XCI
They were—but there a silence that is clamorous in the hearing of the Eternal. Do you see those pinched ghosts of gallant Cavalry horses tethered in the driving blizzards behind the low stone walls? A few rags of tents shivered in the piercing wind that blew from Sevastopol.... Here and there shanties of mud and earth sheltered officers, but the rank-and-file of Britannia’s Army had gone down into the ground where the dead were, that they might keep the life in them. And for Blueberry and his kind there was nothing but to stand and wait for death.
Blueberry’s beautiful blue-black eyes were glazed with fever, and gaunt with famine. Dreams of the full rack and the brimming manger tortured the suffering beast. And Joshua Horrotian leaned his cheek upon the broad front of his dying charger, and begged him to keep up!—and tried to comfort him. He had no fodder to give the horse—nothing but promises and kind words. He promised him Old England and plenty of sound oats again—a grassy paddock to kick his heels in—everything else a good horse might desire, if only he would keep on living.... He scraped wood-shavings fine as paper and offered them to him—and when Blueberry snuffed at them feebly, and turned his sorrowful eyes away, the tears rolled down his master’s weather-beaten cheeks for the creature he hadbred. He took the dying head in his ragged arms and fairly moaned over him:
“Oh Lord! Oh Lord!—my poor old Blueberry! why ever did us go a sogering?”
Blueberry had done with that hungry profession for good and all.... And Joshua Horrotian kissed him again, and staggered away to borrow a mattock to dig his grave with.... When he returned with this, narrowly escaping destruction at the hoofs of a frenzied Brocken-hunt of ownerless, starving Cavalry horses, he found that great pieces had been torn from Blueberry’s yet quivering sides by these perishing comrades: and that his mane and tail had been gnawed away....
Perhaps Somewhere Else it was all made up to these blameless four-legged martyrs?... Perhaps Blueberry woke up in radiant meadows beside crystal-clear pools?... Stern theologian, do not shake your head.... You can be sure no more than I can. And there is room enough in Eternity for every soul, be it human or brute.