The dullest pages in history are those which record the long, slow years of peace and progress, when everything goes well and nothing lively happens.
Jack's term of service at Chatham had been such. His record was one of simple hard work, considerable acquirement, and a methodic, level life.
His work appealed to him, and he gave himself up heart and soul, and might have given his health as well if the authorities had not seen to it. Brains in an officer were very acceptable, and the concentrated application of them still more so--to say nothing of the comparative rarity of the combination. But brains without body would obviously be of small service to the country, and so Jack was kept fairly fit in spite of himself. He won the golden opinions of his instructors and examiners, and was looked upon as a reliable officer and a coming man.
"Give us a good tough bit of siege work," he had said, with hot enthusiasm, as they tramped the frozen sands at Carne that last time, "and we'll show them what we are made of."
"A good open country and plenty of room for cavalry to manœuvre, that's whatwewant," said Jim, with relish, "and we'll show the world what British squadrons can do."
"Tough sieges somehow seem a bit out of date," said Mr. Eager. "I should say Jim's horses are more likely to be in it."
"I'd sooner have the siege," said Gracie; and they all clamoured to know why, and Jim felt humpy.
"Oh, just because you're all farther away from one another and not so likely to get hurt," said she. "When you fight on horses you're bound to get close to one another."
"That's what we want," growled Jim. "The closer the better."
"And then the poor horses!" said. Gracie, with a shiver. "To say nothing of the poor men!" growled Jim once more.
"It's all horrid and hateful and wicked. I don't mean you two," she added hastily, "but the people who bring it about. If they all had to fight themselves, instead of sending other people to do it for them, they wouldn't be so ready to begin."
"They'd make a pretty poor show, some of them," laughed Jack. "Think of little Johnny Russell facing up to the Tsar."
"David and Goliath," suggested the Rev. Charles.
"Goliath got the stone in his eye--well, in his head, it's all the same--and so he will this time," said Jim.
"Artillery!" said Jack triumphantly.
"David cut off his head," said Gracie.
"Infantry assault after we--I mean the artillery--had made the breach."
Involved military operations, and especially the complicated strategy of the siege, had fascinated Jack from the time he could read. He absorbed the elements of his profession with keenest delight; and driest details, which to some of his fellows were but dull drudgery, were to him like the necessary part of a puzzle of which he held the clue, and their essentiality was clear to him.
What would be the course of the coming war none could tell, for the simple reason that no one seemed to know exactly where they were going or what they were going to do. All arms were to be represented, however, and each separate branch hoped ardently that the tide would run its way.
Jack and Jim, at parting, had undertaken to correspond regularly. They had also mutually pledged themselves to write not more than one letter a week to Gracie.
If Jim's scrawl had hitherto been the more interesting to their recipients, it was certainly not by reason of their penmanship, or their spelling, or their literary qualities, but simply that, living in London and somewhat in the whirl of things, and with more time and mind for outside matters than Jack had, he had always something to tell about, and that, after all, is what people want.
Very sympathetic--and certainly very charming--little smiles used to lurk in the corners of Gracie's flexible little mouth as she read Jim's epistles. And she would murmur, "The dear boy!" as she thought of the time and labour he had given to their production. For to Jim the sword was very much mightier than the pen and infinitely more to his liking.
He told Gracie, in his letters, most of what befell him in London, much about Lord Deseret, and much about Mme Beteta, but concerning Kattie and old Seth Rimmer, after much ponderous consideration, he had thought it best to keep silence.
Jack had waxed mightily indignant over old Seth's half-blown suspicions, and on the whole it was perhaps just as well that the old man fell into Jim's hands.
Of the final episode Jim told none of them. In the first place, he felt bound to keep Kattie's secret. In the second, he went straight home to his bed that night as tired as a dog, and wasen routefor the East soon after six o'clock next morning. And in the third place, as to telling Jack, Jack was on the high seas nearing Gallipoli, and they did not see one another again for months to come.
Jack, to his immense delight, found himself detailed for duty with a large number of his men to assist General Canrobert in the fortification of the long narrow peninsula on which, Gallipoli is situated.
No matter that the fortifications were little likely to be of any actual benefit, it was active service and turning to practical account the theoretical knowledge of which he was full.
The men, who had left England ablaze with warlike fervour amid the cheers of the populace, had found their long detention at Malta very trying and relaxing. Warlike fervour cannot keep at boiling-point unless it has something to expend itself upon. And so they welcomed this diversion, and planned, and built earthen ramparts, and bastions, and barbettes, and ravelins, and redoubts, to their hearts' content, and felt very much better both in mind and body than when they were kicking their heels and frizzling in the tawny dust of Malta.
There were many discomforts, however, chiefly in regard to the provisioning. Even at this very first stage in the proceedings the men had little to eat and less to drink; and if curses could have assisted the commissariat, or blighted it off the face of the earth, its movements would have been mightily quickened. But forty years of peace do not make for efficiency in the fighting machine. It had grown rusty through disuse, as all machines will, and the ominous creakings which began at Gallipoli never ceased till--too late for the hosts of gallant souls who died of want before Sebastopol--England awoke at last to the shame of her relapse, and set her house in order with a roar of righteous, but belated, indignation.
Jack and his men fared better than most, through their intimacy with the Frenchmen, who had the knack of living in plenty where others starved. Jack brushed up his French, and found welcome, and still more welcome hospitality, among the officers, and his men learned how tasty dinners could be made out of the scantiest of rations if only you knew how to do it.
But the slow weeks dragged on; there was no sign of an enemy, and the fighting for which they had come out seemed as far off as ever. And the little advance army growled and grizzled and cursed things in general, and began to get a trifle mouldy. And meanwhile the Turks, under Omar, were valiantly holding the Danube against the Russians, and the allied generals were in communication with the allied ambassadors at Constantinople, and the ambassadors were in communication with the un-allied diplomatists at Vienna, and the diplomatists were seeking instructions from London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, and futile talk blocked the way of warlike deeds.
It was the middle of May before the welcome order came to move on, and their spirits rose at the prospect. They had come out to fight, and anything was better than moulting at Gallipoli.
But the diplomats were still chopping words at Vienna, so they were all dumped down again at Scutari, till the wise men should see which way the cat was really going to jump.
More weary weeks followed, though, since they gave Jack the chance of seeing a great deal of Constantinople, he at all events had no cause for complaint. The neat little steamer, which the Sultan had placed at the disposal of the British officers, ran across in a quarter of an hour and plied to and fro constantly; and having no duties to perform, Jack missed none of his opportunities and saw all he could, and that included many strange sights.
He made many new acquaintances, and began to lose somewhat of the studious concentration which had hitherto stood in the way of his making any very close friendships even at Woolwich and Chatham. He had given heart and brain to his work, and now only craved the opportunity of applying his knowledge and climbing the ladder. While frivolous Jim, with a modicum of the brains and still less of the application, somehow possessed the knack of making friends wherever he went. And having mastered his drill and won the hearts of his men, he also considered his military education completed, and longed only to get the chance of showing what was in him and them.
Jim would have had a delightful time in Constantinople, and, with all his desire for glory, would still have enjoyed himself thoroughly; but Jack, with most of his fellows, felt keenly that all this was not what they had come out for; and when, in June, orders came to embark for Varna, up along the coast of the Black Sea towards the Danube, he was heartily glad. For there had been heavy fighting on the Danube, and if they could only get there in time there might still be a chance of showing what they were made of.
It was four months since they left England, and so far they had practically done nothing more than mark time, and there is a certain monotony about that necessary but fruitless operation which has a depressing effect on spirits and bodies alike.
However, they were getting on by degrees at last, though what their ultimate objective really was no one seemed to know, unless, perhaps, Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, and they kept their own counsel.
Jack had been a fortnight at Varna, and was beginning to get sick of it as he had of Malta and Gallipoli, when one day the statelyHimalayasteamed quietly in among the mob of smaller craft which crowded Varna Bay, and began to discharge the first of the cavalry that had put in an appearance. This looked like business, and Jack joined the crowd watching the disembarkation.
"Hello, Jim, old boy!"
"Hello, Jack! That you?" And the boys of Carne had met again.
"Hardly knew you in those togs. Took you for a tramp," grinned Jim.
"You loaf here for half a dozen weeks, my boy, and you'll come to it. Have you any news? Are we going on? We're all sick to death of the whole business."
"Idunno. We've come straight through. We began to be afraid we'd be too late and miss all the fun."
"You've not missed much so far. We've been frizzling and grizzling all this time. Never seen the ghost of a Russian so far."
"Waiting for us, I expect. Can't get on without cavalry."
"If that's what we've been waiting for we're all mighty glad to see you. All this hanging about is the hardest work I've ever done yet."
"Where are you living?"
"Up on the hill there. You'll be going on to Devna, I expect. That's twenty miles further up."
"I've got to look after the horses. They've done splendidly so far. Not lost a leg. We'll have a talk when we knock off." And Jim turned to the congenial work of seeing his equine friends safely ashore.
When he had seen them all picketed on the stretch of turf near the beach, and enjoyed for a time their rollings and stretchings and kickings of cramped heels, he walked away up the shore, had his first delicious swim in the Black Sea, and then made his way into the dirty little town and struggled slowly through its narrow streets, packed with such a heterogeneous assortment of nationalities as his wondering eyes had never looked upon before.
Guardsmen, Fusiliers, Riflemen, Highlanders, Dragoons, and Hussars, Lancers, Chasseurs, Zouaves, Artillerymen, and Cantinières; Greeks, Turks, Italians, Smyrniotes, Bashi-Bazouks, and nondescripts of all shapes and sizes; dark, windowless little shops with streaming calico signs in many languages, offering for sale every possible requirement from pickles to saddlery, but especially drinks; a slow-moving, chattering, chaffering, and occasionally quarrelling, mob of shakos, turbans, fezes, Highland bonnets,képis, and wide-awakes, with bearded faces under them in every possible shade of brown and mud-colour,--no wonder it took Jim a long time to get through.
But he got out into the open country at last, and breathed clean air again, and climbed the hill and found his way to Jack's tent, and demanded something to drink.
"What a place!" he gasped. "Never saw such a sight in my life!"
"Beastly hole!" growled Jack. "I wish to Heaven they'd get us on and give us some work to do."
"Why don't they?"
"Ah--why don't they? Some one may know, but I'm beginning to doubt it. When we came up here we had hopes again, but now they say the Russians have had enough on the Danube and are bolting, so that's off. What's the news from home? I've hardly had a letter since we left."
Jim gave him of his latest, and handed him Lord Deseret's present, which Jack found greatly to his taste.
"No more news of Kattie?" he asked presently, when other subjects seemed exhausted, and in a tone that anticipated a negative reply.
"Yes. I found her--the very last night," said Jim quietly.
"You did? How was it?"
"I had been dining with Lord Deseret, and saying good-bye all round, and was dead tired. We were to start at six next morning and I was hurrying home to get some sleep, when suddenly Kattie stepped up and spoke to me."
"Good God! Did she know it was you?"
"Oh yes. She hadn't got so low as all that. But it gave me a shock, I can tell you, Jack, to meet her like that, though we had been doing all we could to find her."
"And how did she seem? And what had she to say for herself?"
"She looked prettier than I'd ever seen her--better dressed, you know, and all that."
"And what did she say?"
"She flatly refused to tell me who had brought her to London. She had heard we were leaving in the morning and she wanted to say good-bye--so she said."
"Deuced odd! What did you do?"
"Well--I was knocked all of a heap and didn't know what to do. Then I suddenly bethought me of Mine Beteta. She had been very kind to me, and only that afternoon, when I was saying good-bye, she had laughed and said her only regret was that I hadn't got into any scrape that she could help me out of. It was jolly nice of her, you know. So I bundled Kattie into a cab, and took her straight to madame, and left her with her."
"Poor little Kattie! She was too good for that kind of thing. And you got no hint as to who----
"Not a word. I asked her straight, and she said she would not tell."
"I'd like to wring his neck for him, whoever he was."
"She probably knew we would feel that way, and that's why she wouldn't speak. And how have you been keeping, Jack? Seems to me you look thinner. Perhaps it's the way you dress--or don't dress. I never saw such a seedy, weedy-looking set. You'd certainly be taken for tramps in England."
"Just you wait, my boy. If you get four months of this infernal loafing in dust and dirt and blazing sun, you'll come to it. And I may well be thin. I'd hang every commissary in the service. They starve us half the time and give us rubbish the rest."
"That sounds bad. What's got them?"
"Everything's at sixes and sevens. All the food and drink in one place and all the hungry and thirsty souls in another, some hundreds of miles away. If I was the Chief I'd hang a commissary every time the men go short. And the amount of red-tape! Oh, Lord! But you'll know all about it before you're through, my boy. Some of the fellows have chucked it and gone home."
"Rotters!"
"I don't know. It's been almost beyond endurance at times, and all so senseless, and nothing comes of it. Starving for a good cause is one thing, but starving simply because the men who ought to feed you are fools is quite another."
"Overworked, I expect."
"Underbrained, I should say. I'll ask you three months hence what you think about it all."
Jim was very busy the next few days getting his men and horses on to Devna. His chiefs had found out that he could get more out of men and horses than most, and that when he took a thing in hand he did it. So work was heaped upon him and he was as happy as could be.
He messed with Charlie Denham in a little tent on the shore, bathed morning and night, and Joyce and Denham's man saw that their masters--and incidentally themselves--were properly fed.
Cavalry transports were coming in every day now; the Varna beach looked like a country horse-fair, and to Jim was given the task of superintending the debarkation of the horses and their dispatch to their appointed places.
One day, when the great raft on which the horses were floated to the shore bumped up against the little pier, a nervous brown mare broke loose and jumped overboard. There happened to be no small boats close at hand, and the poor beast, white-eyed with terror at the shouts of the onlookers, struck out valiantly for the open sea.
To Jim, in the thinnest and oldest garments he possessed, and sweating heartily from his labours, an extra bath was but an additional enjoyment. He leaped aboard, ran nimbly along outside the horses, and launched himself after the snorting evader. His long swift side-stroke soon carried him alongside.
He soothed her with comforting words, turned her head shorewards, and presently rode her up the beach amid the bravos of the onlookers. It was little things like that that won the hearts of his men. They knew he would do as much and more for any one of them.
As he slipped off, with a final pat to the trembling beast, a hearty hand clapped his wet shoulder.
"Well done, old Jim! It was Carne taught you that, old man." And the voice of the gigantic dragoon, whose clap was still tingling in his shoulder, was the voice of George Herapath, though Jim had to look twice at his face to make sure of him.
"Why, you hairy man, I'd never have known you. Just got here?"
"This minute, my boy, and glad to see you old stagers still alive and kicking. Here's Harben. I say, Ralph, this dirty wet boy is our old Jim."
"Hanged if I'd have jumped into the sea after an old troop-horse," said Harben, looking somewhat distastefully at the dishevelled Jim.
"A horse is always a horse," said Jim, "and an extra bath's neither here nor there. Can't have too many this weather, if you work as I've been doing lately."
"Deucedly dirty work, it seems to me. Why don't you let your men do it? That's what they're here for."
"They are doing it," said Jim, waving a benedictory wet hand towards the horse-fair along the beach. "I'm only keeping an eye on them."
And before they could say more, a very splendidly accoutred horseman rode down to them, with a still more gorgeous one behind him.
"Very smartly done, my boy," said the first in English, though he wore the uniform of a colonel of Cuirassiers. "An officer that looks after his horses will certainly look after his men."
"Hello, sir!" jerked Jim. "Glad to see you again! Sorry I'm so dirty."
"It's the men who get dirty who do the work." And then he turned to the magnificent personage behind, who sat looking on with a suave smile on his clean-shaven face, and said in French, "This is one of my cubs, Your Highness, though I'll be crucified if I know which." And turning to Jim--"me see, now you're----"
"I'm Jim, sir. Jack's in the Engineers."
"Ah, yes--Jim. It was the Prince who bade me come down and thank you for saving that mare, and it was only when I heard your friend mention Carne that I recognised you. Monsieur----?" to the Prince, who addressed some remark to him in French, to which he laughingly replied, and then turned again to Jim.
"His Highness says he would like to see you cleaned up, and invites you to his table to-night--both of you, if you can come. I suppose you can fig out all right?"
Jim saluted Prince Napoleon and bowed.
"It is a great honour," he said. "I'll find Jack, sir, and we'll fig out all right."
"Eight o'clock, then. We're camped over there for the night. Any one will show you the Prince's quarters." And the two horsemen saluted generally and galloped away.
"You're in luck, old boy," said George. "Dining with princes and big-pots. Who's the other? He talks uncommonly good English for a Frenchman."
"My father," said Jim quietly.
"Your---- Good Lord! Well, I---- Yes, of course, now I remember."
"All the same," said Jim, "princes are not much in my line, and I'd just as soon he hadn't asked me."
"Man alive!" said Ralph, with exuberance. "Why, I'd give my little finger for the chance."
"And where's old Jack?" asked George.
"Up on the hill there behind the town."
"And where do we go?"
"You stop the night here and get on to Devna to-morrow. It's about twenty miles up-country."
Jack was mightily astonished when Jim gave him his news, and showed no modest reluctance in accepting the invitation.
"It's always interesting to meet people like that," he said. "Is he like the Emperor?"
"He's not like his pictures. More like the first Emperor, I should say. But he seemed pleasant enough."
"And our paternal?"
"He was all right. They seemed on very good terms with one another."
"And he really is as big a man as he led us to believe that night?"
"Why, yes, he seemed so. Did you doubt it?"
And so, all in their best, they duly presented themselves at the Prince's quarters a few minutes before eight, Jack, in his modest Engineer uniform, feeling somewhat overshadowed by Jim's gorgeous Hussar trappings.
"By Jove! but don't they know how to make themselves at home!" said Jack, as they came in sight of the handsome tent, with a great green bower made of leafy branches in front and an enclosure of the same all round it.
The sentries passed them in at once, and their father came out from the tent and met them with cordial, outstretched hands. He held both their hands for a moment, and looked from one to the other.
"Jack is the Engineer, and Jim is the Hussar, and both of you very creditable Carrons. We must get to know one another better, my boys. The coming campaign should afford us plenty of opportunities."
"Is there to be a campaign, then, sir?" asked Jack. "We'd about given up all hopes of it."
"Oh, we're not through yet by any means," smiled the Colonel.
"I don't know how it is with your men, sir, but all this dawdling about is doing ours no good."
"It is good for nobody, my boy, but we've got to obey orders, and those who pull the strings are far away. However, you need have no fear. The Tsar is far too stiff-necked to give way till he's had a good thrashing, and we have not only to fight him, but distance and climate to boot. Here is His Highness."
And when he introduced them, the Prince, with a smile at Jim, and a pat on the shoulder, told him he would certainly have had difficulty in recognising him again, and he was a "brave boy," which set the brave boy blushing furiously under his tan.
"They are grumbling at getting no fighting, Your Highness," said the Colonel.
"Young blood! Young blood!" said the Prince, with a smile. "Let us hope they will have plenty left when the fighting is over."
A number of other bravely dressed officers came in, and in the long green bower they sat down to a dinner such as they had not tasted for months, and of which they many times thought enviously in the lean months that followed.
Jim, by force of circumstance, acquired a very wholesome reputation as the best-mounted man in the Light Brigade, as a tireless rider, and as an officer who doggedly carried out his instructions. The result was much hard work, which he enjoyed, and much commendation, which he thoroughly deserved.
When the Russians retired from the Danube and disappeared into the wilds of Wallachia, Lord Cardigan was ordered to follow them with a party of gallopers and learn what route they had taken.
The first man picked for his troop was Jim Carron, and Jim was wild with delight. Here, at last, was something out of the common to be done, something with more than a spice of danger in it, and altogether to his liking.
They were away for seventeen days, camping as best they could without tents, and they rode through three hundred miles of the wildest and most desolate country Jim had ever set eyes on. For one hundred miles at a stretch they never saw a human being, but finally got on the track of the Russians and found they had gone by way of Babadagh. Then they rode up the Danube to Silistria and returned to camp by way of Shumla, somewhat way-worn as to the horses, but the men fit and hard as nails.
But they were the fortunate ones, and their satisfaction with their lot could not leaven the seething mass of growling discontent represented by the remaining fifty thousand would-be warriors, who had come out all aflame with martial ardour, but had so far never set eyes on an enemy, who were ready to die cheerfully for a cause which not one in a hundred properly understood, but found themselves like to moulder with ennui and lack of proper provisioning.
Their hopes had been constantly raised only to be dashed. They were to go up to the Danube to help the Turks against the Russians. They were aching to go. But fifty thousand men need feeding, and the commissariat was in a state of confusion, and transport non-existent and unprocurable. So they stayed where they were, and mouldered and cursed, and began to look askance at the whole business and to doubt the good faith of every one concerned.
Many officers fell sick, some threw up their commissions in disgust and went home. The men would have liked to follow.
In July came the inevitable consequences of ill-feeding, ill-temper, enforced idleness, and mismanagement--the men became as sick in body as they had long been at heart. The heats and rains of August turned the camps into steaming stew-pans, and the men, who would have faced death by shot and steel with cheers, died miserably of cholera and typhus, and dying, struck a chill to the hearts of those who were left.
The officers did their best--got up games for them and races. But the more intimate companionship between officers and men which obtained in the French army was lacking in the British, and could not be called into spasmodic existence on the spur of the moment.
The races alone excited a certain amount of enthusiasm, and whenever Jim happened to be in camp he carried all before him.
With quite mistaken grandmotherly solicitude, too, the bands were all silenced, lest their lively music should jar on the ears of the SICK and dying. The men tried sing-songs of their own, but sorely missed their music, and those near any of the French camps would walk any distance to share with them the cheery strains they could not get at home.
The camps were moved from place to place in vain attempt at dodging death. But death went with them and the men died in hundreds. And those who were sent to the hospitals at Varna wished they had died before they got there.
Through all that dreadful time, when the doctors were next to powerless and burying-parties the order of the day, our two boys kept wonderfully well. And for that they were not a little indebted to Lord Deseret, to a certain amount of fatherly oversight on the part of Colonel Carron, and perhaps most of all to the fact that they were kept busy.
Jack and his fellows beat the country-sides for game until they had swept them bare.
Jim, still in luck, was sent out to buy horses, and travelled far and wide, and still farther and wider as the nearer provinces became depleted. And when Jack's game was finished he got permission to go with him, and in those long, venturesome rides they two renewed their youth together, and rejoiced in one another, and found life good.
Many a lively adventure they had as they scoured the long Bulgarian plains in search of their four-legged prizes, for which they paid a trifle over a pound a leg in cash, whereby they beat their French opponents, who only paid in paper which had to be cashed at French Head-quarters, one hundred or more miles away.
To the boys it was all a delightful game; and getting the horses home, when they had found and bought them, was by no means the least exciting part of it. But the chief thing was that it took them out of the deadly camps, kept them fully occupied, and in soundest health when so many sickened and died.
The risks of the road were comparatively small, and they always went well armed and with an escort.
Danger, indeed, lurked nearer home. For the twenty miles of road between Varna and the camps at Aladyn and Devna began to be infested with the baser spirits from among the great gathering of the off-scourings of the Levant which had flocked after the army.
Outrages were of daily occurrence, and every man who went that way alone rode warily, with his hand on his revolver and his eyes on the look out.
One day Jack had ridden up to the plateau by the sea, where the Dragoons were, to visit George Herapath and Harben, who were both down with dysentery, and Jim had been delayed at the commissary's office by the only part of the business in which he took no delight--the settlement of his accounts, which never by any chance came out right.
They were cantering home in the cool of the evening, when cries of distress at a short distance from the road turned their horses' heads that way, and galloping up in haste they came on a band of Bashi-Bazouks--cut-throat ruffians whom General Yusuf was trying to lick into shape--dragging away a young country girl, whose terrified eyes had caught sight of the British uniforms. Already that uniform carried with it greater guarantee of right and justice than any of the many others with which the country was overrun. So as soon as she saw them she shrieked for help, and they answered.
"Let her go, you beasts!" shouted Jack, as he dragged out his sword.
And then, as dirty hands fumbled in waist-shawls full of pistols, Jim's revolver cracked out, and two of the rascals went down. Curses and bullets flew promiscuously for a second or two, and then the remaining Bashis bolted, leaving four on the ground and the girl on their hands.
"What the deuce are we to do with her?" said Jack, as the spoils of war clung tearfully to his leg.
"Where?" asked Jim, in one of the few native words he had picked up in the course of business.
"Pravadi," panted the girl.
"That's over yonder, past Aladyn," said Jim. "We'd better take her home, or those brutes will get her again. I'll take her up--my horse is fresher than yours. Come along, my beauty!" And he stuck out his boot for a foot-rest, and held out his hand to the girl.
The uniform was her sufficient guarantee, and she climbed up and straddled the horse, and locked her arms tightly round Jim's waist.
"All right?" he asked. And they turned to the road.
Two minutes later they fell in with a Turkish patrol galloping up at sound of the firing, and had some difficulty in making them understand that they were not carrying off the girl on their own account. They were only convinced by being led back to the place where the wounded Bashis lay. Then they offered to take care of the girl and see her safely home. But she knew them too well and would have none of them. She clung like a leech to Jim, and at last they were permitted to go on their way.
They had many little adventures of the kind, and they tended to keep their blood in circulation, and the blues, which afflicted their fellows, at a distance.
Lord Deseret had laid down the law for Jim as regards eating and drinking.
"I have lived in Turkey," he said. "Drink no water unless it has been boiled, and then dash it with rum. Tea or coffee are better still. And eat as little fruit as possible; it's tempting, but dangerous."
And Jim used to get wildly angry with his men, when he saw them devouring cucumbers by the half-dozen, and apricots and plums by the basketful, under the impression that these things were good for their health. They laughed at his remonstrances at first, but remembered them later; and those who did not die foreswore cucumbers for the rest of their lives.
Colonel Carron was constantly looking the boys up, and carrying them off to the best meals they ever got in that country. His Chief, Prince Napoleon, had gone down to Therapia with a touch of fever, and the Colonel was in charge of his quarters and saw to it that His Highness's cooks did not get rusty in his absence.
Over these delightful dinners in the leafy arbours which always marked the Prince's quarters, they all came to know one another very much better than they might have done under any ordinary circumstances.
And the burden of the Colonel's talk was chiefly regret that one or both of them had not taken his offer and joined him in the French service.
"Sorry I am to say it," he said one night, as they sat sipping coffee such as they got nowhere else, and smoking cigars such as their own pockets did not run to, "but your army is only a fancy toy--in the way it's run, I mean. Your men are the finest in the world, what there are of them; but England is not a soldierly nation, say what you like about it."
"What about the Peninsula, sir?--to say nothing of Waterloo!" murmured Jack, after a discreet took round.
"Oh, you can fight and win battles, just as you can do pretty nearly anything else you make up your minds to do--regardless of cost. But with us the army is a science--an exact science almost--and every single detail is worked out on the most scientific lines. You only need to look round you to see the difference. England is never ready because she is not by nature a fighting nation. Her army rusts along, and then when the sudden call comes you have got to brace up and win through--or muddle through--at any cost, and the cost is generally frightful. The men and money you have wasted--absolutely wasted--in your wars do not bear thinking of."
"I'm afraid it's true, sir. And we don't seem to learn much by experience. I suppose it comes from having sea-frontiers instead of land. You have tobeready. We always have togetready."
"And how about the horses, Jim?" he asked. "I'm told you manage to get more than we do. That's one for you, my boy."
"We pay cash, sir. You pay in paper promises, and a man a hundred miles away will sooner part for gold than for paper."
"Truly; I would myself. Do you lose manyen route?"
"Not two per cent, sir. Some of them are pretty wild, and they make a bolt at times, but it adds to the fun, and we nearly always get them back. Did you see Nolan's Arabs?"
"I saw them--beauties. The Prince wanted to buy two or three, but I dissuaded him. They're too delicate for a winter campaign. That big brown of yours, that Deseret gave you, is worth four of them--as far as work is concerned."
"You think we're in for a winter campaign, sir?" asked Jack eagerly.
"No doubt about it, I think. We've got to do something before we go home--some of us. Our coming up here has cleared the Russians off the Danube, but our dawdling here has given them every chance of strengthening themselves in the Crimea. The biggest thing they have there is Sebastopol, on which they have squandered money. Therefore I think it will be Sebastopol, and anything but an easy job."
"We shall get our chance, then," sparkled Jack. "We did a bit at Gallipoli, but a real big siege would be grand."
"I hope your commissariat will play up better then, or we shall have to feed you," said the Colonel, with a smile.
He liked to draw them out and get their views on men and things, and watched them keenly the while, but all his watching brought him not one whit nearer a solution of the problem of Carne than had Charles Eager's and Sir Denzil's.
In the course of one such talk, however, they made a discovery and received a shock which knocked the wind out of them.
Their father was delightfully open and frank with them as regards the past, and it drew their liking.
"I have behaved shamefully to you both," he said one time, "and still worse to one of you. And I have nothing to plead in extenuation except that I did as my fellows in those days did--which is a very poor excuse, I confess. I must make such compensation as I can. One of you will have to become Carron of Carrie, and the other M. le Compte de Carne--maybe M. le Duc by that time. There's no knowing."
"There's the Quixande matter too," said Jack thoughtfully.
"An empty title, I fear, by this time. And the Carrons were of note ages before the Quixandes were heard of. You seem to have got on very good terms with Deseret"--to Jim.
"He was very good to me, sir. I don't know why, unless it was because of his old friendship with you. He always spoke very handsomely of you."
"He was always a good fellow, but a terrible gambler. And yet I don't think he suffered on the whole. He was so confoundedly rich that it made no difference to him in any way. I have seen him win and lose £10,000 in a night at Crockford's, without turning a hair."
"I saw him win somewhere about that at a house in St. James's Street and----"
"And how much did you lose?"
"Nothing, sir; I was only looking on. Charlie Denham took me there--just to see it, you know. When Lord Deseret heard my name he came up and spoke to me. He asked me to call on him, and scribbled his address on the back of a bank-note, and gave it to me, and insisted on my keeping it."
"Just like him!"
"Then the police came and we had to get out over the roofs----"
"I would dearly have liked to see Deseret getting out over the roofs," laughed the Colonel.
"He seemed quite used to it, sir."
"I haven't a doubt of it. And he never suggested you should play?"
"On the contrary, he never ceased to warn me against it. So did Mme Beteta----"
"Mme Beteta!" And the Colonel's cigar hung fire in midair, and he sat staring at Jim as if he had called up a ghost.
"The dancer, you know. She has been awfully kind to me. Did you know her too, sir?" asked innocent Jim.
"How did you come to makeheracquaintance?" asked his father, with quite a change of tone, and an intentness that struck even Jim.
"We had gone to see her dance----"
"Both of you?"
"Charlie Denham and I. And Lord Deseret saw us and sent for us to his box, and at the interval he offered to take us round."
"Deseret?" And he said something under his breath in French which they did not catch. "Well--and how did she receive you?"
"She was very pleasant. She asked me to call and see her, and I've been several times."
The Colonel resumed his cigar and smoked in silence for some time, with his eyes fixed meditatively on a distant corner. Then, he seemed to make up his mind. He blew out a great cloud of smoke and said very deliberately:
"In view of what is coming it is perhaps as well you should know, though it will not help you to a solution of your puzzle--at least--I don't know. . . . It might--yes--probably it might, if one could be sure of her telling the truth for its own sake and apart from all other considerations. Mme Beteta is your mother"--and he nodded at Jim, who jumped in his chair; "or yours"--and he nodded at Jack, who sat staring fixedly at him. "She may know which of you is her own boy. I cannot tell. But she will only tell what she chooses--if I know anything of women."
"Yes," he said presently, while the boys still sat speechless, "Beteta is old Mrs. Lee's daughter. The old woman knows also, I expect, but she certainly will only tell what suits her, and you could put very little reliance on anything she said. Has madame met you both?"
"Yes, sir. She asked me to bring Jack to see her the first chance I got, and I did so."
"Well?"
"She was just the same to him, as nice as could be, anxious we should get into some scrape so that she could be of some use to us, and that kind of thing--very nice."
"Ay--well! It is just possible--it is very probable," he said weightily, "that some of us three may never get home again. We don't know for certain what we're going to attempt, so it is impossible to forecast the chances. But, in view of what may be, it is only right that you should know. Is there anything else you wish to ask? I have had great cause to regret many things in my life, but nothing, perhaps, more than this. Though,mon Dieu!" he said very heartily, "even this has its compensations in you two boys. However, I have no desire to refer to it again. So, if there is anything more----" And he waited for their questioning.
"There is one thing, sir," said Jack, unwillingly enough, and yet it seemed to him necessary. "You will pardon me, I hope, but it might be of importance. Did you--were you--was your marriage with madame all in order?"
The Colonel nodded as though he had been expecting the question.
"In justice to her, I must say that she believed so at the time, but there were irregularities in it which would probably invalidate it if brought to the test, and I think she is now aware of it."
"You have met her since?"
"Oh yes. We have been on friendly terms for some years past."
"And you believe she could solve the question that is troubling us all, if she would?"
"I think it likely, but--you must see," and he addressed himself more particularly to Jack--"that most women, in such a case, would lie through thick and thin to establish their own cause."
"I don't know," said Jack doubtfully. "I suppose it is possible."
"It is certain. However, the solution to the puzzle may come otherwise,"--they knew what he meant--"so now we will drop the matter, and you must think of me as little unkindly as you can. Jean-Marie," to an orderly outside, "bring us fresh coffee and more cognac."
"Do you know that Canrobert lost three thousand of his men up in the Dobrudscha?"
"Three thousand!" gasped Jim.
"They got into some swamp full of rotting horses and dead Russians and consequent pestilence, and the men died like flies."
"It is hard to go like that," said Jim. "I'd sooner die ten times over in fair fight than of the cholera. That's what's knocking the heart out of the men, that and having nothing to do but watch the other fellows die."
"Ay--well, we'll give them something to do at last. Every Tom, Dick, and François is to set to work making fascines and gabions."
"That means a siege, then," said Jack, with delight. "And our time's coming after all."