It was afternoon before the advance was made, and in many places the fog had lifted.
Theodore Trist, with that instinct of warfare which was his curse, had selected a spot on the hill behind the doomed fortification, and thence, or from near at hand, he witnessed that terrible day’s work.
Failure was Skobeleff’s bête noire. Success in this case was an absolute necessity. There was only one way of gaining it in face of the horrible fire which was waiting within the fortification. Like the waves of ocean the Russian general swept his men up at carefully selected intervals. No troops in the world could have advanced under such galling volleys—they were bound to waver and fall back. But at the moment of hesitation a fresh regiment came on at the charge with a wild shout, bearing on the others in front of them. Four regiments rushed on thus to their death—three thousand men in three hundred yards. In the redoubt the Turks fought with that calm, desperate fatalism which makes such grand soldiers of the followers of Mahomed.
Theodore Trist, standing on the scarp of a second redoubt two hundred and fifty yards to the rear, wrote rapidly in his book, his mouth quivering with excitement. At last he could stand it no longer.
“By God!” he exclaimed hoarsely, “I have never seen anything like this!”
And shouting incoherently, he ran down the slope towards the redoubt.
At this moment Skobeleff came charging up at the head of his last reserve, a mere handful of sharpshooters. Trist saw the general fall and roll over with his stricken horse. A great throb seemed to choke him, and he barely realized that Skobeleff was on his feet again leading on his men, waving his sword and shrieking like a madman. A moment later the Englishman was borne uphill before a rushing mass of Turks, black with powder, voiceless, inhuman in their fury. The redoubt was lost!
But Trist did not give way to the general panic. The instinct of journalism was too strong in him, and he stood for a moment between the two redoubts looking on with practised eyes. He knew exactly how many men had been defending the position now lost, and was busy counting roughly the small number of fugitives. In certain corners of the redoubt the fight was still going on, but the Turks in there were no better than dead men.
While he was still there a Russian noncommissioned officer picked up the rifle of a Turk, and took aim at the solitary figure standing upon the slope, but Skobeleff knocked away the barrel with his sword.
“Not that man, my child!” he exclaimed, in a voice hoarse with shouting. “I know him. Let the story of this fight be told!”
The artillery fire had ceased all round, and for a moment there was a great silence in the valley, only broken by the moan of the dying and an occasional rifle-shot here and there. It was almost as if the living stood aghast—ashamed and cowering before their Maker, by the side of their grim handiwork. And so darkness came over the land, covering the hideousness of it with a merciful veil.
“They cannot possibly hold it!” Trist said to an officer who accosted him as he made his way—dazed and stupefied—back into the town. “It is untenable.”
This was no idle attempt at consolation. The Russian general had obeyed orders, but now he knew that his gallant work had been all in vain. By itself the redoubt was useless, for it was fully exposed to the Turkish fire, and there was no material at hand to reconstruct it, had his weary men been equal to the task, which they were not. During the night he sent, again and again, for reinforcements, which were persistently withheld, and at dawn he pluckily prepared to defend the position as best he might with the remainder of his own army-corps.
Trist had said that when Osman and Skobeleff met there would be war indeed, and the result proved with terrible reality that he had spoken naught else but the truth.
At daybreak the fight began again. The restless Turkish leader had made all his arrangements during the night. Exposed as it was to a galling fire from all sides, it seemed impossible that the redoubt could be held. But Skobeleff was there, and under Skobeleff the Russians have fought as they never did before.
At Turkish headquarters there was little or no anxiety, for the enemy could not afford to take another redoubt at such a cost, and so skilfully had the fortifications been planned, that there was no reason to suppose that further advances could be made more easily.
“Tomorrow,” Osman had said to his chief of staff, “it must be retaken!” and the young officer merely nodded his head. Then with the pencil that he carried stuck into his fez above his eye, the Turkish commander proceeded to write out his instructions.
At daybreak the fight began again, and the sun had not yet lost its matutinal ruddiness when the first organized attack was made. This was repulsed, and the same fate attended four subsequent attempts. No man but Skobeleff could have held that position for so long. As usual, there was something unique and original in his style of defence. He waited until the attacking force was almost within forty yards before firing, and then met them with one crashing volley, the sound of which rose to the firmament like the
