“Yes. You are right.”
With these words the commander of Plevna turned to go.
“What news have you?” inquired Trist indifferently, as he set in order the papers lying upon his table. He spoke in a loud voice, as all men did in Plevna, because of the roar of artillery and the rolling echo among the hills.
“Oh—nothing of importance!”
“Are you quite without communications from outside?”
Osman turned upon the threshold, and looked back with a smile of assumed density. Then he disappeared through the low doorway.
Trist turned to his papers again, but he had not begun writing when the Turkish commander appeared once more.
“Trist,” he said, coming forward with long, heavy strides.
“Yes.”
“I can get you out tonight. Had you not better go?”
“I would rather stay,” replied the Englishman. “I am neither a woman nor a child.”
“But why run the risk?”
“It is my duty.”
“What we are enduring now,” said Osman, in a dull, painful voice, “is nothing to what I foresee. At present we make some small attempt to collect bodies and … and limbs, and bury them. Soon that will be impossible, for we shall want all our men at the guns and in the redoubts. The winter is coming on—food is already scarce—the wounded cannot be cared for. They and the dead will lie about the streets rotting in their own blood. My friend! this place will be a hell on earth!”
“Nevertheless, I stay.”
“Disease will take the town before the Russians break through—few of us will live to see Christmas!” pleaded Osman.
The Englishman looked up, pen in hand. There was actually a smile hovering upon his firm lips.
“It is useless,” he said very gently. “I stay till the end.”
“As you like,” murmured the soldier, leaving the room.
Trist did not begin work again for some time. The pile of papers around was of sufficient dimensions to alarm a less methodical labourer, but in the apparent disorder there was really a perfect system. Darkness closed in soon, and the war-correspondent lighted a small lamp. Then he laid aside the larger mass of paper, and selected a sheet which he doubled carefully into the form of a letter.
“It is better,” he said, “to face all probabilities. I shall write to her now, in case we are starved to death in here like rats.”
Far into the night this strange, restless Englishman sat at the little table writing. Heedless of the roar of artillery, the merry call of the bugle, and the groan of the dying, he wrote on at a great speed, for above all he was a writer. His pen sped over the paper with that precision which only comes from long practice—line after line, page after page of the small paper, perfect in punctuation, ready for the press in true journalistic form.
He folded the letter, and enclosed it in an envelope, which he addressed carefully in a legible roundhand.
“There,” he murmured, “let that be the last line I write tonight. It seems to me that we are on the verge of a crisis. Osman has something on his mind … I wonder if he means to cut his way out.”
Before lying down to rest on the heap of straw which served him as a bed, he collected all his papers and placed them securely in a large leather despatch-case, upon which was painted in black letters the address of the newspaper which he served. This was his nightly custom; for he was out all day upon the walls among the devoted children of Islam, and where bullets are flying no man has a right to ignore the chances of death. There was no bravado in the action, but a mere simple method. The chances were much in favour of the little baker’s shop being left empty one night; but that was no reason why the British public should be defrauded of its rightful sensation in the matter of words written by a hand that is still, for nothing is so safe to draw as the last words of one who has died in battle or mishap.
People who live peaceably at home are accustomed to receive great odds in the game of life and death. They, therefore, cannot understand why others—wanderers, sailors at all times, soldiers in time of war—are content with the lighter favour, and have the power of living happily in close proximity to death.
XIV
The Puzzle of Life
For five days and five nights there was little sleep to be had in Plevna. The Russians did not attack, as had been generally expected within the town, but commenced a terrible bombardment. Day and night the heavy guns were served by continual relays of men, and life in the redoubts was such as to reconcile the most philosophic to death. Within the town the scene was simply hellish. Osman has been accused of neglecting his wounded, but no man who crouched in the little town he so gloriously defended during those days would have the courage to aver that he could have done more than he did.
Tuesday, the eleventh of September, dawned, gray and hopeless. The smoke of a million rifles, a thousand cannon, hung heavily over the low hills. The continuous roar of the last few days seemed to have benumbed the very air, even as it had paralyzed men’s senses.
In the Russian camp upon the Loftcha road there were signs of extra activity. The artillery fire was somewhat slacker.
“They will attack the redoubts today,” Theodore Trist said to himself, as he surveyed the position of affairs in the gray morning light. There was not much to be seen, owing to the density of the fog hanging low in the vales, but the five days’ bombardment followed by audible activity in camp had some meaning.
Osman knew his weak point as well as it was known by Skobeleff; but the Russian general—foolhardy, reckless, wild as he was—hesitated to attack.
But there is no man who can boast that he is free
