PLEVNA.
There is in one of the minor streets of Plevna a small baker's shop,
with no other sign indicating that bread may be bought within than
the painted semblance of a curiously twisted cake upon the yellow
wall between the window and the low door.
On the seventh of September, eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, this
painted cake was the nearest approach to bread that could be seen in
the neighbourhood. For many weeks there had been no pleasant odour
of browning loaves, no warm air from the oven at the back of the
shop. Curious irony of fate! The baker had died of starvation. I
almost hesitate to tell that the foul heap of clothing lying in the
ditch a few yards down the hill was all the earthly remnant of the
late owner of this useless establishment. Useless because there was
nothing in Plevna now to bake. He had been dead many days, but there
seemed to be no question of burying him. There were too many
wounded, too many sick, dying, and festering men, for the living to
have time to think of the dead. The heavy pestilential air was full
of the groans of these poor wretches.
Within the little shop were three men--one seated at a rough table, a
second standing before him, the third perched nonchalantly on the
window-sill smoking a cigarette. The last-mentioned had the
advantage of his companions in the matter of years, but of the three
his gravity of demeanour was most noticeable. Amidst such squalid
surroundings--by the side, as it were, of death--his personal
appearance was somewhat remarkable, for he was neat and clean in
dress. His fresh rosy cheek had that cleanly appearance which
denotes the recent passage of the razor, the light moustache was
brushed aside with a rakish upward flourish. The nose was small and
straight, the eyes blue. A bright red fez tilted rather forward
completed the smart appearance of the smoker, who manipulated his
cigarette daintily, and, while listening to the conversation of his
two companions, made no attempt to join in it. This man was Tefik
Bey, Osman Pasha's chief of staff, one of the defenders of Plevna. I
confess that Tefik is a puzzle to me. I cannot tell what sort of man
he is. He is indescribable. Taciturn to a degree, he was barely
thirty years of age, and looked younger. A dark, sombre, silent man
is more or less a straight-forward production of Nature; but Tefik
had the appearance of a light-hearted talker, and belied it.
The man standing in the middle of the small, low-roofed chamber was
his wonderful chief, Osman Pasha. Tall, strongly built, and
handsome, he formed a striking contrast to his young colleague. A
loose, dark-blue cloak hung from his shoulders, and the inevitable
fez surmounted his powerful brow. A short black beard concealed a
chin of unusual firmness, and from time to time a nervous movement of
a somewhat dusky hand brushed the hair aside with a rustling sound.
The nose was large and inclined downwards with a heavy curve, while
beneath bushy brows a pair of steadfast black eyes looked sorrowfully
forth upon the world. There was determination and a great energy in
those eyes, despite their wan thoughtfulness.
He who sat at the table we know. It was Theodore Trist. Clean and
carefully shaven, he was literally clad in rags; but his face had
lost its old dreaminess, its vague meekness of demeanour. A clear
light in his eyes, the set of his lips, conveyed in some indefinite
way that this man was in his element. Despite his hollow cheeks and
sunken temples, in the midst of that heavy reek of death and blood,
this Englishman was visibly happy.
'Do you want,' Osman was saying, 'to see what we can do with our
triple ranks of Berdans?'
'Yes.'
'To-morrow Skobeleff will attack the redoubt again. He has positive
orders to take it at any cost.'
'_Will_ he take it?' asked Trist.
Osman turned with a smile towards Tefik, who was lighting a second
cigarette. The chief of staff shrugged his shoulders, and threw away
the end of the last cigarette with a sideward movement of his lips.
Osman shrugged his shoulders in precisely the same way.
'Who knows?' he said quietly. 'If they value the redoubt at four
thousand lives, they might do it.'
Trist set his two elbows on the table and looked up at the speaker's
face with calm speculative scrutiny. He did not offer him a chair,
because he knew that Osman rarely sat down. The great soldier had no
time for rest.
'Skobeleff,' said the Englishman, 'is a great man, but Napoleon would
have been in here some time ago.'
Tefik moved slightly, and looked towards his two companions with a
vague smile. He knew nothing of Napoleon the Great and his method of
making war. Moreover, he did not care to know.
It was the chief of staff who finally broke a silence of some
duration.
'Listen, Osman,' he said in a soft, dreamy voice. 'I hear the sound
of a new gun. The Russians have mounted another big one. We are
going to get it very hot.'
All three raised their heads and listened. After the lapse of a
minute a dull thud broke upon their ears. The Russians had mounted a
new siege gun, and Plevna was beginning its career as a target for a
steadily increasing army of artillery. There was no indecent haste
in loading or sponging. It was excellent practice for the gunners,
and through the next three months the sound of heavy firing never
quite ceased night or day. At times, by way of variety, the whole of
the artillery combined in directing its fire upon a spot previously
selected. But the grim game was not all on one side, for Plevna
pluckily returned blow for blow.
'There is,' said an expert at Russian headquarters, 'a European
directing those guns--probably a German.'
But Trist never sighted a single shot, although he did not withhold
his advice.
'I know where it is,' said Tefik at last. 'Perhaps we can get at it.'
And he left the room quietly.
The two men remaining there did not speak for some time. Trist was
occupied with a large sheet of paper covered with a fine writing, and
showing columns of figures. Osman had brought this to him, and was
now evidently waiting for it. The Englishman skimmed up the columns
with the celerity of a banker's clerk, muttering the additions in his
native language. The hand that held the pen was brown and scarred
with manual labour, for Trist had worked in the trenches day and
night.
'Yes,' he said at length, looking up in a business-like, curt way,
which showed that between these men there was some bond of
comradeship. 'Those figures are all right. At an extremity you
could even reduce the allowance of soup, could you not?'
The soldier shook his head with a wan and momentary smile.
'Scarcely,' he replied. 'It is getting colder every day. If we want
to hold out we must keep up the hearts of the men, and if there is
nothing to press them upwards all our hearts drop into our stomachs,
my friend.'
'There is more clothing to be had. We get a fresh supply day by
day,' said Trist, with an uneasy sigh.
Osman winced. The meaning was only too clear, for the time had long
since gone by for men to scruple over stripping the dead for the
benefit of the living.
'Yes. You are right.'
With these words the commander of Plevna turned to go.
'What news have you?' inquired Trist indifferently, as he set in
order the papers lying upon his table. He spoke in a loud voice, as
all men did in Plevna, because of the roar of artillery and the
rolling echo among the hills.
'Oh--nothing of importance!'
'Are you quite without communications from outside?'
Osman turned upon the threshold, and looked back with a smile of
assumed density. Then he disappeared through the low doorway.
Trist turned to his papers again, but he had not begun writing when
the Turkish commander appeared once more.
'Trist,' he said, coming forward with long, heavy strides.
'Yes.'
'I can get you out to-night. Had you not better go?'
'I would rather stay,' replied the Englishman. 'I am neither a woman
nor a child.'
'But why run the risk?'
'It is my duty.'
'What we are enduring now,' said Osman, in a dull, painful voice, 'is
nothing to what I foresee. At present we make some small attempt to
collect bodies and ... and limbs, and bury them. Soon that will be
impossible, for we shall want all our men at the guns and in the
redoubts. The winter is coming on--food is already scarce--the
wounded cannot be cared for. They and the dead will lie about the
streets rotting in their own blood. My friend! this place will be a
hell on earth!'
'Nevertheless, I stay.'
'Disease will take the town before the Russians break through--few of
us will live to see Christmas!' pleaded Osman.
The Englishman looked up, pen in hand. There was actually a smile
hovering upon his firm lips.
'It is useless,' he said very gently. 'I stay till the end.'
'As you like,' murmured the soldier, leaving the room.
Trist did not begin work again for some time. The pile of papers
around was of sufficient dimensions to alarm a less methodical
labourer, but in the apparent disorder there was really a perfect
system. Darkness closed in soon, and the war-correspondent lighted a
small lamp. Then he laid aside the larger mass of paper, and
selected a sheet which he doubled carefully into the form of a letter.
'It is better,' he said, 'to face all probabilities. I shall write
to her now, in case we are starved to death in here like rats.'
Far into the night this strange, restless Englishman sat at the
little table writing. Heedless of the roar of artillery, the merry
call of the bugle, and the groan of the dying, he wrote on at a great
speed, for above all he was a writer. His pen sped over the paper
with that precision which only comes from long practice--line after
line, page after page of the small paper, perfect in punctuation,
ready for the press in true journalistic form.
He folded the letter, and enclosed it in an envelope, which he
addressed carefully in a legible roundhand.
'There,' he murmured, 'let that be the last line I write to-night.
It seems to me that we are on the verge of a crisis. Osman has
something on his mind ... I wonder if he means to cut his way out.'
Before lying down to rest on the heap of straw which served him as a
bed, he collected all his papers and placed them securely in a large
leather despatch-case, upon which was painted in black letters the
address of the newspaper which he served. This was his nightly
custom; for he was out all day upon the walls among the devoted
children of Islam, and where bullets are flying no man has a right to
ignore the chances of death. There was no bravado in the action, but
a mere simple method. The chances were much in favour of the little
baker's shop being left empty one night; but that was no reason why
the British public should be defrauded of its rightful sensation in
the matter of words written by a hand that is still, for nothing is
so safe to draw as the last words of one who has died in battle or
mishap.
People who live peaceably at home are accustomed to receive great
odds in the game of life and death. They, therefore, cannot
understand why others--wanderers, sailors at all times, soldiers in
time of war--are content with the lighter favour, and have the power
of living happily in close proximity to death.