Chapter 4

In the morning, before the departure of the detachment, the captain on duty came to Colonel Verkhóffsky to present his report, and to receive the orders for the day. After the customary exchange of words, he said, with an alarmed countenance: "Colonel, I have to communicate a most important thing: our yesterday's signal-man, a soldier of my company, Hamitóff, heard the conversation of Ammalát Bek with his nurse in Bouináki. He is a Tartar of Kazán, and understands pretty well the dialect of this country. As far as he could hear and understand, the nurse assured the Bek that you, with the Shamkhál, are preparing to send him off to the galleys. Ammalát flew into a passion; said, that he knew all this from the Khan, and swore to kill you with his own hand. Not trusting his ears, however, the soldier determined to tell you nothing, but to watch all his steps. Yesterday evening, he says, Ammalát spoke with a horseman arrived from afar. On taking leave, he said: 'Tell the Khan, that to-morrow, by sunrise, all will be over. Let him be ready: I shall soon see him.'"

"And is this all, Captain?" demanded Verkhóffsky.

"I have nothing else to say; but I am much alarmed. I have passed my life among the Tartars, Colonel, and I am convinced that it is madness to trust the best of them. A born brother is not safe, while resting in the arms of a brother."

"This is envy, Captain. Cain has left it as an eternal heirloom to all men, and particularly to the neighbours of Ararat. Besides, there is no difference between Ammalát and myself. I have done nothing for him but good. I intend nothing but kindness. Be easy, Captain: I believe the zeal of the signal-man, but I distrust his knowledge of the Tartar language. Some similarity of words has led him into error, and when once suspicion was awakened in his mind, every thing seemed an additional proof. Really, I am not so important a person that Khans and Beks should lay plots for my life. I know Ammalát well. He is passionate, but he has a good heart, and could not conceal a bad intention two hours together."

"Take care you be not mistaken, Colonel. Ammalát is, after all, an Asiatic; and that name is always a proof. Here words hide thoughts--the face, the soul. Look at one of them--he seems innocence itself; have any thing to do with him, he is an abyss of meanness, treachery and ferocity."

"You have a full right to think so, my dear Captain, from experience: Sultan Akhmet Khan gave you a memorable proof in Ammalát's house, at Bouináki. But for me, I have no reason to suspect any mischief in Ammalát; and besides, what would he gain by murdering me? On me depends all his hope, all his happiness. He is wild, perhaps, but not a madman. Besides, you see the sun is high; and I am alive and well. I am grateful, Captain, for the interest you have taken in me; but I entreat you, do not suspect Ammalát: and, knowing how much I prize an old friendship, be assured that I shall as highly value a new one. Order them to beat the march."

The captain departed, gloomily shaking his head. The drums rattled, and the detachment, in marching order, moved on from its night-quarters. The morning was fresh and bright; the road lay through the green ramparts of the mountains of the Caucasus, crowned here and there with forests and underwood. The detachment, like a stream of steel, flowed now down the hills, and now crept up the declivities. The mist still rested on the valleys, and Verkhóffsky, riding to the elevated points, looked round frequently to feast his eyes with the ever-changing landscape. Descending the mountain, the detachment seemed to be swallowed up in the steaming river, like the army of Pharaoh, and anon, with a dull sound, the bayonets glittered again from the misty waves. Then appeared heads, shoulders; the men seemed to grow up, and then leaping up the rocks, were lost anew in the fog.

Ammalát, pale and stern, rode next to the sharpshooters. It appeared that he wished to deafen his conscience in the noise of the drums. The colonel called him to his side, and said kindly: "You must be scolded, Ammalát; you have begun to follow too closely the precepts of Hafiz: recollect that wine is a good servant but a bad master: but a headache and the bile expressed in your face, will surely do you more good than a lecture. You have passed a stormy night, Ammalát."

"A stormy, a torturing night, Colonel! God grant that such a night be the last! I dreamed dreadful things."

"Aha, my friend! You see what it is to transgress Mahomet's commandments. The conscience of the true believer torments you like a shadow."

"It is well for him whose conscience quarrels only with wine."

"That depends on what sort of conscience it is. And fortunately it is as much subject to prejudice as reason itself. Every country, every nation, has its own conscience; and the voice of immortal, unchangeable truth is silent before a would-be truth. Thus it is, thus it ever was. What yesterday we counted a mortal sin, to-morrow we adore. What on this bank is just and meritorious, on the other side of a brook leads to the halter."

"I think, however, that treachery was never, and in no place, considered a virtue."

"I will not say even that. We live at a time when success alone determines whether the means employed were good or bad; where the most conscientious persons have invented for themselves a very convenient rule--that the end sanctifies the means."

Ammalát, lost in his reflections, repeated these words, because he approved of them. The poison of selfishness began anew to work within him; and the words of Verkhóffsky, which he looked on as treacherous, poured like oil on flame. "Hypocrite!" said he to himself; "your hour is at hand!"

And meanwhile Verkhóffsky, like a victim suspecting nothing, rode side by side with his executioner. At about eight versts from Kieként the Caspian Sea discovered itself to them from a hill; and the thoughts of Verkhóffsky soared above it like a swan. "Mirror of eternity!" said he, sinking into a reverie, "why does not your aspect gladden me to-day? As of old, the sun plays on you; and your bosom breathes, as sublimely as of old, eternal life; but that life is not of this world. You seem to me to-day a mournful waste; not a boat, not a sail, not a sign of man's existence. All is desolate!

"Yes, Ammalát," he added; "I am tired of your ever-angry, lonely sea--of your country peopled with diseases, and with men who are worse than all maladies in the world. I am weary of the war itself, of invisible enemies, of the service shared with unfriendly comrades. It is not enough that they impeded me in my proceedings--they spoiled what I ordered to be done--they found fault with what I intended, and misrepresented what I had effected. I have served my sovereign with truth and fidelity, my country and this region with disinterestedness; I have renounced, a voluntary exile, all the conveniences of life, all the charms of society; have condemned my intellect to torpidity, being deprived of books; have buried my heart in solitude; have abandoned my beloved; and what is my reward? When will that moment arrive, when I throw myself into the arms of my bride; when I, wearied with service, shall repose myself under my native cottage-roof, on the green shore of the Dniéper; when a peaceful villager, and a tender father, surrounded by my relations and my good peasants, I shall fear only the hail of heaven for my harvests; fight only with wild-beasts? My heart yearns for that hour. My leave of absence is in my pocket, my dismission is promised me.... Oh, that I could fly to my bride!... And in five days I shall for certain be in Geórgieffsk. Yet it seems as if the sands of Libya, a sea of ice----as if the eternity of the grave itself, separated us!"

Verkhóffsky was silent. Tears ran down his cheeks; his horse, feeling the slackened rein, quickened his pace--and thus the pair alone, advanced to some distance from the detachment.... It seemed as if destiny itself surrendered the colonel into the hands of the assassin.

But pity penetrated the heart of Ammalát, maddened as he was, and burning with wine--like a sunbeam falling in a robber's cave. He beheld the sorrow, the tears of the man whom he had so long considered as his friend, and hesitated. "No!" he thought, "to such a degree as that it is impossible to dissimulate...."

At this moment Verkhóffsky started from his reverie, lifted up his head, and spoke to Ammalát. "Prepare yourself: you are to go with me!"

Unlucky words! Every thing good, every thing noble, which had arisen anew in Ammalát's breast, was crushed in a moment by them. The thought of treachery--of exile--rushed like a torrent through his whole being "With you!" he replied, with a malicious smile--"with you, and into Russia?--undoubtedly: if you go yourself!" and in a passion of rage he urged his horse into a gallop, in order to have time to prepare his arms; suddenly turned back to meet him; flew by him, and began to ride rapidly in a circle around him. At each stride of his horse, the flame of rage burned more fiercely within him: it seemed as if the wind, as it whistled past him, kept whispering "Kill, kill! he is your enemy. Remember Seltanetta!" He brought his rifle forward from his shoulder, cocked it, and encouraging himself with a cry, he galloped with blood-thirsty decision to his doomed victim. Verkhóffsky, meanwhile, not cherishing the least suspicion, looked quietly at Ammalát as he galloped round, thinking that he was preparing, after the Asiatic manner, for the djigítering (equestrian exercises.)

"Fire at your mark, Ammalát Bek!" he exclaimed to the murderer who was rushing towards him.

"What mark can be better than the breast of a foe?" answered Ammalát Bek, riding up, and at ten paces' distance pulling the trigger!... the gun went off: and slowly, without a groan, the colonel sank out of his saddle. His affrighted horse, with expanded nostrils and streaming mane, smelt at his rider, in whose hands the reins that had so lately guided him began to stiffen: and the steed of Ammalát stopped abruptly before the corpse, setting his legs straight before him. Ammalát leaped from his horse, and, resting his arms on his yet smoking gun, looked for several moments steadfastly in the face of the murdered man; as if endeavouring to prove to himself that he feared not that fixed gaze, those fast-dimming eyes--that fast-freezing blood. It would be difficult to understand--'twere impossible to express the thoughts which rolled like a whirlwind through his breast. Saphir Ali rode up at full gallop; and fell on his knees by the colonel--he laid his ear to the dying man's mouth--he breathed not--he felt his heart--it beat not! "He is dead!" cried Saphir Ali in a tone of despair. "Dead! quite dead!"

"So much the better ... My happiness is complete!..." exclaimed Ammalát, as if awakening from a dream.

"Happiness for you--for you, fratricide! If you meet happiness, the world will take to Shaitán instead of Allah."

"Saphir Ali, remember that you are not my judge!" said Ammalát fiercely, as he put his foot into the stirrup: "follow me!"

"May remorse alone accompany you, like your shadow! From this hour I am not your companion."

Pierced to the very bottom of his heart by this reproach from a man to whom he had been from infancy bound by the closest ties, Ammalát uttered not a word, but pointing to his astounded nóukers in the ravine, and perceiving the pursuit begun, dashed into the mountains like an arrow.

The alarm soon spread through the advanced guard of the detachment: the officers, who were in front, and the Don Kazáks, flew to the shot, but they came too late. They could neither prevent the crime nor seize the flying assassin. In five minutes the bloody corpse of the treacherously murdered colonel was surrounded by a crowd of officers and soldiers. Doubt, pity, indignation were written on all their faces. The grenadiers, leaning on their bayonets, shed tears, and sobbed aloud: unflattering drops poured above the brave and much-loved chief.