"Then fear not swords that brightly shine,
Nor towers that grimly frown;
For God shall march before our line,
And hew our foemen down."
"He said this so often, that at last he got the nickname among us of "Don't Fear," and he deserved it, if ever man did. Why, Father Nickolai Pavlovitch himself (the Emperor Nicholas) gave him the cross of St. George[[1]] with his own hand at the siege of Varna, in the year '28. You see, our battery had been terribly cut up by the Turkish fire, so at last there was only about half a dozen of us left on our feet. It was as hot work as I was ever in,—shot pelting, earthworks crumbling, gabions crashing, guns and gun-carriages tumbling over one another, men falling on every side like leaves, till all at once a shot went slap through our flag-staff, and down came the colours!
[[1]] The highest Russian decoration.
"Quick as lightning Pavel Petrovitch was upon the parapet, caught the flag as it fell, and held it right in the face of all the Turkish guns, while I and another man spliced the pole with our belts. You may think how the unbelievers let fly at him when they saw him standing there on the top of the breast-work, just as if he'd been set up for a mark; and all at once I saw one fellow (an Albanian by his dress, and you know what deadly shots they are) creep along to the very angle of the wall and take steady aim at him!
"I made a spring to drag the colonel down (I was his servant, you know, and whoever hurt him hurt me); but before I could reach him I saw the flash of the Albanian's piece, and Pavel Petrovitch's cap went spinning into the air with a hole right through it just above the forehead. And what do you think the colonel did? Why, he just snapped his fingers at the fellow, and called out to him, in some jibber-jabber tongue only fit to talk to a Turk in:
"'Can't you aim better than that, you fool? If I were your officer I'd give you thirty lashes for wasting the government ammunition!'
"Well, as I said before, he got the St. George, and of course everybody congratulated him, and there was a great shaking of hands, and giving of good wishes, and drinking his health in mavro tchai—that's a horrid mess of eggs, and scraped cheese, and sour milk, and Moldavian wine, which these Danube fellows have the impudence to call 'black tea,' as if it was anything like the good old tea we Russians drink at home! (I've always thought, for my part, that tea ought to grow in Russia; for it's a shame that these Chinese idolators should have such grand stuff all to themselves.)
"Well, just in the height of the talk Pavel Petrovitch takes the cross off his neck, and holds it out in his hand—just so—and says:
"'Well, gentlemen, you say I'm the coolest man in the regiment, but perhaps everybody wouldn't agree with you. Now, just to show that I want nothing but fair play, if I ever meet my match in that way I'll give him this cross of mine!'
"Now among the officers who stood near him was a young fellow who had lately joined—a quiet, modest lad, quite a boy to look at, with light curly hair and a face as smooth as any lady's. But when he heard what the colonel said he looked up suddenly, and there came a flash from his clear blue eyes like the sun striking a bayonet. And then I thought to myself: