude verandah in front. Fortunately it lay in a wild and
secluded place; so I dwelt for some days in safety with this good
man, who guided me across the plains of Grodno, until I passed the
Prussian frontier, when I knelt with my face to the east, and gave
thanks to Heaven--thanks that I was safe from Russia, although eight
hundred miles lay between me and the hills of my beloved Circassia.
Zupi, my horse, the noble animal which had borne me this incredible
distance, was my first care, and to procure new garments in lieu of
the tattered uniform of the Tenginski Hussars was the second; and
intent only on reaching Britain, which was about to declare war
against Russia, I travelled through part of Prussia by railway, a
mode of locomotion, which I there saw for the first time, and which
filled me with wonder and awe.
On reaching that kingdom, I thought my troubles were at an end; but
there, alas! I found myself accused of a murder, stripped of the
little sum I had about me, separated from Zupi, cast into prison, and
in danger of being hanged; or what was worse, sent back to the
Russian General Todleben, who commanded at Grodno. It happened thus.
I travelled towards Dantzig in a second-class carriage, in which the
only other passenger was a pale and careworn young man, whose
profusion of beard, braided coat, and small cap, with its square
peak, gave him somewhat the aspect of a student. Taciturn and
thoughtful, and being full of astonishment at the speed with which we
swept over plain and valley, across rivers and under
mountains--travelling as it were on the skirts of a whirlwind--I did
not address my companion, who after smoking a large pipe for some
time, covered his head with his cloak, and threw himself at full
length along the seat, where he lay, long, as I thought, asleep. A
jolt of the train threw him on the floor, and perceiving that he lay
motionless and still, I hastened to lift him; but how great was my
emotion, to find my hands covered with blood--for this silent
fellow-passenger was a suicide, who had cut his throat from ear to
ear, by a knife, which he grasped in his now rigid hand.
I endeavoured to lower the windows, but I knew not the way; so I
dashed one to pieces, and cried aloud to the guards or drivers--I
know not which you name them; but I was unheeded, and still this
apparently infernal vehicle, in which I was enclosed with the bloody
corpse, swept on, screaming, whistling, jarring, clanking, smoking,
and whirling over wood and plain, over the roofs of towns, past the
weathercocks of churches, and the tops of lofty trees, with a speed
and din that would have carried terror and dismay to the hearts of a
Circassian host, and would have swept Kurds and Kalmucks to the
furthest confines of Asia.
At Dantzig the train arrived in due time, and the doors were opened
by the conductors. I was found with "the murdered man;" my recent
cries were attributed to him; the broken windows to his dying
struggle, for my hands were cut and covered with blood! The Prussian
gallows threatened me on one hand and the Russian knout upon the
other. I was a poor unfriended foreigner, in a land of spies,
suspicion, and police agents; and in my own defence had not one word
to urge, for I was ignorant of the language. But fortunately next
day, a letter was found on the person of the deceased, who proved to
be a French artist, announcing his intention of destroying himself,
and adding, that "when he had no longer a sou, it was thus a
Frenchman should die--Vive la France! Vive le diable!"
This relieved me, and explained the whole affair; but the Prussian
gens-d'armes kept my purse, as they said, to pay "all contingencies;"
and had not the captain of a large French ship taken pity upon me,
and brought me and my horse to London--the capital of Europe--I must
have begged for bread in the streets of Dantzig, and had to sell my
beloved Zupi to save the noble animal from starvation.
Finding myself in the great city of London, I was likely to be in
greater distress than when in the vast forest of Lithuania; for in
London the whole population live in an atmosphere of snares,
suspicion, and mistrust, every man viewing his neighbour as one who
has a design upon him. Again I was starving, for the little sum with
which the French captain supplied me was spent upon Zupi, by whose
side I always slept at night in an old cart-shed. But remembering
that by birth and habit I was a soldier, I applied to the officers of
the Household Brigade; some of these smiled, and shook their heads
doubtfully, until Sir Henry Slingsby laid before them my commission
in the Tenginski Hussars; it was fringed with silver, and signed by
the Emperor Nicholas Paulovitch. Then they had a fellow feeling for
me, and treated me with a kindness, the memory of which fills my soul
with gratitude; for never, to the last hour of my life, shall I
forget it, or omit to pray for the good and brave Ingleez.