CHAPTER XVIII.

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to abandon a post so perilous; but with admirable coolness he replied, that he "dared not until properly relieved or withdrawn by an order from the captain of the guard."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.