In the Track of the Troops by Robert Michael Ballantyne (fantasy books to read TXT) 📖

Are you willing to go with me?"

"Go where?" I asked.

"That I may not tell," he replied; "anywhere, or nowhere, or everywhere. All I can say is, that if you go, it will be to act as surgeon to a squadron of cavalry. I see you have letters. Good news from home--eh? What of Bella?"

"Yes" I replied, "good news and good advice--listen."

I reopened the letters and read them aloud.

"Capital!" exclaimed Nicholas, "just the thing for you. No doubt my expedition will furnish a column and a half, if not more, of unquestionable facts for the _Scottish Bawbee_. Get ready, my boy; I start in half-an-hour."

He swung off in the same hearty, reckless manner with which he had entered; and I immediately set about packing up my surgical instruments and note-books, and making other preparations for a journey of unknown extent and duration.


CHAPTER TWELVE.


MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF ACTUAL WAR, AND MY THOUGHTS THEREON.

We set out by the light of the moon. Our party consisted of a small force of Russian light cavalry. The officer in command was evidently well acquainted with our route, for he rode smartly ahead without hesitation or sign of uncertainty for several hours.

At first Nicholas and I conversed in low tones as we cantered side by side over hill and dale, but as the night advanced we became less communicative, and finally dropped into silence. As I looked upon village and hamlet, bathed in the subdued light, resting in quietness and peace, I thought sadly of the evils that war would surely bring upon many an innocent and helpless woman and child.

It was invariably in this course that my thoughts about war flowed. I was, indeed, quite alive to the national evils of war, and I will not admit that any man-of-peace feels more sensitively than I do the fact that, in war, a nation's best, youngest, and most hopeful blood is spilled, while its longest lives and most ardent spirits are ruthlessly, uselessly sacrificed--its budding youths, its strapping men, its freshest and most muscular, to say nothing of mental, manhood. Still, while contemplating war and its consequences, I have always been much more powerfully impressed with the frightful consequences to women and children, than anything else. To think of our wives, our little ones, our tender maidens, our loving matrons, and our poor helpless babes, being exposed to murder, rapine, torture, and all the numerous and unnameable horrors of war, for the sake of some false, some fanciful, some utterly ridiculous and contemptible idea, such as the connection of one or two provinces of a land with this nation or with that, or the "integrity of a foreign empire," has always filled me with sensations of indignation approaching to madness, not unmingled, I must add, with astonishment.

That savages will fight among themselves is self-evident; that Christian nations shall defend themselves from the assaults of savages is also obvious; but that two Christian nations should go to war for anything, on any ground whatever, is to my mind inexplicable and utterly indefensible.

Still, they do it. From which circumstance I am forced to conclude that the Christianity as well as the civilisation and common-sense of one or the other of such nations is, for the time, in abeyance.

Of course I was not perplexed in regard to the Turks. Their religion is not Christian. Moreover, it was propagated by the sword, and teaches coercion in religious matters; but I could not help feeling that the Russians were too ready to forsake diplomacy and take to war.

"My dear fellow," said Nicholas, rousing himself, when I stated my difficulty, "don't you see that the vacillating policy of England has driven us to war in spite of ourselves? She would not join the rest of Europe in compelling Turkey to effect reforms which she--Turkey--had promised to make, so that nothing else was left for us but to go to war."

"My dear fellow," I retorted, somewhat hotly, "that Turkey has behaved brutally towards its own subjects is a well-known fact. That she has treated the representatives of all the great powers of Europe with extreme insolence is another well-known fact, but it is yet to be proved that the efforts of diplomacy were exhausted, and even if they were, it remained for Europe, not for Russia, to constitute herself the champion of the oppressed."

"Jeff, my boy," returned Nicholas, with a smile, "I'm too sleepy to discuss that subject just now, further than to say that I don't agree with you."

He did indeed look sleepy, and as we had been riding many hours I forbore to trouble him further.

By daybreak that morning we drew near to the town of Giurgevo, on the Roumanian--or, I may say, the Russian--side of the Danube, and soon afterwards entered it.

Considerable excitement was visible among its inhabitants, who, even at that early hour, were moving hurriedly about the streets. Having parted from our escort, Nicholas and I refreshed ourselves at the Hotel de l'Europe, and then went to an hospital, where my companion wished to visit a wounded friend--"one," he said, "who had lately taken part in a dashing though unsuccessful expedition."

This visit to Giurgevo was my first introduction to some of the actual miseries of war. The hospital was a clean, well-ventilated building. Rows of low beds were ranged neatly and methodically along the whitewashed walls. These were tenanted by young men in every stage of suffering and exhaustion. With bandaged heads or limbs they sat or reclined or lay, some but slightly wounded and still ruddy with the hue of health on their young cheeks; some cut and marred in visage and limbs, with pale cheeks and blue lips, that told of the life-blood almost drained. Others were lying flat on their backs, with the soft brown moustache or curly brown hair contrasting terribly with the grey hue of approaching death.

In one of the beds we found the friend of Nicholas.

He was quite a youth, not badly wounded, and received us with enthusiasm.

"My dear Nicholas," he said, in reply to a word of condolence about the failure of the expedition, "you misunderstand the whole matter. Doubtless it did not succeed, but that was no fault of ours, and it was a glorious attempt. Come, I will relate it. Does your friend speak Russian?"

"He at all events understands it," said I.

On this assurance the youth raised his hand to his bandaged brow as if to recall events, and then related the incident, of which the following is the substance.

While the Russians were actively engaged in preparing to cross the Danube at a part where the river is full of small islands, the Turks sent monitors and gunboats to interrupt the operations. The Russians had no vessels capable of facing the huge ironclads of the enemy. Of the ten small boats at the place, eight were engaged in laying torpedoes in the river to protect the works, and two were detailed to watch the enemy. While they were all busily at work, the watchers in a boat named the _Schootka_ heard the sound of an approaching steamer, and soon after descried a Turkish gunboat steaming up the river. Out went the little _Schootka_ like a wasp, with a deadly torpedo at the end of her spar. The gun-boat saw and sought to evade her, put on full steam and hugged the Turkish shore, where some hundreds of Circassian riflemen kept up an incessant fire on the Russian boat. It was hit, and its commander wounded, but the crew and the second in command resolved to carry out the attack. The _Schootka_ increased her speed, and, to the consternation of the Turks, succeeded in touching the gun-boat just behind the paddle-boxes, but the torpedo refused to explode, and the _Schootka_ was compelled to haul off, and make for shelter under a heavy fire from the gun-boat and the Circassian riflemen, which quite riddled her. While she was making off a second Turkish gun-boat hove in sight. The _Schootka_ had still another torpedo on board, one on the Harvey principle. This torpedo may be described as a somewhat square and flat case, charged with an explosive compound. When used it is thrown into the sea and runs through the water on its edge, being held in that position by a rope and caused to advance by pulling on it sidewise. Anglers will understand this when I state that it works on the principle of the "otter," and, somewhat like the celebrated Irish pig going to market, runs ahead the more it is pulled back by the tail. With this torpedo the daring Russians resolved to attack the second gunboat, but when they threw it overboard it would not work; something had gone wrong with its tail, or with the levers by which, on coming into contact with the enemy, it was to explode. They were compelled therefore to abandon the attempt, and seek shelter from the Turkish fire behind an island.

"So then," said I, on quitting the hospital, "torpedoes, although _terrible_ in their action, are not always _certain_."

"Nothing is always certain," replied Nicholas, with a smile, "except the flight of time, and as the matter on which I have come requires attention I must now leave you for a few hours. Don't forget the name of our hotel. That secure in a man's mind, he may lose himself in any town or city with perfect safety--_au revoir_."

For some time I walked about the town. The morning was bright and calm, suggesting ideas of peace; nevertheless my thoughts could not be turned from the contemplation of war, and as I wandered hither and thither, looking out for reminiscences of former wars, I thought of the curiously steady way in which human history repeats itself. It seems to take about a quarter of a century to teach men to forget or ignore the lessons of the past and induce them to begin again to fight. Here, in 1829, the Russians levelled the fortifications which at that time encircled the town; here, in 1854, the Russians were defeated by the Turks; and here, in 1872, these same Russians and Turks were at the same old bloody and useless game--ever learning, yet never coming to a knowledge of the great truth, that, with all their fighting, nothing has been gained and nothing accomplished save a few changes of the men on the chess-board, and the loss of an incalculable amount of life and treasure.

As the day advanced it became very sultry. Towards the afternoon I stopped and gazed thoughtfully at the placid Danube, which, flowing round the gentle curve of Slobosia, reflected in its glittering waters the white domes and minarets of the opposite town of Rustchuk. A low, rumbling sound startled me just then from a reverie. On looking up I perceived a small puff of smoke roll out in the direction of the Turkish shore. Another and another succeeded, and after each shot a smaller puff of smoke was seen to hang over the Turkish batteries opposite.

A strange conflicting rush of feelings came over me, for I had awakened from dreaming of ancient battles to find myself in the actual presence of modern war. The Russian had opened fire, and their shells were bursting among the Turks. These latter were not slow to reply. Soon the rumbling increased to thunder, and