Prince Czetwertinski—A Romantic Career—His First Commission—A Retrospect—The History of a Noble Pole—From Monte Carlo to Brisbane—A Prince as a Deck Hand on a Schooner—A Bush Tutor—He returns to Europe—The Load of Poverty—Lighter to Bear in Australia—A Big Win at Flemington—School Teaching in Batavia—Back to New South Wales—Death at Wagga—The Vale of Moravia—The Hot Spring—Bulgarian Blanchisseuses—Slavonian Folk-songs—How the Turks sing—A Bulgarian Sámadh—Foley's End—Infuriated Scavengers—A Mysterious Disturbance—Rough-and-tumble Fighting—A Turkish Hercules—Capturing a Prisoner—A Solitary Ride—A Bulgarian Farrier—Back to Sofia—Christmas in the Snow—A Maize Cob for a Christmas Dinner—Orkhanieh to Sofia—A Doctor frozen to Death—Bitter Experiences—Salutary Effects of a Good Dinner.
At Nish I first met a young soldier whose remarkable personality and singularly adventurous life could not fail to attract attention, and with whom I formed a close personal friendship, which was only ended by his death barely a year ago. Prince Czetwertinski, whom I first saw mounted on a magnificent black charger in the main street of Nish, belonged to one of the oldest families in Russian Poland, and was himself the head of the family. His mother had been living at Lemberg in Galicia, and the young prince had been educated in France, and afterwards at a military school in Prague, with the object of entering the Austrian army. At the last moment, however, the Russian Government intervened, deeming it unwise to allow a Polish prince, who, though a Russian subject, was as hostile at heart to Russia as were all his countrymen, to accept an Austrian commission. The official world of St. Petersburg set its face against Czetwertinski, and refused to furnish him with the necessary papers; so that when the Servian war broke out he gladly seized the chance of taking service against the Russians, the traditional foes of his Polish house, proud still, although its glories had been sadly tarnished.
Young Czetwertinski was well received at the court of the Emperor of Austria, and was admitted to the intimacy of Prince Metternich; but there were grave difficulties in the way of the military career upon which he had set his heart. At last, however, through the kind offices of General Klapka, the well known Hungarian general, who was on friendly terms with the Turkish Government, the young prince secured an entrance to military life, and was appointed, not to a commission, but to the grade of private in a Turkish cavalry regiment, in which capacity he had at first to perform the most menial offices. When Alexinatz was taken in October, 1876, it was Czetwertinski who brought the news to Nish; and for his conduct in the engagement he received a captaincy, and also the decoration of the fifth order of the Medjidie. He was a magnificent rider, and his victory over a vicious black stallion that no one in the regiment could sit was a good passport to the affections of the Turks, who dearly love fine horsemanship. I met him afterwards at Widdin, and got to know him intimately. At that time he was captain of a guard of eighty troopers attached to the person of Osman Pasha; and the colonel of his regiment, a man named Mustapha Bey, was himself a Pole, who had fled to Turkey as a boy, entered the Turkish service, and become a Mohammedan. Czetwertinski fell ill at Plevna of dysentery, and passed through my hands, afterwards coming to live with me in the Bulgarian house where I was quartered, and bringing his servant Faizi with him. As the young cavalry officer was attached to the person of Osman Pasha, I was kept au courant with all that was going on; and it was through him that I was enabled chiefly to know and admire the courage, the honour, the high military ability, and the pure patriotism of the great chief under whom we both served.
Czetwertinski fought with signal bravery in all the engagements that took place at Plevna, and on one occasion had his horse killed under him at Pelischat—the famous black stallion that none but he could ride.
He was afterwards selected for his knowledge of French to act as parlementaire, and visited the Russian headquarters in that capacity with Tewfik Pasha. Before I left Plevna, Czetwertinski was sick and wounded; so I sent him down invalided to Constantinople together with Victor Lauri, a German artist, who had chummed in with us on the field. Had Czetwertinski been left behind at Plevna, he would infallibly have been shot by the Russians for a deserter, as Skobeleff himself, who met him at a dinner party after the war was over, assured him.
I said good-bye to Prince Czetwertinski, or, as he used to call himself, Mehemet Bey, at Constantinople, and lost sight of him, as I thought, for ever; but years afterwards—it was in 1884—I found a note at my house in Melbourne saying that Mehemet Bey would call back in half an hour. I waited to see him, and then he told me his story.
It seemed that he owned some villages near Odessa; but when they were confiscated by the Russian Government upon the termination of the war, he went to live with his mother at Lemberg in Galicia. However, after the exciting scenes amongst which he had lived, the dreary life of the provincial Galician capital was intolerable to him, especially as the small revenue still left to the family was miserably inadequate to support the position of a prince. Accordingly Czetwertinski, who was always an inveterate gambler, scraped together about £3,000 and made for Monte Carlo, with the hope of breaking the bank and restoring his fallen fortunes. In three days at the tables he had lost all but £25; and knowing that I was somewhere in Australia, he went over to London, and took a steerage passage in an emigrant vessel bound for Brisbane. His fellow passengers were such a rough lot that he would not associate with them, and consequently he learned not a word of English during the voyage, eventually landing at Brisbane with one solitary shilling in his pocket. He walked the streets of Brisbane for the first night, nearly starving, and towards morning heard a man speaking a few words of French to another. Czetwertinski went up to him, and found that the man was really a Frenchman—he turned out afterwards to be an escaped communard from New Caledonia—and that he owned a small ten-ton cutter, with which he plied up the coast, carrying provisions to the northern squatters and planters. Czetwertinski took a billet as deck hand to the escaped convict trader, working for his tucker alone; but during his three months' service on board he amassed capital in a sense, for he learned English. His next step was from the deck of the cutter to the schoolroom of a station, where he secured an engagement as tutor in a squatter's family, who little guessed that the quiet Mr. Jules who explained the irregular French verbs to them with exemplary patience was Prince Czetwertinski, the dashing light cavalryman who made his mark at the taking of Alexinatz a few years before.
Meanwhile his mother in distant Lemberg was searching Europe high and low for her missing son, and at last she confided the story of his disappearance to the Jesuits, by whom he had been brought up as a child. Setting the machinery of their vast religious organization to work, the Jesuit fathers in Galicia sent inquiries flying through the ramifications of their order in all quarters of the globe, and at last their brethren in Sydney discovered the wanderer, and placed him once more in communication with his family. They also offered him a post as master in a Jesuit college near Parramatta, and it was during a holiday from his duties there that he came down to Melbourne to see me. His mother longed for him to go home again, and sent him out money, imploring him to return to Europe, which he did soon after I saw him. I had letters from him afterwards, in which he told me that he had resumed his title of prince, and was living in Rome with his uncle, who was a cardinal. He had a special audience with his Holiness the Pope, who took a warm interest in him.
With revenues depleted by continual confiscations, Czetwertinski found himself unable for long to support the social position which he was called upon to fill in Europe, and he accordingly returned to Australia, and for three years held a post as master at St. Xavier's College, near Melbourne. I heard that he was a good teacher, but very harsh with the boys. When he left the school, I got him a post as tutor to the son of a friend of mine at a good salary; but when he had been there a week, there was a race meeting at Flemington, and he got a holiday to come down to town. Now Czetwertinski, though a magnificent rider, knew nothing about racing; but he tackled the ring with the same gay audacity as the tables at Monte Carlo, and with £7 in his pocket commenced a plunge in cash betting. His luck was in this time, and he backed winner after winner, leaving off at the end of the day £300 to the good. Two days afterwards I heard from him that he had thrown up his billet, and was leaving that night for Sydney, en route for Bagdad or Havana! I surmised that he would find his way back to Europe, and eventually marry an American heiress with £20,000 a year, with whom his mother had arranged a mariage de convenance for him, with a promise that £500,000 should be settled upon him on the day of the wedding. As a matter of fact, however, he got no farther than Batavia, where he opened a school, which was a failure. He worked his way back to Cooktown, and thence in a state of starvation to Sydney. On one occasion a butcher's wife, who wanted to engage a tutor, came across him in a registry office, and explained to him that it was usual for people in her country to wear collars. The poor wandering prince had no collar, so he lost the billet. However, he eventually made his way down to Wagga, where he opened a school, which turned out very successfully. He was doing splendidly, and meditating another trip home, when he caught a chill, and died in a week of pneumonia. A Wagga man brought me down poor Czetwertinski's final good-bye, saying that he thought of me to the last. So died as noble, brave, and high-spirited a soldier as ever drew the sword.
Nish, which is close to the Servian border, is one of the most flourishing towns in Bulgaria, and it was at that time fortified by several large forts and earthworks. Many of the houses were extremely handsome, and the villa in which we were quartered was a beautiful residence. A fine Bulgarian church and several Turkish mosques lent stateliness and dignity to the little city that nestles in the valley of the river Moravia. In the evening, as we sat over our cigarettes after dinner, there was a quiet restfulness in the beauty of the landscape that had a special charm; and when my comrades asked me to sing, I would give them that sweet old song, "Sweet Vale of Avoca, how calm could I rest," altering it to local circumstances by substituting "Moravia" for "Avoca."
Routine comes to mould a man's daily life in the Balkans as well as in London or Paris, and before many days had passed we had settled down to very regular habits. After breakfast at eight o'clock, a walk of half a mile took us to the general hospital, where we had a couple of hundred wounded men under treatment; and after going our rounds, and conferring with the head of the hospital about any matters demanding immediate attention, we were practically free by one o'clock for the rest of the day. One day a week was set apart for operations; but on the other days we used to go out riding in the hills and to the surrounding Bulgarian villages, with an occasional coursing match—for hares were very plentiful—by way of keeping our sporting proclivities properly exercised. A very favourite trip was a ride of seven miles out to a famous hot mineral spring, where the water, strongly impregnated with sulphur and chalybeates, gushes out of the living rock in a stream over a foot in diameter at a temperature of 120° Fahr., and falls into a natural basin, largely resorted to by the residents as a bath. Close to this bath, as the afternoon wore on, the deep-bosomed, dark-eyed Bulgarian women would bring the clothing of their households to wash, as Nausĭcaa and her maidens used to do long ago in the fabled land of Phæācia, where Odysseus, shipwrecked on his homeward voyage from Ilium, was saved from the sea. The Bulgarians, like their cousins-german the Servians and Roumanians, are fond of bright colours, particularly the women. Darwin throws the cold light of science on the important subject of feminine attire, when he points out that the gorgeous plumage of certain birds has been developed by them as a special sex attraction to secure for them the notice of a mate. With birds and animals, however, it is almost invariably the male who decks himself out in the most brilliant colouring, hoping thereby to make himself the cynosure of all the eyes of the females; but in the human species, by a curious piece of satire, Nature seems to encourage the female to adopt this gentle art. At any rate the Bulgarian women were adepts at it; and in spite of their Finnish type of features, many of them looked positively pretty as they stooped over the pool in their short, white kirtles of homespun frieze and loose-sleeved scarlet bodices, making a bright note of colour in the picture. And as they dipped their garments in the steaming washtub of Nature's own brewing, these rustic blanchisseuses de fin would sing the plaintive folk-songs of their country in the smooth Slavonian tongue, which had come to them in the old migratory days, during their long residence on the Volga, before the Avars swooped down upon them and drove them across the Danube to the country under the shadow of the Balkans, where they have remained ever since. In the Bulgarian folk-songs, with their plaintive semitones and their melodies sliding away invariably into the mournful minor, one seemed to hear the echoes of the history of the people who have degenerated from the warlike race that crossed the Danube under their great chief Zabergan in the sixth century to the feeble and lethargic tillers of the soil, who have grown up under their long subjection to the great Byzantine Empire with its seat of government at Constantinople, and afterwards to the despotic Turkish power which superseded it.
As the evening drew in we would race our horses back across country to Nish, haunted by the recollections of those plaintive Bulgarian airs and of the low, rich voices of the dark-eyed singers. The Turk, though an excellent fellow in many respects, has peculiar notions in the matter of voice production, and to hear a group of them all singing in unison through their noses as they squatted on the ground round a camp-fire was an experience to which one had to get accustomed before one could thoroughly enjoy it. It was a pleasant variety to exchange the nasal tenor squeak of the Turkish Tommy Atkins for the soft contralto of a Bulgarian blanchisseuse.
One of the principal sights of Nish is a squarely built brick tower covered over with plaster, in which are set three thousand Servian skulls. This ghastly trophy, which is about fifty years old, celebrates a long forgotten victory. The heads were stuck there freshly shorn from the shoulders of the Servians, and the whole grim monument reminds one of those sámadhs, or cenotaphs of heads, of which Kipling gives such a vivid description in one of his "Departmental Ditties."
Our party was joined at Nish by a son of the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel FitzGeorge, and a Captain James, who had come over with him from Widdin. I bought a capital grey pony from James for £8, and I always fancy that he imagined I had got at him over the bargain. However, caveat emptor is an admirable maxim in horse-dealing; and the law presumably imagines the vendor capable of looking after himself, as no maxim has been framed for his guidance. At any rate the grey pony stood me in good stead; and in our nightly race home from the mineral spring, or the particular Bulgarian village which we happened to be patronizing with a visit, I generally finished in the first three. It was a flat race of course, for you can walk from one end of the country to the other without meeting a fence of any kind.
At night after dinner the entire British medical staff at Nish, supported by FitzGeorge and James, were in the habit of discussing the Eastern Question in all its bearings, not from the outside point of view of the unprejudiced observer, but with the keenness of people who felt that they had a close personal interest in the solution of the problem. There were not wanting alarmists, who took the cheerful view that, if disaster overtook the Turkish arms, the exasperated Turks would turn their swords against the Giaours in their own ranks, and we should all get our throats cut for our pains.
One of the speakers who invariably ranged himself on the side of the minority in these discussions, and whose chief delight it was to be the Ishmael of debate with his hand against every man and every man's hand against him, was an extraordinary man named Foley, who quarrelled violently with every one of us except, I think, myself. Afterwards, just before the Russian war broke out, the poor fellow met a tragic end. He was quartered near Sistova in a Bulgarian house on the bank of the Danube, and it was found one morning that he had disappeared. His fate was a mystery which was never cleared up; and whether he drowned himself in the Danube, or was knocked on the head by some wandering Circassians, we were never able to find out. Another of my comrades at Nish was Ralph Leslie, a Canadian, who has had a fairly adventurous career, and was afterwards with Stanley on the Congo. He was a nice young fellow; but he used to read Gil Blas to me in French when I was in bed at night and required all my energies to circumvent the strategy of the Bulgarian insects.
An incident occurred one afternoon which came near terminating seriously for some of us, and it forms a good illustration of the dangers which the travelling Briton incurs as often as not through his own pig-headedness. S—— and I, with three or four more of the medical staff, were walking down the main street in plain clothes after lunch, when we noticed half a dozen Turkish soldiers engaged in cleaning the street. They were scooping up the liquid mud in great shovels, and throwing it into a cart drawn up near the footpath. A good share of every shovelful of mud came down on the footway, and as we approached S—— shouted to them in English to "knock off" whilst we went past. They either did not or would not understand, and before we had gone three steps farther my companion's Bond Street tweed suit received a liberal baptism of black mud from the shovel wielded by a dour old Turk, the ugliest of the party. S—— lost his temper, and sent in a heavy left-hander, which caught the old fellow on the point of the jaw, and landed him kicking on his back in the middle of the road. The whole gang at once raised a yell, and rushed us with their shovels, while we had to rely upon our fists alone for our defence. Matters were beginning to look very ugly indeed, when a Turkish lieutenant who knew us rushed up, and drawing his sword interposed himself between ourselves and our assailants, who retired in disorder under a vigorous volley of Turkish maledictions. It was a close thing for us all the same, and the adventurous career which I had marked out before me came perilously near to being abruptly terminated by an inglorious end at the hands of an infuriated scavenger.
But this same S——, capable man as he was at his profession and good-hearted fellow to boot, had an unhappy knack of getting into difficulties, and his death resulted eventually as an indirect consequence of a mysterious quarrel which he had with a Turkish major under circumstances which I recollect with great distinctness. While we were at Nish, one of the British surgeons attached to the general hospital, Howard Keen by name, was quartered in a fine Bulgarian house, which he shared with a Turkish major, whose name it is not necessary to mention. S—— and I went up to spend the evening with them; and as it was a bitterly cold night with snow on the ground outside, Keen advised me to stop with him, and camp in his half of the house, which I did. At about twelve o'clock I wrapped myself in my heavy military overcoat lined with wolf-skin, and lay down to sleep on the floor in front of the fire in Keen's room, while Keen also went to sleep on his camp-bed. We left S—— and the Turkish major drinking raki together in the major's room at the other side of the house.
As the fire was burning low I woke with a start to find the Bulgarian owner of the house standing over me in a state of violent agitation, gesticulating wildly and repeating again and again some words of the meaning of which I had not the faintest notion. He was holding in his hand a revolver which belonged to S——. I guessed at once that something was wrong; and fearing that S—— had got the worse for liquor and insulted the Bulgarian's wife, I woke Keen, who ran out in his shirt and trousers to the other side of the house. I followed him almost immediately, and he yelled out to me to come to the major's quarters at once. I rushed in, and found the major in a state of tremendous excitement, chewing his big black moustache and hurriedly buckling on his sword. Guessing that S—— had got into trouble again, I sang out to him to clear out; but as I did so the door opened, and in he walked as white as a sheet. The major drew his revolver, and fired at S—— point-blank, but the bullet missed its mark; and before he could pull the trigger again, Keen and I had closed with him, and for about two minutes the inside of that Bulgarian's sitting-room was about the hottest corner I have ever been in. The Turk was a big, powerful fellow, and he was mad with raki; while Keen and I were both tough, and in pretty good form. Over and over on the floor we rolled, the Turk trying to throttle us, while we hung to him like a couple of bull-terriers, and gradually wore him out. At last we had him fairly beaten, and, grabbing his revolver, we blew out the light and fled, taking S—— with us, and locking the door behind us. S—— staggered off to his own quarters; but when the morning came, he was found lying in the snow outside his own door, and the exposure brought on an attack of inflammation of the lungs, from which he eventually died. In the morning we tried in vain to find out the cause of the quarrel; but neither S—— nor the major would tell us. I think the Bulgarian knew, but he kept his own counsel.
One night in Nish I met a very remarkable Turkish officer named Ahmet Bey, who was introduced to me as a man who had killed seven Servians with his own sword during the final attack upon Alexinatz. I never in my life saw a man with such a magnificent physique. He was very handsome, splendidly proportioned, and of astounding physical strength. A few days before I met him he had been the hero of a feat about which all the troops in Nish were still talking. It seemed that Abdul Kerim Pasha, the commander-in-chief, while inspecting the troops one morning, casually expressed a wish that he could capture a Servian prisoner from the Servian lines. Ahmet Bey, who overheard the remark, rode up, and, saluting, asked to be permitted to get the commander a prisoner. Abdul Kerim wonderingly gave the required permission, and Ahmet Bey without another word wheeled his charger, dashed the spurs into his flanks, and galloped off in front of the astonished detachment straight for the nearest Servian outpost. As he approached the Servian lines half a dozen rifles cracked, for the Servian vedettes opened fire upon him, hoping to drop him on the wing. But Ahmet Bey galloped on unharmed, having deliberately marked down one sentry for his prey. The sentry emptied his rifle at the audacious horseman in vain, and too late started to run. Ahmet Bey swooped down on him like a sparrow-hawk upon a landrail, and bending down grasped the man by the collar in an iron grip and flung him without an effort across the saddle in front of him. Then he galloped back again, bending over his horse's neck as the bullets whistled over his head, and delivered his bewildered prisoner to the Turkish commander amid the delighted shouts of the whole detachment.
The hero of this extraordinary feat was afterwards attached to the staff of Mehemet Ali Pasha, in command of the army of the Lom. With the same army corps was Baker Pasha, the famous Colonel Baker, who was accounted one of the finest cavalry leaders in Europe; and Baker Pasha, who should be a good judge of soldierly qualities, has left it on record that Ahmet Bey was the beau-ideal of a soldier. Baker Pasha has given it as his written opinion that he never met the equal of this Turkish officer in instinctive military knowledge. He seemed to be able to divine the movements of the enemy and forestall every change of position or modification of strategy.
The frequent defeats of the Servians seemed to indicate a speedy termination of hostilities; and had it not been for the thousands of Russian volunteers who flocked to the Servian standard and took service under the Russian General Tchernaieff, who commanded the Servian army, it was evident that the resistance of Servia must have collapsed much earlier. At last, when Servia appealed to the Powers to stop the war and an armistice was declared at the instance of Russia, a large number of Turkish troops were sent to the rear, and among them was my regiment the Kyrchehir. We were ordered to retire to Sofia, and of course I had to sever my connection with the general hospital and rejoin my regiment.
It was December. The sky was the colour of lead, and the snow lay with a dead weight upon the pine trees. The regiment started early in the morning, and when I left for the long, solitary ride to Sofia I was several hours behind my troops. As I cantered my grey pony over the frozen ground a mishap befell me at the outset, for the gallant little animal cast a shoe, and I had to stop at a Bulgarian village to get him shod. Throughout the Turkish Empire they use flat plates which cover the whole of the foot with the exception of a small round orifice in the centre, instead of the crescent-shaped horseshoes which have come down to more civilized countries from the Roman times, and I had to hunt up a farrier to do the work. I found him at last, a surly, black-bearded fellow, who gave free vent to his hatred of the Turkish troops, and flatly refused to assist me. Out came my revolver; and as I tapped the barrel, significantly pointing first to the shoeless hoof and then to the farrier's head, he came to terms and consented. But when I remounted the grey, I found that he was dead lame. The rascally farrier, I discovered afterwards, had driven a long nail straight into the frog of the unfortunate pony's foot, and then nailed the plate on over it. Before I reached Sofia a Circassian stole my English stirrup-irons while I slept, and leading my lame pony I finished the journey on foot.
However, we were a very jolly party at Sofia, where a fresh lot of English surgeons chummed in with us, and we all resolved to celebrate Christmas in the proper English way by a splendid dinner. On Christmas Eve a special sub-committee was formed to arrange the details of a banquet which should be worthy of the occasion. We were going to have no more of the eternal pilaf, with its accompanying hard biscuit and gulps of hot black coffee, but a real hot joint, a turkey, a goose, a plum pudding, and plenty of wine. I went to sleep that night with my soul filled with beautiful dreams of Christmas, and peace on earth, goodwill towards Bulgarians, and of roast turkey and celery sauce. In the morning I woke, and learned with horror that the regiment was ordered to march at once to the bleak, detestable pass of Orkhanieh in the Balkans, and that we should probably get no dinner at all. They went away without me, and as Christmas morning wore on I came to the conclusion that I had better follow them or else I might get lost. I did follow them, but I got lost all the same; and after riding until ten o'clock at night I reached a filthy Bulgarian village, and decided to camp there. The house which I selected as the most promising was about as clean as an English piggery; but I found a kind of loft where maize was stored in the cob, and there I stopped for the night. I lay on the cobs of maize which were as hard as paving-stones, and made my Christmas dinner off one of them, hardly knowing whether to curse or laugh at the irony of fate and the "happy Christmas" which my friends in England and Australia no doubt were wishing me. Next day I overtook the regiment, and went into quarters with it for five weeks at Orkhanieh. I had plenty to do there, for the men suffered greatly from dysentery; and as they could not all be accommodated in the village, they had to live under canvas, a mode of life which was very severe at that time of the year. After a few weeks there my stock of medicines, which was never very large, began to run out, and I got permission from the colonel to ride into Sofia, a distance of thirty miles, to replenish the regimental medicine chest.
Of all my campaigning experiences none were more awful than those lonely rides from Orkhanieh to Sofia and back again. My horse went lame soon after I started, the cold was intense, and in half an hour I was overtaken by a snowstorm which nearly blinded me. All day my poor horse hobbled along on three legs, while I was afraid to dismount, knowing that if I once left the saddle I should be frozen to death on the ground. When I arrived in Sofia at ten o'clock that night, I had to be lifted off my horse and put to bed. In the morning my good horse was found dead in the stable, killed by that fearful journey. An Italian doctor, who drove into Sofia on the same day, was lifted out of the vehicle dead. Perhaps if he had ridden he might have been saved.
After a rest of two days, I had to start back for Orkhanieh with my replenished medicine chest. The prospect was not a pleasant one; but I faced it with a fresh horse and renewed confidence. Before I had gone half-way I missed the road, and going across country came to a frozen river, which I was afraid to cross, lest the ice might give way and let me and my horse through into deep water. Accordingly I rode along the bank until I came to a place where I judged from the colour of the ice that the water was shallow, and there I resolved to attempt the crossing. When I was in the middle, there was a crack like a pistol shot, the ice broke, and we fell through to the river-bed, my horse standing up to his shoulder in the icy water, which reached to my knee. I was off his back in a moment, and the poor brute, after a couple of frightened plunges, stood still shivering. It was plain that the ice would not bear us, even if I could get myself and the horse to the surface again, so the only course open was to cut a way out. I took my two heavy stirrup-irons, fixed them on one leather, and, using this improvised implement as a hammer, broke away the ice piecemeal, and dragged myself and my horse up the bank on the opposite side. At last I reached the camp, as stiff as though I was encased in plaster of Paris, and with my clothes frozen hard to my body. It was three weeks before I properly recovered sensation in my bridle-hand.
The regiment was ordered to Widdin before I had recovered from that last ride, and on the eve of our departure I had a severe attack of dysentery, which weakened me terribly. However, they lifted me on to my horse, and at last we reached the town of Vratza, one of the most picturesque towns in Bulgaria. Here I found the Turkish regiment to which my friend Stiven was attached; and to my great joy almost the first man whom I met was Stiven, who was living in the house of a Polish apothecary. I was very weak and ill; but I accepted Stiven's invitation to dine, and he prescribed a nourishing diet with plenty of good blood-making wine. What is more, he saw that I had it; and my performances at that dinner, which was the first European meal I had eaten since leaving Sofia, made our Turkish servant open his eyes. I am afraid to think how many bottles of the wine of the country Stiven and I got through between us; but I know that, when at last I tumbled off to bed in the mosque where the regiment was quartered, I slept the deep sleep of those who have dined both wisely and too well. It was a good prescription of Stiven's, and next day I was completely restored in health.
Off to Widdin—Strong Fortifications—Osman Pasha in Command—The Kalafatians at Work—Dr. Black—A Discreditable Englishman—Shooting on Sight—An Arrest and a Release—"Life off Black"—Egyptian Troops arrive—Zara Dilber Effendi—Osman Pasha's Ball—A Memorable Function—I get Plenty of Partners—Military Wall-flowers—The Ladies of Widdin—The Dance before the Fight—Three Beautiful Roumanians—An Angry Grandfather—Lambro Redivivus—Preparing for the Campaign—Some Forcible Dentistry—Religion of the Turks—The Wrestlers—Visitors from Kalafat—I pay a Return Call—Across the Danube into Kalafat—Dinner with the Roumanians—Pumping the Guileless Stranger—A Futile Effort—Frank Power—Nicholas Leader—Edmund O'Donovan—Wild Duck Shooting.
A march of four days brought us to Widdin, the journey being accomplished by easy stages and with a fair degree of comfort. Of course it must be remembered that there was no such thing as a commissariat department in the Turkish army. The zaptiehs, or mounted police, in each district received notice of our approach, and requisitioned the necessary supplies from the farmers, who received acknowledgments of Government indebtedness for the amount due. We always sent forward a few arabas with an advance party and a number of cooks; so that when the regiment reached the camping-place for the night all the preparations were made, and a hot meal was ready for the men. We usually camped in a Bulgarian village; and if there was no other shelter for the men, we appropriated the mosque, and made up our beds in it. I have slept many a time on the paved floor of a Turkish mosque, in the very arms of Islam as it were; and I must candidly admit that my slumbers were quite as refreshing and my dreams as sweet as they have since been within sound of the cathedral bells of Christendom.
Widdin is a town of considerable commercial importance, and a strongly fortified position of great military significance, being, in fact, one of the keys of Bulgaria, for it is situated on a wedge of Bulgarian territory, having both the Servian and Roumanian frontiers almost under the muzzles of its siege-guns. When we were there the population numbered about fourteen thousand persons, of whom perhaps one-half were Bulgarians, one-third Turks, and the remainder Levantines, Greeks, Italians, Spanish Jews, and Tchiganes or Gypsies. There are a great number of Jews everywhere throughout the Turkish Empire, and they are very well treated by the Turks. It is hardly necessary to say that almost all the bankers and financial agents in the country belong to this race.
There are practically two towns in Widdin—namely, that which is within the fortifications, and that which is outside. The fortified portion faces the Danube, which forms its protection for a distance of about one mile; and it is defended besides by a high castellated wall fully twenty feet in height, which runs right round the town. Facing the Danube, when we were there, were several powerful and perfectly organized batteries, armed with at least fifty Krupp siege-guns of the most modern description. From the Danube side the town was practically impregnable. On the other side, beyond the castellated wall, was a wide and deep moat; and over this was a drawbridge, which was pulled up at six o'clock every night, so that after that hour ingress to the fortified town was impossible until the morning. Inside the fortress were the principal public buildings, including the konak, or townhall, the seat of administration of the Turkish governor in charge of the vilayet, as well as the barracks, which accommodated four thousand men, a large Government mill for grinding corn, and the great granaries in which a reserve of grain was stored for victualling the town in the event of a siege.
The greater portion of the population lived outside the fortress in the different suburbs; and beyond these again was the outer line of defence, a huge wall of earth about twenty feet high, and studded at short intervals with redoubts. Outside this wall the country was low-lying and swampy, capable of being flooded from the Danube, and thus affording additional protection to the town. One result, however, of all this circumjacent water was that Widdin was one of the most unhealthy towns in the whole of Turkey. The climate was excessively damp, and we were never free from malarial fever. At one time there were no fewer than four hundred men in the hospitals with this fever.
A staple article of export from Widdin is caviare, which is obtained in enormous quantities from the roe of the sturgeon, and sent away packed in barrels on board the flat-bottomed boats that ply up the river. I have seen a sturgeon fully twelve feet long caught in the Danube. Three men were dragging it with a rope through the streets of Widdin. The town has also a great reputation for its filigree work in silver and gold, which is very beautiful.
In February, 1877, when our regiment reached Widdin, we found about thirty thousand Turkish troops in the place, mostly infantry, though there were a few batteries of field artillery and about a thousand cavalry. The Kyrchehir Regiment went into quarters in the barracks inside the fortress; but of course there was not sufficient accommodation there for all the troops in the town, and a military encampment was formed a couple of miles out of the town for the bulk of the army corps. Osman Pasha, at that time a comparatively unknown man, was then commander-in-chief of all the troops in Widdin, and Adil Pasha was the commandant in charge of the camp. Osman Pasha had already won considerable reputation by his brilliant defeat of the Servians at Zaitchar; but it was not until his subsequent successes against the Russian arms that his name was flashed through the length and breadth of Europe, and that congratulations poured in upon him from all quarters. It fell to my lot to open and read many of the letters sent to him from England, in which the writers, a large proportion of whom were ladies, expressed their admiration for his gallantry and begged the favour of his autograph. Osman Pasha lived in a large house within the fortress, and I myself was billeted in the same quarter, where I lived quite in the Turkish fashion, sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating my food with my fingers.
At this time hostilities with Servia had ceased, and a long armistice had been declared, during which the Powers were occupied in dictating terms to Turkey, which, however, she declined to accept, her determined attitude in the matter leading ultimately to the declaration of war against her by Russia. The town of Kalafat in Roumania is close to Widdin; and we could see the Roumanian troops there busily engaged in fortifying it in anticipation of hostilities breaking out, and of an attack being made on the town by the forces in Widdin at any moment. The position, therefore, was decidedly interesting, for we could actually see the Roumanians, who were nominally our vassals, building up their redoubts against us as fast as they could. It will be remembered that during the early part of the Crimean war the Turks occupied Kalafat, Osman Pasha being the commander of the forces; and that the Russians lost some twenty thousand men in a vain attempt to take it.
The time of waiting in Widdin was fairly quiet, although every one felt that war was in the air, and that the interval of rest was only the hush that precedes the hurricane. I had plenty of work to do, for dysentery and lung troubles affected the troops severely as well as malarial fever. There were about thirty military surgeons in the town including myself, but most of them were Hungarians or Austrians; and the only other British subject among them besides myself was a man whom I shall call Dr. Black, although that was not his name.
Dr. Black was by no means a credit to his country. In fact, not to put too fine a point upon it, he was a perfect disgrace; and as every fresh scrape that he got into reflected more or less upon me, I began to get heartily sick of him. Few of the people in Widdin had ever seen an Englishman, and Dr. Black's manners and customs were not calculated to prejudice them favourably with regard to the nation in general or myself in particular. Fortunately for me there was one other Briton in the town. To use a convenient Irishism, he was a Scotsman, and he was commonly known as Jack; in fact, I never heard his surname. Jack was a high-class mechanical engineer, and he had been specially imported from Glasgow to take charge of the Government flour-mill inside the fortress. He lived there with his wife, a charming little Scotswoman, and they both spoke Turkish like natives. I had many consultations with Jack as to our common bête noir Dr. Black; but we had to suffer in silence for a while until the whirligig of time brought its revenges, and Dr. Black was at last turned out of Widdin.
I had met Dr. Black before in Sofia, and it was with intense disgust that I came across him again in Widdin. He was a middle-aged man, who might possibly have been of some good in his profession when he was younger; but he had spoiled his life and ruined his chances with drink. He was the most awful drunkard I have ever met. In fact, he was never sober, and in his habits he was perfectly filthy. He used to wear a long, dirty overcoat, in one pocket of which he invariably carried a bottle of the commonest and vilest rum, while in the other he carried a loaded revolver, with which he would blaze away at any one who gave him the slightest provocation. On one occasion I saw him stagger into a Bulgarian boot shop and yell out in English to the proprietor, "Give me a pair of boots, you ——!" Of course the Bulgarian could not understand, so Black whipped out his revolver and blazed a few cartridges away among the stock in trade before the trembling cobbler could pacify him. He was perpetually firing off this weapon, and he was such a terror to the unfortunate Bulgarians in whose houses he was quartered, that he was never allowed to stay more than a week at a time in one place. At last he became such a nuisance that old Hassib Bey, a most courtly old Turkish gentleman, who was the head of the hospital, sent for me, and asked me what on earth they were to do with this compatriot of mine. I suggested that he should be quartered in the military hospital, where he would have fewer opportunities of being a nuisance, and my suggestion, which was adopted, speedily brought matters to a crisis.
One night, when Dr. Black had retired to rest in the military hospital, drunk as usual, a number of mischievous jarra bashis, dispensers and dressers, began to tease him by hammering at his door and making offensive remarks to him. He yelled out to them in English that if they did not desist he would bring out the inevitable revolver; but they could not tear themselves away from the fascinating sport of baiting a boozer; and suddenly, as they were gathered outside in the passage whistling, cat-calling, and shouting out uncomplimentary epithets, the door opened, and Dr. Black appeared in his night-shirt, revolver in hand. There was a frightened stampede down the passage, and as they fled Black emptied the revolver at random at his assailants. A piercing shriek told that one of the bullets at any rate had gone home, and presently the whole hospital was in an uproar, as a little Italian dresser staggered into the house surgeon's room declaring that he was murdered. A hasty examination, however, showed that the bullet had entered a portion of the anatomy where it could do little harm, namely, the fleshy tissues adjacent to the base of the spine, and no attempt was made to extract it. Probably that little Italian dresser carries the bullet about in his back still as a souvenir of campaigning days in Widdin.
When Dr. Black put his head out of his door next morning, he found a couple of soldiers stationed there waiting to arrest him; so he retreated inside the room again, and devised a plan of escape. The window of the room looked out over a courtyard about fourteen feet below; and as there was a thick layer of snow in the yard, Black decided to escape that way. He knotted his blanket into a rope, and dropped into the yard—also into the arms of the sentry stationed below. He was brought before old Hassib Bey, who sent for me; and I sent for Jack the mill engineer to act as interpreter. Finally Hassib Bey decided that it would be no good to put Black in gaol, and to my intense delight he resolved to send him away out of Widdin altogether. He treated my discreditable compatriot most generously, for he had him placed on board one of the large river steamers which plied once a week from Widdin up as far as Belgrade, and sent him away scot-free after his escapade, and with £10 in his pocket to carry him out of Turkish territory as soon as possible. I thanked Hassib Bey for his forbearance, and to my great joy I never saw Dr. Black again.
When my regiment was sent out of the fortress to the encampment, I was detailed for hospital duty, and took up my quarters at a small fifth-rate Bulgarian hotel on the banks of the Danube. The principal diversion was to go on board the big passenger steamers, and hear the news of the outside world and what people were saying of us in England. I met a charming Frenchman on board one of them, a highly cultured and agreeable military man, named Captain Bouchon, who was going down to Rustchuk. However, I persuaded him to stop with me for a week, and his society gave me the greatest pleasure.
The first war correspondent whom I met in Widdin was a man named Fitzgerald, who came out as the representative of the London Standard. He was a fine fellow, and had seen service in the British army. It was the month of April when he arrived, among the first of the petrels who presaged the coming storm; and about the same time there came two battalions of Egyptian troops under Prince Hassan, the Khedive's second son. These made a strong reinforcement for the large body of troops already in Widdin. One day Fitzgerald came to me, and said that he was going away up the river for a few days. He asked me to look after his correspondence, and to send any items of news worth telegraphing to the Standard. He took the boat, and went away leaving me in charge, and I have never seen him from that day to this. I took up his work, and sent several messages during the campaign which followed to the Standard, spending a considerable sum of money out of my own pocket upon telegraphing. Afterwards, when I got down to Constantinople and explained matters to Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore, a well known personality there, he refunded me the money.
When the Egyptian troops arrived, they naturally occasioned a good deal of stir, and they were keenly criticised by their Turkish allies. For physique and fighting qualities there could be no comparison between the two bodies of men, the Turks easily carrying off the palm. Still, the Egyptians were by no means to be despised. Their officers were highly trained and intelligent, and the equipment of the troops was new and good, far superior, in fact, to that of the Turkish soldiers. Moreover, the Egyptian force brought with it an excellent band of brass and strings, which proved a perfect god-send, as we had no band among all the Turkish forces, and the bugles were not particularly agreeable to listen to. The Egyptians afterwards behaved well in action, and many of them fought at the defence of Widdin under Izzet Pasha, who successfully beat off the repeated assaults of the Roumanians and the Servians, and preserved the town intact.
Among the many interesting men who were gathered together in Widdin during this period of waiting and watching was a singularly attractive and talented Armenian named Zara Dilber Effendi, who was a resident of the place and the chairman of the local chamber of commerce. He had been brought up in Germany, and spoke every European language with equal fluency. I became very intimate with him, and was a frequent visitor at his house, finding him thoroughly well informed and an intimate friend of Osman Pasha. In fact, Zara Dilber Effendi and Osman Effendi, a Turkish doctor who had been educated in Paris, and who was the best surgeon that I came in contact with during the whole of the campaign, were my constant companions during my stay in Widdin, as my medical confrères, with the exception of two or three, had few tastes and no ideas in common with me. Dr. Kronberg and Dr. Busch, however, both capital fellows and married men, were sociable enough; and I have always attributed to the promptings of Madame Kronberg and Madame Busch a brilliant social idea which was developed by Osman Pasha immediately after the declaration of peace with Servia.
Civil and military society in the town was convulsed one day by the announcement that Osman Pasha intended to give a grand ball to celebrate the cessation of hostilities and in aid of the funds of the military hospitals. All the arrangements for the ball were left in the hands of Zara Dilber Effendi on the strength of that gentleman's intimate knowledge of the highest circles of European society; and as it was generally understood that Osman Pasha's invitations would be issued on the recommendation of Zara Dilber Effendi, the feminine world of Widdin was much fluttered. It leaked out pretty early that no one below the rank of a field officer would be invited, and we were kept on the tiptoe of excitement until the eventful night arrived. A fine Bulgarian house with a large room was taken for the night, and for a whole week beforehand Zara Dilber Effendi was missing. People said that he made several mysterious visits into Roumanian territory, bringing back each time a small army of Roumanian servants and many suggestive cases and packages. It was rumoured that there were to be chairs at the ball, and knives and forks. People whispered of a regular set supper, with European dishes and champagne. But Zara Dilber Effendi kept his own counsel, and went on his way, wrapped in impenetrable Oriental secrecy. As for myself, having received my invitation, I bought a brand new uniform, wondering a good deal where the ladies were to come from, and how the Turks would enjoy a ball carried out according to Western ideas. My invitation bore Osman Pasha's signature, and I sent this interesting souvenir out to my father in Australia afterwards.
When I entered the ballroom on that memorable night, I was fairly staggered. The room had been beautifully decorated by the Turkish and Egyptian troops with festoons of flags and picturesque devices composed of swords, rifles, revolvers, and arms of every kind. Upon a raised daïs, at the end of the room, stood Osman Pasha in full-dress uniform, supported on either side by Madames Kronberg and Busch beautifully dressed. He received the guests with courtly politeness, shaking hands with each as they came up; and as the long line of brilliant uniforms sparkling with decorations, and of beautiful women dressed with exquisite taste, filed past in front of him, it was difficult to realize that one was not assisting at some great State ball in London or Paris, but at a function in a small Bulgarian frontier town lying almost under the guns of an avowedly hostile force.
A wide divan ran round the room, and on this the Turkish officers sat cross-legged, observing the proceedings with grave interest. The Turk is quite used to paying people to dance for his amusement, but he would never dream of dancing himself. I watched one dignified old Turkish colonel striving hard to maintain that decorous impassivity which a few of the ballroom exquisites of the Western world seem to have borrowed from the East; but every now and then, as some audacious young Giaour like myself glided past clasping a vision of beauty all silk and lace and pearls and flowers in his arms, I saw the old Turk's eyes open wider and wider in spite of himself. Zara Dilber Effendi had performed his share of the work well, for he had collected about sixty of the most cultured, refined, and beautiful women that I have ever seen together in a ballroom. There were a few Bulgarian ladies of the highest class; but the majority were Spanish Jewesses from seventeen to twenty years of age, with the rich colouring, the dark hair, and liquid eyes of all their race, or stately Roumanians, statuesque in type. There was a liberal sprinkling of Levantines, Italians, Greeks, and possibly two or three Servians; but though they differed in race, they were alike in one particular, for all were beautiful and refined. These ladies, I must admit, were little short of a revelation to me, for I had only seen a few thickly veiled Turkish women in the town hitherto; but Zara Dilber Effendi was evidently a person of some note in Widdin, and the invitations had been sent out to none but the ladies of the most aristocratic families in the country.
I was the only Englishman present at that remarkable ball; and I suppose it is not often that an Englishman finds himself assisting at an entertainment of such half-barbaric splendour, and held under such dramatic circumstances. Every man in the room knew that the commencement of a fierce campaign was only a question of weeks, perhaps days; and we snatched the enjoyment of the hour as gaily as did the guests at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. Indeed the parallel between Osman Pasha's ball and the historic ball at Brussels which Byron has celebrated was a very real one. In both cases the dancers were dancing on the edge of a battle-field. In both cases the existence of an empire hung on the issue of the coming struggle. In both cases many of the brave men gathered there amid the music and the flowers and under the flags and lamplight were soon to be lying out upon the blood-soaked plain, cold and deserted—the débris of a dreadful festival. We had no "Brunswick's fated chieftain" there that evening; but the courtly old Turkish colonel who sat up cross-legged on the divan, and watched me so intensely while I danced, makes in my eyes a far more vivid picture. I saw him afterwards, again in a sitting posture, outside a redoubt near Radishevo, when the tide of battle had ebbed back, only to flow again in fiercer volume. His head had fallen forward on his knees, and when I touched him I found that he was dead—cut almost in two by a Russian shell.
However, the shadow of the impending war only served to throw the brightness of the ball into stronger relief, and I gave myself up to the business of pleasure with all the ardour of two and twenty. There were only about a dozen of us, mostly members of the medical staff, who were dancing men, and we were consequently kept busy. I generally divided one waltz into three parts; and as the other men followed my lead, we were able to give all the ladies a turn occasionally, and there were no wall-flowers. A big ambulance tent had been pitched in the garden to serve as a supper-room, and we paid for the refreshments as we had them, the money going to the hospital fund. I used to take my partners out after every dance, and the champagne corks were flying almost as thickly as the bullets later on. I recollect that I spent just £9 on suppers and refreshments during the evening. A man is not inclined to be economical when he knows that before long he may have no mouth to put champagne in and no head left to get dizzy with it. Zara Dilber Effendi had got in a splendid supper from Crajova in Roumania, where he also obtained the favours for the cotillion which was danced in perfect style under the direction of the experienced Madame Kronberg and Madame Busch.
Among my partners that night were three very charming sisters, who had been born in Roumania, but whose father was a Greek. They spoke German very well, and consequently I danced more often with them than with the other ladies, with whom I found greater difficulty in conversing. The sisters were good enough to take quite an interest in me, and they invited me to call at their house during the week, following up their verbal invitation with a note next day. At the end of a sheet of dainty little handwriting on scented notepaper was a remarkable postscript (I find that ladies generally put the most important part of their communications into the postscript) setting forth that their grandfather had a rooted aversion to all Englishmen, myself in particular, and that he would certainly shoot me if he found me calling on his granddaughters. In campaigning times one is not discouraged by trifles, and soon after the ball I called upon my three charming partners, who entertained me with coffee and music at their beautiful home. Suddenly a step was heard on the stairs, and the eldest of the sisters with a blanched face whispered that it was their grandfather, and bade me fly at once. I dropped from the window into the lane below, and as I did so the irascible old Greek opened fire on me with a blunderbuss. Fortunately for me his anger had affected his aim, and I escaped unscathed. A few years more or less make little difference in national proclivities. Old Lambro, the Greek pirate who attacked Don Juan, is said by Byron to have been "the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat"; and the grandfather of my fair partners seemed to have inherited something of the same temperament with a certain difference.
In April of the year 1877 we began to realize fully that war was imminent, and the Turkish commanders set to work to prepare their troops for a stern and fierce fight. Every day almost the small, flat-bottomed, single-masted boats that plied up and down the Danube kept arriving with cargoes of flour and maize for victualling the town, and also with reinforcements of fresh troops, who were packed on board as close as eggs in a basket. Most of the reinforcements were quartered in the large camp, which was pitched about two miles and a half out of Widdin towards the Servian border; and when all had arrived, we found about thirty-five battalions of infantry there, with several batteries of artillery and squadrons of cavalry, the whole making up an imposing corps d'armée. As the camp increased in proportions, it was found that more surgeons were required, and I received orders to give up my hospital work in the fortress and report myself for duty at the camp. I was appointed one of the ambulance surgeons, and rejoined my old regiment, the Kyrchehir, which had been sent out from the fortress. The camp was situated on a long, green slope of rising ground, several miles in length; and here the long lines of bell tents were pitched, among them the tent of my old comrade the paymaster, with whom I once more foregathered.
About half a mile from the camp was a large marsh or swamp, where great white arum lilies grew, with jonquils, narcissus, and the different kinds of iris, in magnificent profusion, as well as millions of the tiny white snowflakes. I had a trench dug outside my tent, and once a week our two servants, the paymaster's and my own, went down to the swamp, and brought back barrowfuls of flowers, which I planted in the trench. Here too the orderlies made me a great seat of turf, and every morning from six o'clock till half-past nine I sat there among the flowers to receive my patients, who used to come up from the different battalions to have their various ailments treated. Epsom salts formed a sovereign remedy for most of the trifling sicknesses, and my method of giving the physic was extremely primitive. As I sat on my throne of turf, I had a sackful of Epsom salts beside me, together with a bucket of water and a pannikin; so that when the patient had swallowed a handful of the salts I presented him with a pannikin of water, and he washed the nauseous mouthful down. The men never complained, and accepted these simple ministrations with exemplary sang-froid.
As a rule the Turks have excellent teeth; but in such a large assemblage of men there were of course many exceptions, and I had a good deal of tooth-drawing to do. Some of those Mussulman molars were dreadfully obstinate, and resisted every effort of the Giaour with fanatical determination. One man with a huge aching grinder in his upper jaw came to me three mornings in succession, for with the simple appliances at my disposal I was unable to extract it in one sitting. At last I made him sit down on the ground in front of me, and, grasping the forceps in my right hand, I braced my feet against the pit of his stomach, and put forth every effort. There was a crunching, grinding noise, a sound of breaking and rending, then a "plop" as when a recalcitrant cork comes out of a bottle of pale ale, and I was lying on my back in the trench among the arum lilies, with the forceps and the molar in my hand at last. As for the Turk, he spat the blood out of his mouth, piously remarked that Allah was very good, and went back to his company.
If any of my patients were seriously ill, or showed symptoms of malarial fever or dysentery, which was very prevalent, I had them placed in arabas, and sent back to the hospital in Widdin. Then, when my work of inspection was over, which was usually the case by about nine o'clock, the rest of the day was my own, and I spent it in improving my knowledge of Turkish and consuming large quantities of coffee and cigarettes with my brother officers. Every day the camp was in a state of great activity, with never ending drills and ceaseless inspections by the commandants, who spared no pains to see that everything was ready before the expected outbreak. The discipline throughout the camp was admirable, and the men were in excellent good humour.
Nearly every day I used to ride into Widdin to hear the news, and return to camp in the evening, generally reaching it before sunset. Only life in a Turkish camp can enable one to realize how deeply the Turks feel their religion, and how diligent they are in the practice of their devotions. No dour old Covenanter with a verse of a psalm on his lips ever flung himself with more dogged courage on the pikes of Graham of Claverhouse, than did those Turks charge down upon the Russian steel a few months later, with the cry of "Allah" upon their lips and the assurance of paradise in their heroic hearts. Perhaps the best qualification for a good soldier is to be a fanatic—as the next best is to be an infidel. After "Praise-God-Barebones," the most striking figure in a mêlée is Sergeant Bothwell, who died "believing nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing." Every evening at the camp near Widdin the men were formed up in long, double lines just before sundown; and as the sun sank below the horizon the cry of "La ilaha illallah Mohammed Rasul Allah" started at one end of the lines, and was taken up by man after man, dying away in the distance diminuendo, and travelling back again crescendo, until it reached the starting-point in a mighty shout of religious fervour. The effect resembled nothing so much as a feu de joie of musketry, delivered with the precision and clearness attainable only by the daily practice of a lifetime.
When the men were dismissed from this mighty church parade, they would scamper off like so many schoolboys, and indulge in all kinds of games with the keen joy of living, and the unblunted faculties of sensation which are seldom found in the alcohol-drinkers of other nations. Wrestling was a favourite pastime with the men; and it was no uncommon sight to see five thousand spectators gathered in a huge ring, in the centre of which picked competitors, stripped to the waist, engaged each other in a catch-as-catch-can struggle. Hassan Labri Pasha, one of the principal officers in the camp, was an enthusiast in the sport of wrestling, and used to get up great tournaments in which the men wrestled each other for prizes of tobacco and other inexpensive little luxuries.
After three weeks of this life in camp, I was ordered back to Widdin again, and took up my quarters at the little Bulgarian hotel on the bank of the Danube where I had been before. Things were looking very serious at this time; and though war was not actually declared by Russia until April 24, 1877, still it was quite certain long before this date that Roumania would espouse the Russian cause; and when the Russian army which had been quartered on the Pruth entered Roumanian territory, the Government of the Porte communicated with the Roumanian Government, intimating that they construed the act of Roumania in allowing Russian troops to cross her frontier as an act of hostility towards Turkey.
About a week before the declaration of war, two Roumanian officers came down the Danube from Kalafat, and landed at my hotel, where they were stopped and told that they could go no farther. One of them was a Captain Giorgione, whom I met and asked to dine with me before he went back to Kalafat. He accepted my invitation, and after a long and pleasant conversation about the general situation and the prospects of war he gave me a cordial invitation to go across the river to Kalafat and pay him a visit in his quarters. As hostilities were expected to break out at any moment, no one was allowed to cross the Danube from our side without a special permit from Osman Pasha; and as there was no probability that he would grant me the necessary permission, I determined to make the trip on my own account. Possibly this was an indiscretion on my part; but indiscretions are apt to be the most enjoyable things in life, and I was getting tired of the humdrum routine of the camp. I had my English passport with me, which ensured my safe conduct until the actual declaration of hostilities; and armed with this precious document, I got one of my colleagues to act as locum tenens during my temporary absence from my practice, and hired a boat and a crew of boatmen to take me over the river, which at this point is nearly a mile wide, and flows with a current of extraordinary velocity. I dressed myself in a suit of mufti, but had no hat, and must have presented rather a piebald appearance with a Turkish fez surmounting a suit of English tweed. The Roumanian customs officers stared at me pretty hard, but they franked me through on my English passport, and I went into Kalafat, leaving my boatmen on the Roumanian side of the river to bring me back the same night.
I strolled into a café in Kalafat, which was then a town of about three thousand people; and the experience of living again in the European fashion, eating at a table, sitting on a chair, and seeing men in ordinary coats and trousers and hard black hats, struck me with all the charm of the unexpected. I felt the sensation of a Robinson Crusoe transplanted suddenly from his desert island and set down in the Hôtel Bristol.
Almost the first person that I met after I had finished breakfast was my friend Captain Giorgione, who expressed his delight at seeing me, and took me off at once to introduce me to the general commanding the division, after which I went to the captain's quarters in a house in the town. Most of the ordinary residents of Kalafat had already left the place, fearing that the bombardment of the town by the Widdin batteries was imminent, and the houses were filled with Roumanian officers and men. I lunched with Captain Giorgione and his brother officers, many of whom spoke German, and evinced a capacity for hearing news which was hardly disinterested. However, they were excessively polite, and in the afternoon we strolled on the promenade, and listened to the strains of an excellent military band.
As evening drew in my conscience began to trouble me, and I had the qualms of a schoolboy who has broken bounds, thinking of Osman Pasha and the remarks that he would be likely to make if he found out where I was. However, my newly found friends would not hear of my leaving them that day, and insisted upon my staying to dinner, at which I was given the seat of honour next to the general. What a capital dinner that was! Perhaps I enjoyed it all the more from the little circumstance that Osman Pasha might have me shot as soon as I got back. The Roumanian band played English airs in my honour, and the officers kept my glass always filled with Pommery. By the time we had reached the walnuts I found myself developing a surprising talent for mendacity, and the more questions that my polite hosts asked me the more astonishing grew my answering taradiddles. Of course they tried to pump me as to the number and disposition of the Turkish troops, and of course, guileless youth that I was, I lied wholesale. Even when I had put down the troops in Widdin at a hundred thousand men and expanded the artillery to four hundred guns, I was almost as astonished at my own moderation as they were at the magnitude of the force which Turkey had already mobilized in Widdin. One of the Roumanian surgeons who was at that dinner was green with envy when he discovered that I ranked as a major in the Turkish army while he was graded as a lieutenant. We had a very merry night of it, and I hope that all the fibs I told will not be remembered against me. Then at daybreak I made my way to the river, found my boatmen, and was back by six o'clock at my hotel with no one a bit the wiser for my escapade.
I met some interesting men at Widdin just before the war, notably a splendid young fellow named Frank Power—who, by the way, was a nephew of the late Sir Peter Lalor, once speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, and long ago a picturesque figure in the fight at the Eureka Stockade near Ballarat. Frank Power was a young Irishman, who had joined the Austrian military service, but afterwards was sent up to Widdin to act as war correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph. He lived with me; and I found him a most delightful companion, full of romance, and generously endowed with the love of adventure, and the enthusiasm, fire, and wit which are characteristic of the best Irishmen. He was a splendid rider and keen all-round sportsman, had read widely if not deeply, and with the mercurial temperament of the adventurer he combined more than a trace of the artist nature. He had the happiest knack of producing charming sketches in black-and-white or water-colours of bits of picturesque Bulgarian peasant life, groups of Turkish soldiery, or glimpses of the iris-spangled country that was soon to be coloured in a deeper dye. Poor Power was almost heart-broken when they sent up Nicholas Leader from Constantinople to replace him as the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. He returned to Vienna, and thence to Dublin, where he resumed his old journalistic life for a time. But to such a man as Power a life of comparative inactivity was impossible; and when the troubles broke out in the Soudan, he soon found his way over there, and eventually reached Khartoum, where General Gordon appointed him British consul. Shortly before the fall of Khartoum, Gordon sent him down the Nile in a steamer with Colonel Stewart and an Arab escort to take despatches to the force advancing to the relief of Khartoum. However, before the steamer had got far the smouldering fires of disaffection among the natives on board broke into flame, and they succeeded in running the steamer aground. Lured by the friendly demonstrations of the Arabs on the shore, Colonel Stewart and Frank Power went ashore with their escort while efforts were being made to lighten the steamer and float her off again. The full details of what followed will never be known with certainty; but news of a massacre reached the British column eventually, and the bearers of the despatches were among the missing. Those who are familiar with Dervish methods may picture for themselves the sudden rush of bloodthirsty fanatics, the desperate hand-to-hand combat, and the deaths of Colonel Stewart and of my gallant young comrade when they fell pierced by Arab lances on the scorched and dreadful desert that lies along the banks of the Nile from Wady Halfa to Khartoum.